After Santa Barbara County incorporated in 1850, there was a need to connect the various population centers for the local ranchers and the overland mail stagecoach by an official “County Road.”
In 1859, William H. Leighton made the original survey for the road through Santa Barbara County, which then included present day Ventura County. He presented it and it was accepted by the County Supervisors on August 12, 1859. The road followed the coast between the Los Angeles County line near Malibu, continued along the shore or coast to Santa Barbara, north to Goleta, Gaviota, Las Cruces, the Santa Ynez Mission through the Nojoqui Pass, on to Ballard, Foxen, Sisquoc, and across the Santa Maria River at the Suey Ranch crossing and on to the Nipomo Rancho stage station in San Luis Obispo County. The road was 150 miles long and cost $15,000 to construct. The contract was awarded to James Thompson, who got the road in operating condition by August 1861.
This road was no superhighway. It followed the contours of the land, fording all creeks and had no bridges. Shovels, pickaxes, and black powder were used to scrape out the original roadbeds. The stages forded all streams or drove out on the sand at the beaches.
The first overland mail stage using this “new” road passed through Santa Barbara on April 1,1861, with great celebrations. The original route to Ballard was changed to Los Alamos and then also to Lompoc after the town was founded in 1875. Lompoc was the second town in Santa Barbara County.
The stage from Santa Barbara’s Arlington Hotel took 10 hours to reach Lompoc. It stopped to change horses at Naples, at Arroyo Quemada for rest, and at Arroyo Hondo, Las Cruces, and Rancho San Julian, in that order. The route is still visible in places today.
In the 1880s the Southern Pacific Railroad began to compete with the stagecoach services. The Southern Pacific (SP) reached Ellwood in Goleta in 1887, where it had a turntable, which remained until 1899. In the meantime the SP continued to push south from San Francisco. In 1896, SP reached the north side of the Santa Ynez River, 10 miles west of Lompoc, where there was a turntable and a small community. There was then a gap of 70 miles from Santa Barbara from which the stage originated to Lompoc. The Mail Stage then became the ”connection” to the San Francisco–bound train waiting at the Santa Ynez River.
So after a 10-hour ride from Santa Barbara and an overnight at the Arthur Hotel in Lompoc, the stage transported the passengers 10 miles across “Ball’s Crossing” of the river to the railhead, where they could go on to San Francisco.
When the railroad was completed in 1901, thus closing the 70-mile gap, a direct train from Santa Barbara to the north was available and the era of the stagecoach was brought to an end. The stagecoach “connection” to Lompoc was replaced by the SP service to Lompoc from Surf.
References: History All Around Us by Justin M. Ruhge, 2011
About the author: Justin M. Ruhge is a Lompoc-based historian.
