No Bluffing--Activists Save a Scenic Coastline

A long campaign to save the Carpinteria Bluffs, one of the last stretches of privately held, undeveloped coastline between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, succeeded just days before the New Year’s deadline.

Activists, local merchants, schoolchildren and hundreds of Santa Barbara County citizens raised nearly $4 million to buy the bluffs Dec. 23 from the property owner, Shea/Vickers Development.

The developer had offered the parcel with the stipulation that Citizens for the Carpinteria Bluffs and the Land Trust for Santa Barbara come up with the money before year’s end.

This prompted conservationists to begin a flurry of benefit concerts, fund-raising parties and door-to-door campaigns to add to the $1.5 million contributed by the California Coastal Conservancy.

For more than two decades a battle raged between development interests with plans to build huge housing and hotel projects and local conservationists who wanted to preserve the bluffs.

Surfers, hikers and bird-watchers have long enjoyed the bluffs, which rise about 100 feet above the beach and offer great views of Anacapa, Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa islands.

Now that the bluffs are in the public domain, they are likely to add to Carpinteria’s allure for coastal connoisseurs. Carpinteria residents boast that they have the “world’s safest beach” because, although the surf can be large, it breaks far from shore, and there’s no undertow. As early as 1920, visitors reported “the Hawaiian diversion of surfboard riding.”

The Carpinteria Tar Pits once bubbled up near Carpinteria Beach. Spanish explorers noted that the Chumash caulked their canoes and sealed their cookware with the natural asphalt. About 1915, crews mined the tar-like substance, which was used to pave the coast highway in Santa Barbara County.

In order to dig the asphalt, workmen had to heat their shovels in a furnace; the smoking tar would slice like butter with a hot edge. Long ago, the tar pits trapped mastodons, saber-toothed tigers and other prehistoric animals. Unfortunately, the pits, which might have yielded amazing fossils like those of the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, became a municipal dump.

On Aug. 17, 1769, Gaspar de Portola’s Spanish explorers observed the native Chumash building a canoe and dubbed the location La Carpinteria, the Spanish word for a carpentry shop.

Carpinteria is one of the state park system’s more popular beachfront campgrounds. A broad beach, gentle waves, fishing and clamming are among the reasons for its popularity. A tiny visitors center (open weekends only) offers displays of marine life and Chumash history as well as a child-friendly tide-pool tank.

The Carpinteria beach hike heads down-coast along the state beach to City Bluffs Park and the Chevron oil pier. A small pocket beach contains the Harbor Seal Preserve.

From December through May this beach is seals only. Humans may watch the boisterous colony, sometimes numbering as many as 150 animals, from a bluff-top observation area above the beach.

After seal-watching, you can then sojourn over the Carpinteria bluffs or continue down the beach to Rincon Point on the Santa Barbara-Ventura County line.

Directions to trail head: From U.S. 101 in Carpinteria, exit on Linden Avenue and head south (toward the ocean) 0.6 mile through town to the avenue’s end at the beach. Park along Linden Avenue (free, but time is restricted) or in the Carpinteria State Beach parking lot ($5).

The hike: Follow the beach south. After half a mile’s travel over the wide sand strand, you’ll reach Carpinteria Creek, which bisects the state beach.

During the summer, a sandbar creates a lagoon at the mouth of the creek. Continue over the sandbar or, if Carpinteria Creek is high, retreat inland through the campground and use the bridge over the creek.

Picnic at City Bluffs Park or keep walking a short distance farther along the bluffs past Chevron Oil Pier to an excellent vista point above the Harbor Seal Preserve.

From the seal preserve, you can walk another mile across the Carpinteria Bluffs. Time and tides permitting, you can continue still farther down-coast along the beach to Rincon Beach County Park, a popular surfing spot.

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Carpinteria Beach Trail

WHERE: Carpinteria State Beach.

DISTANCE: From Carpinteria State Beach to Harbor Seal Preserve is 2.5 miles round trip; to Carpinteria Bluffs is 4.5 miles round trip; to Rincon Beach County Park is 6 miles round trip.

TERRAIN: Dramatic bluffs, “world’s safest beach.”

HIGHLIGHTS: Seal preserve, conservation success story.

DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: Easy.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Carpinteria State Beach, c/o California State Parks, tel. (805) 968--3294