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Below the 101 2.4-mile waterfront line, Santa Barbara
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A self-guided walking line along the Santa Barbara waterfront, from the harbor breakwater to the end of Stearns Wharf. Everything above Highway 101 is the red-tile old town; everything below it is where the money and the work came from. Walk it backwards through time — the 1930 harbor a yachtsman's cheque paid for, the resort hotel the railroad made and fire took, the 1887 depot, the un-made-over "Funk Zone," and out to the 1872 wharf that ended the town's isolation. Ten stops, about a hundred and ten minutes, and the whole city waiting at the end of the pier.

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The route, in order

  1. Harbor & breakwater A harbor a millionaire's cheque bought in 1930 — and has been paying to keep ever since.
  2. West Beach & the Potter ghost A 600-room resort colossus stood here — opened 1903, gone in a single 1921 night.
  3. Train depot The railroad reached town in 1887 — and the freeway that followed the tracks walled the beach off from downtown.
  4. Moreton Bay Fig Tree Planted in 1876 from a sailor's seedling — believed the largest Moreton Bay fig in the United States.
  5. Entering the Funk The quarter the makeover skipped — cheap, odd and honest, until the arts-district clock started ticking.
  6. Urban Wine Trail block Warehouse tasting rooms brought Santa Barbara County's wine down to the water — and a movie poured gasoline on it.
  7. The mural blocks An open-air gallery that keeps repainting itself — art as both the funk and the thing that raises the rent.
  8. The surf corner Rincon down the coast, Renny Yater's boards, and Channel Islands Surfboards — founded here in 1969.
  9. Wharf gate & Dolphin Fountain Bud Bottoms' dolphins mark the spot where a lumberman decided the town needed a wharf.
  10. End of Stearns Wharf 1872: the wharf that ended the town's isolation, and the view of the whole city from the water.

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