San Ysidro Ranch

San Ysidro Ranch holds about five hundred and fifty acres in the Montecito foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains, above Santa Barbara. The chain of title is the longest this register carries. Franciscans named the land in the late 1700s for Saint Isidore, the patron of agriculture; it was granted to the ranchero Tomás Olivera in the 1820s when Mexico secularised the mission estates; by the mid-nineteenth century it was a working citrus ranch of more than a thousand orange trees producing upwards of a hundred thousand lemons a year. The ground was farmed for a century before anyone slept on it for pleasure.

The stone packing house built in 1889 still stands and holds the restaurant and pub. In 1893 Taylor Goodrich and Harleigh Johnston took their first eight paying guests with a tea under the moon, and the Johnstons went on adding cottages for forty years. The actor Ronald Colman and the hotelier Alvin Weingand bought it in 1935 and gave it its best-known period; Ty Warner bought it in 2000 and rebuilt the cottages rather than the place. Thirty-eight cottages stand in the gardens now, about fourteen acres to each, with no lobby and no corridors.

The working building is still working. A citrus packing house of 1889 serves dinner. The estate kept its agricultural structure rather than clearing it, which is why the plan has no centre in the hotel sense.

Farmed first, visited after. Mission land, then a Mexican grant, then oranges and lemons, then guests. Four uses of one piece of ground, and the register counts the last of them as the shortest.

Sources

• Published history - the land was named in the late 1700s by Franciscans for Saint Isidore and granted to the ranchero Tomas Olivera in the 1820s after Mexico secularised the mission properties; by the mid-nineteenth century a citrus ranch of more than a thousand orange trees and over a hundred thousand lemons a year; the stone packing house was built in 1889 and now holds the restaurant and pub
• Published history - Taylor Goodrich and Harleigh Johnston welcomed the first eight paying guests in 1893; the Johnston family added cottages until selling to Ronald Colman and Alvin Weingand in 1935; Ty Warner acquired the property in 2000
• Operator and guide coverage - thirty-eight bungalow-style cottages in the gardens, with no grand lobby and no corridors; the Stonehouse restaurant occupies the nineteenth-century packing house

Verification

Official source

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Sources disagree

the estate is published as five hundred and fifty acres by the operator and as five hundred by one reviewer; the opening is given as 1892 and as 1893.

Property confirmation

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Last verified

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Booking

Private Resorts arranges each stay on request, quoting the rates available for the resort and dates. No benefit should be assumed unless it is confirmed in writing for the individual reservation.

Classified by The Resort Collection House · The Register · Edition 2026 · LHL-E-355
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