Santa Ynez: The College Ranch and the Hotel That Waited for a Train
Near Los Olivos, California
The town of Santa Ynez wears its old western flavor proudly, with board sidewalks and false-front storefronts, but its beginnings lie in a land sale by the Catholic Church. The name is Spanish for Saint Agnes, the same saint honored by Mission Santa Ines, which Father Estevan Tapis founded nearby in what is now Solvang on September seventeenth, eighteen oh four. The mission also housed the College of Our Lady of Refuge, the first seminary in California, which was abandoned in eighteen eighty-one.
In the early eighteen eighties the Catholic Church sold off the College Ranch, and settlers bought tracts and town lots. Great hopes rode on the railroad. Believing a railroad would run through the valley, the local land company built the grand College Hotel in the late eighteen eighties to lure buyers.
But the railroad chose the coast instead of the valley. Without the train, the boom never came, the valley towns stayed small, and the great hotel is long gone. What survived was the ranching country and the unhurried western character that still defines Santa Ynez today.
The town sits in the Santa Ynez Valley, between the Santa Ynez Mountains to the south and the San Rafael Mountains to the north, with the Santa Ynez River running through the valley from east to west. Santa Ynez is also the headquarters of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Mission Indians, who operate a casino resort here, and about forty-five hundred people live in the community today.
