Goleta

History

The area of present-day Goleta was populated for thousands of years by the Chumash people. Locally, they became known, by the Spanish, as Canaliños as they lived along the coast, adjacent to the Channel Islands. One of the largest villages, S'axpilil, was north of the Goleta Slough, not far from the present-day Santa Barbara Airport.While one source cites the Spanish for the ship type 'schooner' as the source of the place name There were at least five native towns in the area, the largest being on an island in the middle of the lagoon. For that reason, expedition engineer Miguel Costanso called the group of towns Pueblos de la Isla, or "towns of the island". Some of the soldiers called the island town Mescaltitlan, after a similarly insular Aztec settlement in Nayarit, Mexico. Franciscan missionary Juan Crespi, who accompanied the expedition, gave the towns the name Santa Margarita de Cortona. The island retained the name Mescalitan Island (dropping the extra 'T' of the Aztec spelling), until it was bulldozed and flattened in 1941 to provide fill for the military airfield that is now Santa Barbara Airport (SBA). The wastewater treatment plant of the Goleta Sanitary District is located on what used to be the island. Portola returned to San Diego via the same route in January 1770, where he mounted a second expedition to Monterey that year. A second Spanish expedition came to the Santa Barbara area of Alta California in 1774, led by Juan Bautista de Anza. De Anza returned the following year, and the road along the coast of Santa Barbara County (today's Highway 1) soon became El Camino Real, connecting the string of Spanish missions. An expedition in 1782, led by military governor Felipe de Neve, founded the Presidio of Santa Barbara, and soon thereafter, the Santa…

Geography

Goleta is about west of the city of Santa Barbara, along the coast (the coast runs east to west in this portion of Southern California). Nearby is the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California and the student community of Isla Vista. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which (0.91%) is covered by water. It consists of Holocene and Pleistocene alluvium, colluvium, and estuarine deposits, as well as marine terraces created during interglacial high-sea-level episodes. The area has been subject to rapid geologic uplift, as evidenced by its coastal bluffs and narrow beaches. The uplift was caused by motion along the More Ranch Fault, one of the most geologically active faults in the area. The More Ranch Fault roughly follows a line along El Colegio Road, through the southern part of the airport, along Atascadero Creek, and then continues east into Santa Barbara as the Mission Ridge Fault Zone. Soils in Goleta are mostly well-drained, brown, fine, sandy loam of the Milpitas series. Underneath the alluvial units of the coastal plain are three prominent bedrock units: Monterey Formation, Sisquoc Formation, and Santa Barbara Formation. This last unit is the principal groundwater aquifer for the region, and its freshwater wells are protected from seawater intrusion by the uplift along the More Ranch Fault, which has placed relatively impermeable rock units between the ocean and it. Some of the underlying sedimentary units contain economically recoverable quantities of oil and gas. The Ellwood Oil Field was worked beginning in the 1920s, with its onshore portions only being dismantled in the 1970s. The La Goleta Gas Field was formerly productive on the bluffs west of More Mesa, and is now used for gas storage by the…

Race & ethnicity

Largest nearby schools

• Santa Barbara Senior High
  High · Santa Barbara · 2,107 students · 20.7:1 ratio
• Dos Pueblos Senior High
  High · Goleta · 2,034 students · 21.4:1 ratio
• San Marcos Senior High
  High · Santa Barbara · 2,020 students · 21.7:1 ratio
• La Colina Junior High
  Middle · Santa Barbara · 900 students · 22:1 ratio
• Peabody Charter
  Elementary · Santa Barbara · 767 students · 24:1 ratio
• Goleta Valley Junior High
  Middle · Goleta · 717 students · 18.4:1 ratio
• Santa Barbara Junior High
  Middle · Santa Barbara · 560 students · 17.5:1 ratio
• Washington Elementary
  Elementary · Santa Barbara · 524 students · 18.7:1 ratio