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The story of water, land, air, and fire has no beginning and has no end.
All life is interconnected; entwined.
All life is interconnected; entwined.
That is the way of water, land, and people. It is a story of relationships.
We share responsibilities in stewardship in order to be replenished and sustained, and by that made whole by acknowledging these sacred relationships that are timeless and endurring.
The story is water heated and dissolving minerals rising from the depths and touching the sky. Springs gathering as pools, flowing, sustaining communities of flora and fauna. Waters coursing downslope defined by canyon opens onto the coastal plain and meanders and reminds the village Shalawa near the ocean that life is merging and reemergence as these springs join into the ocean losing distinction. All to later be pulled to cloud carried and with the pull of gravity fallen and absorbed by a yielding earth only to draw deeply to once again become warmed by the heart of the earth. And that is why we know that water is life and with its own story.
The people; Chumash
The people; Chumash
Since time immemorial and to this day the Chumash people have lived upon these lands and have responsibilities of stewardship of the land and sustenance of its people. The whole Chumash way of life, creation, and relation with a nurturing and sustaining planet was shared and imparted by story throughout the generations.
Today when we do not have access to the stories we have recorded events we know as historical guideposts to what might have incurred. This vew of knowing will be shared as references and distilled intuition providing a narrative or lens to encourge others to care. Care for one another, and care for all of creation.
While we do not know with precision when the first steps were taken to arrive at the springs; the Chumash people have sustained themselves for far longer than the evidence found approxiametely 13,000 years ago on the island offshore of today's South Coast. The Arlington Springs Woman lived a life and died on the singular mega-island known as Santa Rosae. It is not implausible that she traveled the short distance to the various cold, tepid, and hot mineral springs of today's Santa Barbara mainland.
The Rainbow Bridge
There are many hot springs in the lands of the Chumash people. "These springs are naturally heated and provide hot water all year round. These springs were regularly used for heat therapy, especially by people with arthritis pain. Sometimes dying people were carried to the springs for heat therapy. Aromatherapy was also used in these hot springs by putting several handfuls of California bay leaves (U.californica) in the spring. This fills the water and the air with the smell of bay. Bay contains monoterpenes such as cineole, sabinene, umbellulone and thujene that may act as pain relievers (3). In the spring, the hot springs were used for a sacred ceremony honoring Khutash, the Spring Goddess. The hot springs were blessed and scented with California bay and decorated with red maids (Calandrinia ciliata) which are called khutash in Chumash. Following this sanctification of the spring, people bathed."
There were many Chumash village sites on the South Coast. Although remains were found in the Shalawa meadow I believe it was a nearby villege site near the tidal channel of today's Montecito Creek. It is a three mile northward walk to arrive to the springs beneath today's Monetcito Peak. And upon that trail was the first written reference to the springs in the Spanish exploration of 1769.
Two websites as reference: SYUKHTUN and Barbareǹo Band of Chumash Indians
Spanish claims and pueblo land grants. Spanish Empire 1769–1821
Spanish claims and pueblo land grants. Spanish Empire 1769–1821
"In the spring of 1769, while Spanish soldiers were busy erecting a Royal Presidio on the site of Santa Barbara, their spiritual leader, Padre Junipero Serra OFM, was scouting for a place to put his tenth California mission. He selected a spot in Montecito’s beautiful East Valley, where an Indian trail snaked up a canyon. That trail is known today as Hot Springs Road.
But Father Serra died shortly thereafter, and in 1786 it was his successor, Fermin Lasuen, who arrived to establish Mission Santa Barbara. Fr. Lasuen rejected Montecito as a mission site, believing it to be too far removed from the protection of the presidio. The roundabout oak groves – Montecito means “little woods” – swarmed with grizzly bears, wolf packs, and human renegades. Prudently, Lasuen located Santa Barbara Mission four miles west, thus depriving Montecito of what would have been an historical landmark of the first magnitude. ~ Walter A. Tomkins
The world and geopoltics are in constant flux and a far departure from the relatively stable lifeways that the ancestral people of the South Coast enjoyed for thousands of years. One can only wonder who was the first to say, there goes the neighberhood. That first hinting of what was to come occurred when Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, sailing for the Kingdom of Spain, sailed through what is now called the Santa Barbara Channel in 1542, anchoring briefly in the area. Soon to follow Sebastián Vizcaíno gave the name "Santa Barbara" to the channel and also to one of the Channel Islands in 1602. With the first land exploraty forays came into the area the arrival of the first Europeans and euro-centric structures such as the Presidio were built in 1782. Mission Santa Barbara, known as "the Queen of the Missions," was founded by the Spanish in 1786. In that northward expansion the arrival was not just Spaniards but indigenous people from Mexico as part of the skilled trades in stone masonery.
Earlier before the pueblo land grant that later became Old Spanish Town the Chumash were dispossessed of land and colonized by Spaniard armies and missionaries. The South Coast were inextricably changed and imprinted by the dispossession and loss of title to the land. Before and following the Mission Revolt in 1824 people scattered to continue thier lifeways unimpeded. Some arrived to the opening of Hot Springs Canyon. Today within the properties on Hot Springs Road there are acorn grinding sites from that time. Later the people crossed over the front country to a Chumash villege site now submerged under today's Jameson reservoir. It was within the pueblo lands Los Prietos y Najalayegua known as safe haven through intermarriage of José Domínguez.
First Mexican Empire 1821–1823, United Mexican States 1823–1848
First Mexican Empire 1821–1823, United Mexican States 1823–1848
During the Hispanic era, 1782-1846, the soldiers of the presidio fell as much as twenty years behind in their salaries. Hence, to compensate soldiers reaching retirement age, free parcels of the “Santa Barbara Pueblo Lands” were awarded them. These lands, granted by the King of Spain for the support of Santa Barbara, extended from Tucker’s Grove to the Rincon, between the foothills and the beach. Most of the soldiers chose 50-acre plots in what became known as “Old Spanish Town,” starting on the west where Hot Springs and Cold Spring Creeks join to form Montecito Creek, and extending along East Valley Road, then an ox-cart trail, as far as today’s Montecito Village.
Montecito was thus founded by some of Santa Barbara’s “first families,” bearing such proud names as Jaurez, Romero, Olivas, Robles, Dominguez, Lopez and Lorenzana. Many of their descendants still live on land owned by their forebears nearly 200 years ago.
The matriarch of one such family, Dona Marcellina Feliz de Dominguez, planted a grapevine slip near her adobe at what is now 850 Parra Grande Lane. She irrigated it with water carried in an olla from the nearby creek. The vine thrived. Its trunk grew to 14 inches in diameter; its arbor covered one acre; it produced six tons of grapes per year. In 1876 it was shipped to Philadelphia for the California exhibit at the Centennial Exposition." ~ Walter A. Tomkins
The world and geopoltics are in constant flux and a far departure from the relatively stable lifeways of the ancestral people of the South Coast enjoyed for thousands of years. While the first euro structures such as the Presidio were built in 1782. Mission Santa Barbara, known as "the Queen of the Missions," was founded by the Spanish in 1786. In that northward expansion the arrival was not just Spaniards but indigenous people from Mexico as part of the skilled trades in stone masonery.
Earlier before the pueblo land grant that later became Old Spanish Town the Chumash were dispossessed of land and colonized by Spaniard armies and missionaries. The South Coast were inextricably changed and imprinted by the dispossession and loss of title to the land. Before and following the Mission Revolt in 1824 people scattered to continue thier lifeways unimpeded. Some arrived to the opening of Hot Springs Canyon. Today within the properties on Hot Springs Road there are acorn grinding sites from that time. Later the people crossed over the front country to a Chumash villege site now submerged under today's Jameson reservoir. It was within the pueblo lands Los Prietos y Najalayegua known as safe haven through intermarriage of José Domínguez.
California statehood and land grants. United States 1848–present
California statehood and land grants. United States 1848–present
And
The Mexican Cession (Spanish: Cesión mexicana) is the region in the modern-day southwestern United States that Mexico ceded to the U.S. in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 after the Mexican–American War.
The hotel spa era
The hotel spa era
...1964 Coyote Fire concluded the era of Spas in Hot Springs Canyon
Land transfer to the national forest
Land transfer to the national forest
"From 1964 to 1986, Kenneth Hunter and Larry McCaslin retained ownership of the property, and visitors continued to hike and mountain bike to the hot spring, although for the most part all that remained was one small hot pool nestled against the hillside. I personally hiked up to the springs a couple of times in the 1980's. I was still able to visualize the main house and bathhouse as it looked when our family would visit prior to the 1964 Coyote Fire.
In 1986, the Hunter Family sold their interest in the hot springs property to McCaslin Properties. The McCaslins approached the Santa Barbara Land Trust in 2008 when they decided to sell, but the world economic collapse made for a difficult time to raise charitable contributions. In 2011, The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County decided to enter into a purchase option. In a fast-moving Campaign for Hot Springs Canyon lasting from March 2011 to March 2012, the Land Trust succeeded in raising $7.8 million dollars – all of it from generous local individuals, families and foundations with no government money going into this land purchase. From the beginning, the Land Trust made clear its plan to convey the land to the United States Forest Service for long-term stewardship.
In 2013, following negotiations with government agencies, utility companies and adjacent landowners, The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County handed over the deed to the United States Forest Service, the final step in the Trust’s conveyance of land in Hot Springs Canyon.
The most difficult hurdle was related to a non-producing ground water well that the Montecito Water District was given rights to use by the previous landowner. The Forest Service found major parts of that agreement unacceptable, and months of effort by the Land Trust to negotiate a new agreement acceptable to both agencies resulted in an impasse. As a result, the Land Trust would continue to own and manage a 40-acre parcel at the entrance to Hot Springs Canyon, with the water well site, while conveying 422 acres to the Forest Service." ~ Kim Sturmer
Many soak enthusiasts in the Santa Barbara area took for granted that the capped springs were privatized. In our research we found not only the orginal 1897 water rights beautifully written (in cursive) and stated, and a later 1990 "Recital" of the orginal water rights that made clear that Hot Springs Creek were being harmed by a "permissive taking" and dewatering the stream channel while depriving the needs of downstream aqautic life. This became painfully clear when I discovered City of Santa Barbara vehicles actually pouring water back into Montecito Creek at the bridge on East Mountain Road and near Parra Grande Lane. The city was literally at tax payer cost desperatly attempting to keep downstream pools filled while a rescue mission netted stealhead to relocate to another of Santa Barbara creek that continue to support the steelhead.
The water rights were a granting of 50% of the spring water, however folowing the 1964 Coyote Fire with the last infrastructures of hotel consumed by flame
Where we are today
Where we are today
Today we can ensure that our actions protect the flora and fauna of Hot Springs Canyon while providing family friendly oppertunities to enjoy the trails and mineral waters. Often public lands are taken for granted that others will handle all of the managment tasks of protection of resources and providing of recreational oppertunities.
We can find rewarding oppertunties through volunteering on these special lands to transform recreational consumerism and become vested to the landscape by helping to keep the land and waters clean, maintaining the trail system, and assisting with conservation projects such as restoring native plants and removing invasive plants. Explore the volunteer section to find organizations involved with Hot Springs Canyon.
Your help will be greatly appreciated and those that follow far into the future will understand it takes many hands to protect and care take so that others can experience valuable nature immersive expericences.
The story of the many springs some cold, tepid, and hot beneath todays Montecito Peak is dedicated...
The story of the many springs some cold, tepid, and hot beneath todays Montecito Peak is dedicated...
...to the ancestors of today's Chumash people whom just a few generations ago were bringing ceremony to the hot springs. These people knew the springs since time immemorial, long before spaniards, long before the americanos, long before the stirrings of settler soaks and plunges. We can be thankful that the people came in prayer, came in healing, came in celebration, and co-created the good medicine you feel when you come here as kind visitor to touch these special waters. It is for each and everyone to be responisble and be gentle upon the land. And it is for each and everyone of us to create the possiblity that the Chumash remain maintaining the relationship upon the very lands that sustian you and I. When the lands thrive the springs thrive, when the springs thrive the people thrive, people tend the land, water, and sky the circle harmoniously completes. Today idle no more, the lands, waters, the very air life breaths and exhales all peoples depend upon good relations.
It was over a decade ago, that concerned people gathered and attempted to understand the cultural context of what we came to view as 10,000 years of unceasing and ongoing relationship and interaction to these remarkable mineral waters.
These kindred spirits became close friends and spent many hours in document searchs, made trips to Santa Barbara's Hall of Records, spent much time at the historical archives at the Montecito Library, made appointments with Micheal Redmond at the Santa Barbara Historical Musuems research library, and gained access to Santa Barbara's Mission archival and genealogical records. All of these efforts were to return the springs to the people and once again allow freeflow of the springs back to the ocean.The culmination of those efforts were presented at Our Lady of Mt Carmel in October of 2012. "...This presentation is provided as a matter of community reconcilation. All the races and cultures of Santa Barbara touched the spring waters."
As a beneficiary and researcher into mineral therapuetic waters and hot springs I am profoundly indebted and grateful for Kellam De Forest of the Pearl Chase Society, my great Chumash friend Jimmy Joe Navarro, and Chumash lifeway researcher Christopher Brown.
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