Goleta History: New Horizons to Encina Royale

Encina Royale is one of the most desirable areas to live in Goleta today. A safe and beautifully manicured neighborhood located right in the heart of town, but still remarkably peaceful. This page will look into when and how this neighborhood came to be.

As we have discussed on this website before, Goleta was one of the most heavily populated areas in pre-historic times. The perfect climate and plentiful food sources made it a very attractive place for humans to live. While there wasn’t a village exactly where Encino Royale is today, there were several large villages very nearby. All of Goleta Valley was a dense oak forest and one of the main food sources for the Chumash was acorns, so they were surely hunting and gathering in this area.

When Europeans came along, they claimed the land and individual ownership became a thing. In 1846, a motivated young American named Daniel Hill was granted 4,000 acres by the governor of Mexico. Daniel Hill named his new ranch, Rancho La Goleta. The property ran from the ocean, up Fairview Avenue to the foothills, and back down to the ocean near Turnpike Road.

In 1874, a settler from Iowa named George Washington Hill brought his wife and six young kids out from Iowa and bought 60 acres of the Rancho La Goleta from the widow of Daniel Hill. (No relation). G.W. Hill planted walnut trees and vegetables and he and his family worked their Goleta ranch land for years. G.W. died tragically in a well digging accident at 73 years old. His wife, Rhoda Barbara Hill, kept the ranch going with the help of her children.

When Rhoda Hill died in 1908, the property was split into six equal parcels for the six kids. To distribute the parcels fairly, the six siblings names were written on small slips of paper, sealed in walnut shells and then randomly picked by the children.

One of the sons, L. Delenno Hill, drew an approximately 12 acre parcel that had its western border on Fairview Avenue and he continued to make a living for his young family by farming that land.

By 1935, the other Hill siblings had sold their lots to Albert T. Spaulding and only L. Delleno held onto his farm of mostly walnuts. By this time the Hill’s had also acquired a large parcel south of Encina Road and they planted a lemon orchard on that parcel. Today this is the Encina Meadows apartments and the Calle Real shopping center.

As of 1948, the parcels now occupied by Encina Royale were mostly covered by healthy walnut and lemon trees and Spaulding still owned the majority of this parcel that he named Rancho Encina. It was around this time that Spaulding hired a new ranch foreman. He was a young Goleta man that had just returned from the war named Chuck Begg. Chuck came from a long line of Goleta farmers and a deep love for Goleta farmland ran through his veins. So you can imagine how Chuck felt in 1955, when he learned that Spaulding was selling his ranch to out of town developers. Begg enjoyed living in the foreman’s cottage on Encina Road, seen above on the right side of the parcel, and he loved the beautiful giant Moreton Bay fig tree outside his window that was planted in the 1890s by one of the Hill children.

When a man from the development company came by to look over the property, he looked up at the huge canopy overhead and told Chuck, “It’s going to be a shame to take that tree down.” In an angry tone Chuck replied, “If you think Pearl Chase will let you take that tree down, you’ve got another thing coming!” When the developer asked who Pearl Chase was, Chuck said, ” Just touch one limb of that tree and you’ll find out.” Later, when more guys from the development company came up, they asked to see the “Pearl Chase Tree” first and foremost. Some of them actually thought that was the name of the tree type. When the plan was submitted to the county, there was a flag at the tree’s location with a note saying, “Spare tree by order of Pearl Chase.” Pearl never actually saw the tree, but her name carried some weight.

So, Chuck had to move, but the tree stayed put. And they even named the main street after it! It was the second largest Moreton Bay fig tree on the south coast.

Unfortunately, the big Moreton Bay tree is gone today. But thank you Chuck Begg, shown here in later years.

The development company was owned by Ray Watt, an innovative developer that was one of the first to popularize condominiums, strip shopping malls, time-shares and communities with shared amenities like golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pools and lakes. This Goleta farm would be the site of Watt’s first condominium project that he would name “New Horizons”, a 240-unit complex designed around a nine-hole golf course. Watt turned to condominiums because he thought they would make it easier for home buyers to get financing. Watt was later appointed assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development by President Richard M. Nixon.

This is how the site of New Horizons looked just before they broke ground in 1962. You can see a small parcel in the northwest corner had been carved out for the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, which is still there today. The Moreton Bay tree and farm buildings can be seen in the southeast corner, but some of them would be moved.

The local paper got a shot of Spaulding’s ranch house being moved from Rancho Encina to the nearby Bottiani ranch where it still sits today.

In 1962, the advertising campaign began, well before a single unit was ready to move into to.

An artists rendering showed a very attractive clubhouse with a South Pacific feel to the architecture. In fact, Hawaiian/Tahitian would be the theme of the brand new 360 unit development on 40 acres with “spacious lush tropical greenery throughout”.

In addition to all the tropical plants chosen for the landscaping, each path was given a Hawaiian name.

Somebody spent a lot of time naming all these paths!

Simplified maps were regularly posted in the newspapers, telling everyone where this New Horizon would be located. And so began an all out advertising blitz.

The community would have a “nine-hole golf course, a freshwater fishing lake, a Town Hall recreation and community center, swimming pool, picnic areas and play facilities” and a limousine bus service into town, the airport and UCSB.

Daily ads touted the amenities of this new community. Like an auditorium, a hospitality kitchen, hobby shops for woodworking, ceramics and a darkroom for photography enthusiasts, as well as areas for an art studio, sewing and studies. Construction took about a year, but as soon as a few units were completed, they were opened up for a “Pre-Vue”.

Best of all, it was a Gold Medallion Home, which meant all electric with “invisible radiant ceiling heat”, a thermostat in each room and all electric kitchens. The first ads had units starting at $14,950, but that later changed to $16,500 and then $16,950.

The project reportedly cost five million dollars to build. Mr. Watt was quoted as saying that Santa Barbara County was chosen for this development because it is “already accepted as the retirement capital of the United States”. One aspect that changed throughout the written ads was the minimum age for the residents. The first ads said 40, then later 45 with no children under 18 and today it’s 55 and over.

By the time they had the big grand opening, there was a line of prospective buyers and curious lookie-loos waiting to get in to see what all the excitement was about. A newspaper article said this new community could change Goleta Valley social life forever and then the writer interviewed some of the folks in attendance. He wrote that most of the people he interviewed wanted to live here to escape the “drudgery of gardening”. One husband said, “it was like being in a compound in a foreign city”. The article listed some of the cities that potential buyers had come from and they were almost all from the Los Angeles area. The article closed by saying Goleta “stands to gain immensely from the type of people interested” in living in this neighborhood. Also that the buyers of a home in New Horizons would provide “the artistic backbone to a civilized community”. I mean, that sounds pretty unbiased, right?

Harry and Lloyd Rolf moved to New Horizons for a number of reasons listed here, the best one being, “a smog free climate for fun loving people”. The husband (not sure if it’s Harry or Lloyd) enjoys the easy commute from San Gabriel every weekend while the wife “enjoys carefree living all week”.

The ad campaign and open houses continued as New Horizons was being constructed. This photo shows the project nearing completion, with only the units along Fairview still being built.

Despite the hype, and the advertising money spent, the units didn’t sell out right away, so the advertising continued for a couple of years.

And even while the development wasn’t finished, the beautiful clubhouse was always used as a draw for their ads.

Even Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days were celebrated better at New Horizons, where “every day is a fiesta day” without the drudgery of home maintenance. I’m guessing that’s one of the limousine buses we heard about…?

A different view of the nearly complete New Horizons from September of 1965. Evidently the construction took longer than anticipated. The units along Fairview are still not finished.

One interesting thing to notice in 1965 is the Chuck Begg’s Moreton Bay tree.

And here is that same spot in 2024, minus the tree.

Begg’s Moreton Bay tree was finally cut down in 1989 and Chuck got a slice of the old tree for a keepsake.

Today this badly weathered slice of tree with this plaque attached to it sits in the ranch yard at the Stow House.

Another angle from 1965, with the unfinished units in the foreground and the Moreton Bay tree in the distance.

Around 1970, the name slowly began to be changed from New Horizons to Encina Royale. I’m not sure when the sign officially was changed out front, but articles often used both names for several years. Even as recent as 1978 it was called “Encina Royale (New Horizons)” when the neighborhood was recognized as one of “Goleta Beautiful’s Most Beautiful”. The article mentioned the well maintained and abundant landscaping that blended well with the buildings.

And the same can be said today! The landscaping is still beautifully maintained and very attractive.

And what makes it even more spectacular is all the plantings have matured and are excellent specimens of a wide variety of plants and trees. Kudos to the staff and landscaping crew.

As a regular visitor, and a home gardener, I am always in awe of the near perfect condition of the grounds.

Money can’t buy trees like this. And if it could, they couldn’t be successfully transplanted.

Having such healthy and mature trees in such close proximity to residences must surely be a challenge.

Obviously, the landscape and maintenance crews are imaginative and very skilled at finding solutions to difficult situations, like this one…

So, that’s the story of one of Goleta’s finest neighborhoods, Encina Royale. Ray Watt was an extraordinary businessman, and he and his team clearly put a lot of thought and effort into making this a quality development. It may not be “the artistic backbone to our civilized community”, but at over 60 years old, it continues to be a great place to live.

Read more history articles at GoletaHistory.com