Land Trust to Enter Escrow on Naples Ranch, Aiming to End 140 Years of Development Fights
The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County announced it will enter escrow to acquire the 1,000-acre Santa Barbara Ranch on the Gaviota Coast, with $16 million still to raise toward a deal that could close as early as December.
The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County announced this week that it will enter escrow to acquire Santa Barbara Ranch, the more than 1,000-acre coastal property locally known as Naples, in a deal that would end nearly 140 years of development conflict on the Gaviota Coast.
The deal could close as early as December 2026 but may extend into early 2027, and the Land Trust says $16 million remains to be raised through its Save Naples community campaign. The acquisition is being made possible through a partnership with the Wild America Fund, a conservation organization founded in late 2025. "For decades, this community worked toward protecting Naples. Advancing this project means that hope now has a closing date," Executive Director Meredith Hendricks said, calling it "one of the rarest opportunities in California conservation."
The Land Trust envisions the property as a future 1,000-plus-acre nature preserve. After any acquisition, a two-year planning process would determine public access, restoration and long-term stewardship, with consultation planned with Chumash tribal governments and communities as well as neighbors, scientists and conservation partners.
The ranch sits within the ancestral homelands of the Chumash people. The villages of Mikiw and Kuyamu stood at the mouth of Dos Pueblos Creek, and the property adjoins the Naples State Marine Conservation Area. The Land Trust describes the land as part of a globally recognized biodiversity hotspot, home to white-tailed kites, endangered native pollinators and some of California's most imperiled native grasslands.
The property's development history stretches back to 1887, when Ohio couple John and Alice Williams bought 900 acres of oceanfront for $50,000 and platted a seaside town that was never built. A 1994 California Supreme Court ruling upheld development rights under the historic maps, and in 2008 the county approved 71 mansions of up to 10,000 square feet each, a project the Coastal Commission never approved. The Land Trust says decades of renewed development pressure followed, including memoranda of understanding favoring development, a foreclosure, illegal disking of protected habitat and repeated restoration violations.
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