Goleta

The area of present-day Goleta was populated for thousands of years by the native Chumash people; locally they were known by the first European settlers as Canaliños (for the canoes they built to travel to the Channel Islands). One of the largest villages, S'axpilil, was north the Goleta Slough, not far from the present-day Santa Barbara Airport.

The first European visitor was Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who sailed past in 1542. During the 1980s, discovery of some 16th-century cannon on the beach led to the advancement of a theory that Sir Francis Drake sailed into the Goleta Slough in 1579, where he may have spent several weeks repairing his ship.

In the 18th century, two Spanish expeditions came to the area; the second founded the Presidio of Santa Barbara and Mission to the east, and began the work of converting the Chumash to Roman Catholicism. During the 19th century most of the area, formerly covered with oak trees, was deforested; ranching was the principal land use during this time. The two main local ranchers, Nicolas A. Den and Daniel Hill, became wealthy in the late 1840s by selling locally-grown beef to the thousands of miners who came to the California Gold Rush.

The Goleta Valley was a prominent lemon-growing region during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was largely agricultural. In addition, several areas, especially the Ellwood Mesa, were developed for oil and natural gas extraction. Starting in 1940, boosters from the City of Santa Barbara lobbied and obtained federal funding and passed a bond meausure to develop an airport on the Goleta Slough; the airport development was accelerated by U.S. response to an attack on Ellwood by a Japanese submarine, see Attacks on United States territory in North America during World War II. The Marine Corps undertook completion of the airport and established living quarters on the site of the current University of California, Santa Barbara campus.

After the war, Goleta Valley residents supported the construction of Cachuma Lake, which provided water enabling a housing boom and the establishment of research and aerospace firms in the area. In 1954 the University of California, Santa Barbara moved to part of the former Marine base. Along with the boom in aerospace, the character changed from rural-agricultural to high-tech. Goleta remains a center for high-tech firms, and a bedroom community for nearby Santa Barbara.

Goleta was incorporated as a city in 2002 after several unsuccessful attempts. A significant urbanized area remains unincorporated between the town of Goleta and the city of Santa Barbara, largely consisting of the area which polled against incorporation prior to the 2002 election (it was excluded from the proposed incorporated boundaries, in order to make passage of incorporation more likely). There has been some discussion of annexation of this area, sometimes dubbed informally "Noleta", by the City of Santa Barbara. The current boundaries of Goleta are shown in the city's map.

The 2000 census figures reflect the census-designated place of Goleta, which was somewhat larger than the incorporated city. The city's population was estimated in 2002 at around 30,904 according to the CA Governor's Office of Planning and Research.

Goleta contains a mix of land uses, lacking only heavy industrial zones. North of the U.S. Route 101 freeway is a region of predominantly tract housing built between the late 1950s and the 1970s, intermingled with newer condominium developments, a few gated communities, and adjacent to a lower-density residential zone in the lower foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains which contains larger homes. A commercial strip along Calle Real is one of the town's several business districts. South of the freeway is Old Town Goleta, centered on the stretch of Hollister Avenue between Fairview Avenue and the Highway 217 overpass; adjacent to this commercial area is a region of older, and occasionally substandard housing; some of the south county's least affluent people live in this zone. Between Old Town Goleta and the airport, and running along south Fairview Avenue, are some light industrial zones, some of relatively few in southern Santa Barbara County. Farther west, near the intersection of Storke Road and Hollister Avenue, is a large shopping mall, including "big box" stores, which draws business from outside the local area. This area is called the "Camino Real Marketplace". There is also a new business park called Cabrillo Business Park next to it. Adjacent to the mall and extending more than a mile farther west is a residential area, most of the housing in which dates back to the 1960s; it includes some high-density apartment blocks which accept some of the overflow student population from nearby UCSB.

Goleta has several significant parks, including Stow Park, Lake Los Carneros, and the newly created Ellwood Open Space on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Goleta Beach County Park is just outside of the city limits.