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Mission Santa Barbara
Photo: Hayden Soloviev / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0

Audio walking tour

Santa Barbara Audio Walking Tour

Sun, Sand, and Spanish Stones: Walk the Story of Santa Barbara

Stops
24
Core walk
23 of 24 stops within 1.5 mi of the center
Farthest stop
1.8 mi from the center
Start
Shoreline Park, Santa Barbara
24 stops GPS-triggered audio No app download Free to start
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Santa Barbara walks between red-tiled roofs and the ocean, from Shoreline Park on the Mesa to the Queen of the Missions. Twenty-four stops carry Chumash, Spanish colonial, and modern coastal culture. Shoreline Park opens the route; Stearns Wharf (California's longest deep-water pier, 1872), the Ty Warner Sea Center, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in the old Federal Post Office follow. Paseo Nuevo's Spanish Colonial Revival arcades, the 1924 Lobero Theatre, the 1930 Arlington Theatre, De La Guerra Plaza, and Casa de la Guerra carry downtown. The Santa Barbara County Courthouse (called the grandest Spanish Colonial Revival structure ever built) anchors the civic blocks. The Moreton Bay Fig Tree (planted 1876), Alameda Park, Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens, and the Allan Herschell 3-Abreast Carousel at Chase Palm Park follow. The Presidio of Santa Barbara, the Historical Museum, the 1817 Covarrubias Adobe, the Rafael Gonzalez House, Mission Historical Park, Mission Santa Barbara (1786), the Mission-Archive Library, and Leadbetter Beach close the walk.

Highlights

  • Mission Santa Barbara
    Mission Santa Barbara

    Queen of the Missions is the name given to Mission Santa Barbara, the Misión de Santa Bárbara, and it rises in front of you. This site was founded by Padre Fermín Lasuén for the Franciscan order on December 4, 1786, the feast day of Saint Barbara, as the tenth mission of what would later become 21 missions in Alta California.

  • NO. 1037 Santa Barbara County Courthouse - The Santa Barbara County Courthouse was constructed in 1929 and is a complex of four buildings occupying an entire city block in downtown Santa Barbara. It was designed by master architect William Mooser in the Spanish Colonial/Moorish Revival style. It is an extraordinary example of its style, with an elaborate array of detail emulating a Spanish castle or fortress. Location: 1100 Anacapa Street, Santa Barbara
    Santa Barbara County Courthouse

    Charles Willard Moore called the Santa Barbara County Courthouse in front of you the grandest Spanish Colonial Revival structure ever built, and it remains the seat of the Santa Barbara County Superior Court. Construction began in 1926 and was completed in 1929; originally it served as the county's superior courthouse, jail, and administrative office.

  • In 1876, a visiting seaman supposedly gave a seedling of this Morton Bay Fig tree to a girlfriend in Category:Santa Barbara, Southern California. A year later, the friend replanted it in its current location - the corner of Chapala and Montecito. It is now one of the largest of all Ficus macrophylla trees in the United States. It is on the California Register of Big Trees. The tree averages 80' in height, 176' in average crown spread and over 40' in diameter. "It is an awesome sight!"
    Moreton Bay Fig Tree (Santa Barbara, California)

    Montecito and Chapala streets meet at the Moreton Bay fig tree spreading above you, a few blocks from the ocean. Believed to be the largest Ficus macrophylla in the United States, this tree began as a seedling an Australian seaman presented to a local girl in 1876; she planted it at 201 State Street.

  • Originally built in 1782, this complex of buildings were constructed by the Spanish Colonial Authorities of California to serve as a presidio to protect the nearby Mission Santa Barbara and serve as a center of political influence in the surrounding region. The adobe buildings stood into the mid-19th Century, when they were slowly demolished and replaced by a neighborhood with roads platted through the middle of the presidio in the 1850s. By the mid-20th Century, only a single structure, the El Cuartel, which is the second-oldest existing building in California, remained standing, having been transformed into a private residence. The buildings were largely reconstructed after an archaeological investigation, with the first part of the complex being rebuilt between 1983 and 1985. The buildings consist of one-story adobe structures with red terra cotta tile roofs, exposed rafter tails, porches with wooden columns, and small window openings surrounding a central dirt courtyard, which has been partially restored, and a larger and taller chapel at the center of the western end of the courtyard, with a gabled roof, an arched entrance bay, and small tower with two bells. The buildings are divided by modern streets laid out after the Presidio had been largely demolished, with the ends of the reconstructed buildings revealing the interior structure of the presidio buildings where they are cut away along the streets. The original buildings in the complex were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. Today, the reconstructed Presidio serves as a historical museum operated by the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation.
    Presidio of Santa Barbara

    Picture El Presidio Real de Santa Bárbara, the Royal Presidio of Santa Barbara, rising here. Imagine this place in 1782, when it was built by Spain with a single clear mission: to defend the Second Military District in California.

  • Santa Barbara, Natural History Museum, 2019.11.24 (35)
    Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History

    Along Mission Creek in the Upper Eastside, the Mission Canyon campus of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History opens in front of you. This museum serves about 230,000 visitors annually as of 2023, with attendance split roughly evenly between this flagship campus and the ocean-focused Sea Center on Stearns Wharf.

All 24 stops

How it works

1

Open on your phone

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2

Start walking

Head toward any historic stop. No fixed route.

3

Audio plays itself

Walk within range of a stop and the story begins.

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