Part IV: The Santa Barbara Harbor Approaches a Century

by Lydia Rao

The breakwater was completed on June 30, 1930, and featured walkways, benches, and lighting. It also created land, in the form of 10-acres of sand which built up against the breakwater. Growing quickly over a few years, the sand formed what would become the harbor district and Leadbetter Beach. The wave action carries over 775 cubic yards of sand past the end of the breakwater each day, where it settles to the ground and creates the shoals that fill the harbor and block the entrance to all boats except those with the shallowest draft.

Fishing was abundant in the 1930s, at one point Santa Barbara was providing 30 percent of California’s halibut, prompting Geroge Castagnola to open a fish market. Despite the sand buildup, yachting was becoming popular, with the fleet recorded at more than 100 vessels of varying sizes. Semana Nautica began in the harbor in 1933. It was initially called Fleet Week and had locals compete in various sporting competitions against visiting Navy troops. In 1936, the Port Arguello Rescue Station was founded, and the Coast Guard began regularly patrolling the Santa Barbara coastline.

Leadbetter Beach was officially deeded to the city in 1937, but by 1939 the country was on the brink of World War II, and the city in turn deeded several acres to the Navy for the construction of the Naval Reserve Armory. The price of the land? One dollar. Construction began soon after and was mostly complete by the time the United States entered the war. In 1942, the city leased more land to the Navy for the construction of the Navy Pier, and the completed Naval Armory was designated a Small Craft Training Center, with a focus on minesweeping. In 1943, Dibblee Hill was dynamited to finally connect Cabrillo to the harbor, leaving a small section of freestanding fossil- laden cliff next to the current Los Banos, aptly dubbed “Fossil Hill.”

After the war ended, the Small Craft Training Center was decommissioned, and the building was again a Naval Reserve Armory. Harbor improvement and expansion plans were being discussed, and local civil engineering firm Penfield & Smith was retained to draft an improvement proposal. The plans discussed extending the existing breakwater, plus the construction of an additional breakwater east of Stearns Wharf, with a small craft harbor running inland under Cabrillo Boulevard, but any progress was cut short by the Korean War.

The Santa Barbara Yacht Club was granted land in 1950 and built the first iteration of their clubhouse on the sand, which was completed in 1951. Yacht club members funded several improvements in the harbor, including the first marina, built by Harry Chanson. A total of 105 slips were built in 1955 at a cost of $160,000. Two years later the yacht club formed the Harbor Improvement Association in 1957, which built Marina One with 40 double slips. In May of that year, local voters declined to approve a bond for the proposed harbor expansions, which would have held over 2,700 small craft. Money was still spent on the harbor, however, as the city spent $377,000 on a dredge and tender to keep the harbor open.

Other more modest harbor improvements were approved in 1960 including a new pier to haul boats out of the water, as well as a mobile hoist to transport them to the new boat yard. A two-story building was constructed between the marine hardware store and the Coast Guard building, today occupied by various businesses like Brophy Bros, Blue Water Hunter, Santa Barbara Fish Market, On the Alley, Santa Barbara Marine Service, Paddle Sports Center, and the Waterfront Maintenance offices.

In the decades after the war the diving industry grew, with many Navy-trained divers adapting to abalone and urchin diving. In the 1960s, growing interest in offshore oil led to the formation of several diving companies such as Associated Divers, Cal Dive, Kirby-Morgan Corporation, Ocean Systems Inc., and others. In 1962, Dan Wilson made his historic mixed-gas dive off Santa Cruz Island, descending to 400 feet while breathing a 4:1 ratio of helium to oxygen. His tender recalls they taped measurement increments on the air hose, which they uncoiled and measured along the breakwater after returning to the harbor. In 1964, Dan initially tested the Purisima dive bell in the harbor, and in 1968 he helped to form the Marine Dive Technology Program at Santa Barbara City College. His actions, and those of many more professional divers in the area, helped establish Santa Barbara as the leader in deep water diving.

Since the attempts to add more breakwaters in the 1950s had failed, civil engineers looked inland. In 1960, a bulkhead built along West Beach expanded the harbor, but also caused consequences. The new concrete wall created a rigid surface from which incoming swells would bounce off, causing turbulence in the harbor. The remedy was to add a jetty east of the launch ramp, which forms the Santa Barbara Landing today. More sand- reducing efforts were made in the mid-1960s, such as filling the gaps between the boulders that formed the breakwater with concrete. Fossil Hill was dynamited to expand the parking lot even further. By 1968, the harbor had all four marinas, along with a small boat hoist, sportfishing facilities, parking lots, a bike path along Cabrillo, and the newly opened Undersea Gardens.

These new improvements were in place only a few years before the harbor and coastline were threatened by the oil spill of 1969. On January 28, drilling on Union Oil’s Platform A created an eruption of oil that started to spread across the surface of the ocean. A week later it covered beaches along the coast, including the harbor. Boats were dry docked and cleaned, but the solvent used to remove the oil had destroyed the waterproofing of the concrete slips and docks, which all needed to be replaced. The dredge was also ruined, and dredging operations once again returned to a federal contract. This oil spill led to great civic interest in the preservation of the local environment and was the inspiration for passing the Environment Protection Act in 1970, requiring environmental impact statements from oil companies involved in offshore drilling.

The 1970s brought more small improvements to the harbor including the new fisherman’s wharf in 1974. Two years later, the Coast Guard moved into their current building behind the Naval Reserve Center. Boat owners saw a rent increase in 1978, which drove many fishermen down to Channel Islands Harbor. In 1982, the harbor reported that all 1,008 slips were rented at a price of $1.65 – $2.10 per foot per month. That same year, Commanding Officer of the Naval Reserve Center, Lieutenant Commander Douglas, started the town’s first maritime museum in a portion of the building that is today the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum. The following year, in 1983, a huge storm caused more than $1.5 million in damage to the harbor alone, forcing a six-week closure for repairs. As a response, reinforcement was placed along the sandspit, creating a walled harbor entrance that minimized the entry of southeastern storm swells.

The 1990s saw the Navy sell the Reserve Center back to the city. The price tag this time? $2.4 million. The
decommissioning ceremony was held in 1995, and today the building hosts National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) offices, a visitor center, restaurants, and the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, which opened in July 2000. Today, we still face devastating storms, such as the January 2023 storm, which caused $2.2 million in damages to the waterfront. But the harbor has stood the test of time, and today we have one of the few remaining working harbors, with multi-generational fishermen making a living with the boats of their forebears. For almost a century the harbor has protected the boats and businesses that form an essential part of the thriving Santa Barbara waterfront.

Questions, corrections, or suggestions for the next Curator’s Log? Write to SBMM Collections Manager Lydia Rao at lrao@sbmm.org.

Some sources below for those inclined to read more:
Barthelmess, Don. Santa Barbara Helium Rush: The Legacy of Dan Wilson’s Gas Dive. Noozhawk, November 7,
2012.
Bookspan, Rochelle, et al. Santa Barbara by the Sea. 1982.
Dana, Richard Henry, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast. Harper & Brothers, 1840.
Everett, William B. Noticias: Santa Barbara Street Transportation. Santa Barbara Historical Museum, 1968.
Everett, William B. and Gary B. Coombs. Mule Car and Trolley: The Story of the Santa Barbara Street Railway.
Institute for American Research, 1984.
Graffy, Neal. Street Names of Santa Barbara. 2008.
Graffy, Neal. Santa Barbara Then and Now. 2012.
Graffy de Garcia, Erin. Noticias: Safe Haven. Santa Barbara Historical Museum, 2010.
O’Neill, Owen H. History of Santa Barbara County, State of California. Harold McLean Meier. 1939
Tompkins, Walker A. Santa Barbara Yesterdays. McNally & Loftin, 1962.
Tompkins, Walker A. Historical High Lights of Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara National Bank, 1970.
Tompkins, Walker A. A Centennial History of Stearns Wharf. Santa Barbara Wharf Company, 1972.
Tompkins, Walker A. Santa Barbara Past and Present. McNally & Loftin, 1975.
Tompkins, Walker A. It Happened in Old Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara National Bank, 1976.