J.J. Hollister, whose family name is synonymous with Santa Barbara ranching, a law firm, street names, and a California city, died peacefully yesterday afternoon at the age of 83. John James Hollister III is remembered as a gentleman with a strong sense of civic duty, who made it possible for the county's land trust to acquire his 782-acre Arroyo Hondo ranch for $6.3 million as a natural and historic preserve in 2001.
A graduate of Stanford University and Berkeley's Boalt Hall, Hollister cofounded Hollister & Brace in 1966 with William Brace. He had lived at Arroyo Hondo, where he and his wife Barbara were married in 1970, for many years in an adobe built by the Ortega family. Presidio Commandant José Francisco Ortega had been granted Rancho Nuestra Señora del Refugio, of which Hondo was one canyon, by Mexico in 1827. The arroyo formed part of the thousands of acres stretching from Refugio to Pt. Conception acquired by his great-grandfather, Col. W.W. Hollister, in the 1860s with the Dibblee brothers, Thomas and Albert.
Hollister was born in San Francisco in 1932. His father was in stocks and bonds there until the Great Depression caused the family to move to the family ranch near Gaviota. A natural storyteller, Hollister shared his history of growing up on the Gaviota coast when teacher and writer Cynthia Carbone Ward brought her 6th graders to Arroyo Hondo — their Vista Del Mar schoolhouse had been at the foot of the canyon before moving to Las Cruces — during a living history project in the late 1990s.