The foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains have been home to countless non-human creatures—plant, scaled, feathered, and furred. Populations have waxed and waned in response to climatic shifts. About ten thousand years ago—probably more—the ancestors of the people who now call themselves Chumash also became a part of this community. The Chumash homeland eventually extended over San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties, including the Channel Islands and parts of Los Angeles and Kern counties.

The people prospered in a great diversity of habitats, from maritime to foothills to inland mountain and valley, settling in permanent villages in all those areas. The villages were concentrated along the coast where the most consistent year-round sources for food, shelter, and trade could be found. But even among the coast dwellers, it was customary for whole villages to make seasonal moves for acorn and other harvests as well as regular forays for hunting. We know that San Marcos Foothills (SMF) comprised an area used in this manner over thousands of years as revealed by the archaeological evidence of a permanent village and eight seasonal camping sites (Rogers, 1929). We can deduce from the numerous camps and from the native plant communities still growing there just how rich and beautiful the entire foothill area must have been! The spring that supported this village still flows year round. The land—including the small remaining parcel we now call San Marcos Foothills—was so abundant that the first people were able to live here sustainably for thousands of years.

This was a pristine land when the Spanish first arrived, but it was not a land that needed taming to those who had lived here for many generations. Rather, here and across the American continents, the people interacted intimately with their environments, shaping and being shaped by everything around them. With European contact, the indigenous human populations were decimated by a variety of causes, a loss that continues to reverberate. One consequence often ignored and difficult to document is that the displacement of the Chumash by European-Americans drastically changed the balance of interactions on the land.

When the Spanish King Carlos III claimed California for Spain, Mission Santa Barbara held all the local foothill lands but apparently cultivated only those areas closest to the Mission. By then the Chumash people were so few that they could no longer maintain their traditional resource base. When Mexico attained its independence from Spain, rancheros also turned their backs on the rugged foothills and sought more “hospitable” lands.

For a time, after secularization of the missions in the 1830s, Don Nicholas Den and Doctor Richard Den leased the mission lands (Tompkins, 1960) but found little use for the foothills. The owls, hawks, and bobcats hunted in peace.

In 1848, the United States of America seized California and, ignoring the Dens’ claim, opened the foothills up to homesteading or purchase. From the 1850s to the early 1900s, cattlemen and sheepherders were associated with the foothills. During the era of silent movies, the Flying A Studios in Santa Barbara shot scenes for Westerns in the foothills. In 1914, the Wright family built an elegant home on a knoll with a panoramic view. Excavation during construction revealed that a permanent village of Chumash had also once enjoyed this view (Rogers, 1929). The Wright family home has survived the wildfires and vagaries of time to the present. It stands there still, looking out on the rolling and still miraculously undeveloped terrain of San Marcos Foothills.

- 6 -