This story originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Green Guide 2025/26,
a collaboration publication between 'Santa Barbara Independent' and 'Bluedot Living'.
A recent visit to Arroyo Hondo was my first, but I found it to be unexpectedly familiar. The creek-carved canyon, the vegetation and tall trees, the quiet, even the smells transported me back to the nearby Hollister Ranch, where I had lived as a teenager.
When I was 13, we moved “just for the summer” into the grand house built in Bulito Canyon for Jim and Lottie Hollister in 1910. It had been empty for 10 years, and to take ownership, all we had to do was clean it up — which took weeks of hard work by my five siblings and me. My summer was ruined.