California's American Riviera — where Santa Barbara sits between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific on a north-south coastline (the only section of the California coast that runs east-west rather than north-south — making its beaches face due south, so sunsets appear to set into the ocean at Santa Barbara when they set behind the mountains everywhere else in Southern California), the 1786 Santa Barbara Mission (the only California mission that has been continuously occupied by Franciscan friars since its founding — the other 20 missions were secularised by Mexico in 1833) rises on a hillside of red tiles and whitewashed walls, State Street (the pedestrianised main artery of downtown, rebuilt in Spanish Colonial Revival style after a 1925 earthquake destroyed the previous Victorian downtown) is the most architecturally coherent downtown corridor in California, and the Santa Ynez Valley (30 minutes north) is the wine region that transformed American Chardonnay and Pinot Noir after the film 'Sideways' (2004)
Santa Barbara (91,000 city; 450,000 metro) is a coastal city on the California Riviera — a channel city between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Santa Barbara Channel, 145 km north of Los Angeles. Santa Barbara's Spanish Colonial Revival architecture (the result of a 1925 earthquake that destroyed its Victorian downtown and was rebuilt under strict zoning in a unified Spanish style) makes it the most aesthetically cohesive mid-sized city in California.
Santa Barbara was established as a Spanish presidio (military garrison) in 1782 and the mission in 1786 on the traditional territory of the Chumash people — one of the most sophisticated Indigenous cultures in North America, known for their sewn-plank canoes (tomols) that allowed regular ocean crossings to the Channel Islands. The 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake (6.8 magnitude) destroyed much of the Victorian downtown, and the city chose to rebuild under a strict architectural code requiring Spanish Colonial Revival style — a decision so consistent and sustained that the resulting downtown is o…