A Picture Story

Here is a logo proposed by me in 1984 in my book entitled Goleta Pueblos de las Islas, A Pictorial History of the Goleta Valley, dedicated to the future City of Goleta. It appears in my later book entitled Looking Back (1991). Both books are in the local library.

A lot of local maritime history is in this one drawing.

• The Schooner is the central focus. “Goleta” means schooner or small ship in Spanish. Schooners stopped in the Goleta harbor or bay in the sailing days to drop off goods and take on hides. The schooner Santa Barbara was built in the bay and launched in June 1829.

• The four Channel Islands are directly south of Goleta and form a backdrop for the city.

• Two suns are shown because the east-west orientation of the coast at Goleta allows the sun to rise and set in the ocean during the winter months when it is farthest south, the only place this happens on the California coast.

• Two cannons are shown to represent the five that were found on the Goleta beach in 1981. The town had a joint program with the Goleta Historical Society, the County Cannon Committee and the university to restore the cannons and display them. This was done, and they have been on display at the Historical Society Maritime Museum for the past 20 years until recently, when they were shipped to the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum and to the Trust for Historic preservation in Santa Barbara. This is the only project of its type in California, and it is tied to a shipwreck of a schooner at the mouth of the Goleta Bay, the Dorotea, in December 1829, owned by Commandante Jose De La Guerra of the Santa Barbara Presidio.

• The anchor was found in Goleta Bay in 1869. It is from the sailing days, I believe, when the Spanish were settling the California coast in 1769. The Spanish Navy supply ship San Antonio stopped in a bay to get water and wood and while there lost an anchor. The only likely place for such an event in California was the Goleta Bay. The anchor is on display at the Goleta Maritime Museum to this day.

Hope that that the reader finds this interesting as a historical and meaningful logo once proposed for the City of Goleta.