San Marcos Foothills Parcel
In the late 1800s, La Paloma Ranch included 800 acres of the foothill land that surrounds the present San Marcos Foothills parcel. A dairy and a small farm supplemented the grazing that had begun on the ranch. By 1975, the original parcel had shrunk, subdivided for housing, churches, and State Highway 154. On the remaining 377 acres, little had changed from ancient times. Bunchgrasses grew in abundance on the ridges and slopes, and oaks dotting the hills provided habitat for many animals and birds. The boulders on the western mesa (West Mesa) lay where they had come to rest many thousands of years ago.

The population of Santa Barbara grew rapidly through the 1970s and many developers approached the County Supervisors with elaborate plans for San Marcos Foothills. In 1975, a “Christian City” with schools, an orphanage, conference center, retirement village, and homesites was proposed by the Christian Education Associates, and later withdrawn (Santa Barbara County, 1999).

A 559-unit housing proposal named “Royal Gate” was brought to the table by Arthur Morgan in 1980, but the County Supervisors denied it four to one. Morgan came back in 1990 with “Morgan Ranch,” a development of 175 luxury homes and a golf course, but this too failed to materialize. Subsequent to the rejection of Royal Gate, the County had designated the land a Planned Residential Development (PRD) site with policies for the “Cieneguitas Creek Plan Area.” These policies recognize site constraints related to creeks, Rincon formations, woodlands, and archeological sites. The kites and coyotes hunted on, oblivious to the plans of humans.

San Marcos Foothills changed hands again when Specialty Restaurants, Inc., of Orange County foreclosed on Arthur Morgan in 1993. In 1994, a corporation called Landtec proposed a 75-unit project but later withdrew it. Four years later, during scoping for a project with 75 homes and horse facilities called “Bridle Ridge,” the County acknowledged that the presence of native grasslands (a post-PRD constraint) would warrant further density reduction. In 1998, Bridle Ridge was unanimously denied. And still the hawks and ravens and bobcats continue to hunt unmolested, the Grasshopper Sparrows continue to breed, and the Dusky-footed Woodrats continue to forage, oblivious to all these proposed redesigns of their land.

Regional Environmental Setting
The most striking visual feature of the Santa Barbara region is the juxtaposition of ocean and mountains and the transition lands in between. (See Map 1, Regional Context.) San Marcos Foothills epitomize this transition. The peaks above this land rise to 2800’. The Foothills range from 320' to 960' and, standing on their greatest heights, one can see the ocean stretching from Gaviota to the Rincon. Geological events over more than a million years are responsible for the grassland mesas, the wetlands, and the soils on San Marcos Foothills. The boulder fields testify to the enormous forces that carried vast amounts of coarse alluvium from the mountains to the foothills. Subsequent erosion and uplift have transformed what was once lowland canyons into elevated and dissected terraces from the Riviera to eastern Goleta. The largest remaining terrace not already developed or planted with avocados is the expansive West Mesa of San Marcos Foothills.

The coast of Santa Barbara County south of the Santa Ynez crest seldom receives the direct effects of the major climatic forces. Tucked at the base of our east-west

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