Montecito is verdant -- and wealthy
The neighborhoods of the Santa Barbara County enclave are among the richest in the state -- although Oprah Winfrey, Ty Warner and other big-name moguls make up the elite, not the norm.
John and Jacqueline Kennedy honeymooned there. Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bridges, John Cleese, Rob Lowe and Ivan Reitman live there. Ellen DeGeneres used to, before she sold her estate earlier this year for about $20 million to Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive.
Montecito, a verdant enclave in Santa Barbara County once populated by grizzly bears and wolves, has for decades been home to celebrities and corporate titans residing in luxurious estates.
In recent years, Beanie Babies mogul Ty Warner has bought up and renovated classic Montecito resorts, including the Four Seasons Biltmore, the San Ysidro Ranch (where the Kennedys honeymooned in the hills in 1953) and the Montecito Country Club.
Montecito profile: In Saturday's Section A, a photo with an article profiling the city of Montecito did not show the burned homes of wealthy residents as the caption indicated. It showed the charred remains of the Mount Calvary Monastery, destroyed in the Tea fire.
Warner, Winfrey and their rarefied ilk have added to the unincorporated community's aura of fame and fortune. So far, their well-known properties appear to be unscathed by the Tea fire that broke out Thursday night and spread Friday to Santa Barbara proper.
Actor Christopher Lloyd, best known for his roles on "Taxi" and in the "Back to the Future" films, was not so lucky; his house sustained heavy damage in the Tea fire.
The neighborhoods of Montecito are among the wealthiest in the state --although the Winfreys and other big-name moguls make up the elite, not the norm. Still semirural, Montecito (which means "little woods") has about 10,000 residents, 93% of whom are white, according to census data. The median income is $140,000, on a par with cities such as La Cañada Flintridge and Rolling Hills Estates.
In prehistoric times, hot mineral springs drew Native Americans, who created an early spa in a canyon.
The area was later settled by Mexicans, including many of Santa Barbara's original families: Romero, Olivas, Robles, Lopez, Lorenzana. By the 1850s and '60s, farmers had arrived, tapping creeks and springs to irrigate the dry hills and raise a variety of crops.
"They turned Montecito into the most beautiful green paradise of orchards and farms that you ever saw," said Maria Herold, curator of the Montecito Assn.'s history committee.
In the late 1800s, the incomparable scenery and balmy climate began to attract wealthy visitors from the Midwest and East Coast.
In 1887, the first blast of a locomotive whistle echoed through Montecito, as the Southern Pacific extended its Coast Line as far as Goleta, according to Walker A. Tompkins, who has written about the area. That same year, San Francisco banker William H. Crocker bought a citrus ranch with his mother-in-law, Caroline Sperry. The upper end of the Crocker-Sperry Ranch was called China Flat, named for Chinese stone masons who camped there in the 1880s.
