"Nor is this all that makes the charm, the beauty, the climatic peace and calm and the fascination of Santa Barbara. Twenty-five miles out to sea a marine mountain range, twin sister of the Santa Ynez on shore, rears its glowing peaks from the tumbling billows in a series of islands. So it is that Santa Barbara faces not the open sea, but a channel or a strait of the sea. Up into this channel flows the warm ocean current from the south and so adds its beneficence to complete the climatic combination that keeps the spot snug and warm and free from all violence in winter, the selfsame combination leaving it cool and refreshing through the long, sunny summers. So, also, do the twin mountain ranges—the one on land, the other out at sea—give Santa Barbara a marine playground as safe and as placid as Lake Tahoe. The channel is a yachtsman's paradise. To its long sweep of blue waters—a stretch of seventy miles—come the Pacific-Coast-built ships of the American navy to be tried out and tested for speed and endurance."
Returning to the city, we followed Sycamore Canyon—rightly named, indeed, for throughout its length is a multitude of giant sycamores, gnarled and twisted into a thousand fantastic shapes like trees of Dante's Inferno. Scattered among them were a few majestic live-oaks, which gradually increased in numbers as we came into the beautiful suburb of Montecito, with its handsome residences and flower-spangled lawns. Our driver enlightened us on the value of some of the places offered for sale, also of numerous vacant lots just on the edge of the town. Three to five thousand per acre seemed to be the average sum that a millionaire was asked to invest should he desire to establish an "estate" here—prices quite as high as was then demanded for similar property in the neighborhood of Los Angeles. And it is not likely that values will cease to advance.
The completion of the new highway has put Santa Barbara into easy touch with the metropolis by motor car, adding still farther to its desirability as a residence town for people with leisure and money. The distance, just one hundred miles, is an easy three-hours' drive and a very popular Sunday jaunt from Los Angeles and frequent motor busses make the trip daily. All of which serve to make Santa Barbara a long-distance suburb of the Queen City to a far greater extent than it was in the days of rough roads and the "dreadful Casitas Pass," as I heard it styled more than once.