CHANGING OF THE GUARD

After decades of exclusive access to Hollister Ranch, the most coveted stretch of California coast is finally going public

- JUSTIN HOUSMAN

Twelve-thousand years ago, people stood on the shores of the California coast just south of Point Conception and north of present-day Gaviota and marveled at their good fortune. Mild weather. A south-facing coastline protected from the shrieking winds to the north. Bountiful seafood, plenty of game in the hills and spring-fed creeks spilling down from low-lying coastal mountains. In the winter, as they launched canoes from sandy creek mouths tucked into the lees of points, they would have paddled wide of waves peeling like pinwheels over cobblestone and reef-dotted bottoms; perhaps the paddlers looked into the almond eyes of green tubes spiraling empty toward the clean yellow sand, an oar raised in appreciation and awe. History has long forgotten if it ever knew, the names of the original inhabitants of that idyllic stretch of coast. After who knows how many generations, the people living there came to call themselves the Chumash—a word that roughly translates as “shell collectors.”

When the Spanish arrived in Southern California in the 1700s, the Chumash had developed into a bustling society of fisherman, hunters, artisans and shaman. Their culture was complex and sophisticated, and their food supply so rich it afforded ample free time to enjoy the golden coast. The Chumash lived a lifestyle unrivaled anywhere else in pre-historic North America. Soon after the first Spanish arrived, though, the Chumash were mostly gone, victims first of exotic European diseases, then the predatory mission system and finally the cultural bulldozer that was the relentless advance of the American West. The point-studded coastline, however, remained mostly as it was. The emerald green waves still peeled, the golden grasses waved, the wind still rushed through wild canyons, smelling of live oak and sage, the very essence of coastal California.