San Ysidro Ranch

Winston Churchill wrote part of his memoirs on a cottage porch here, looking down over orange groves to the Pacific. The ranch at the foot of the Santa Ynez mountains above Montecito has been taking paying guests since 1893, which makes San Ysidro Ranch one of the oldest hotels in California still in business, and the one with the longest guest book of film and political names.

History

The land was a citrus and cattle ranch in the nineteenth century, and before that an outpost of the Santa Barbara mission. The owners began letting cottages to winter visitors in 1893. In 1935 the English actor Ronald Colman bought the ranch with the hotelier Alvin Weingand and ran it as a retreat for Hollywood friends. Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier were married in the garden on 31 August 1940, with Katharine Hepburn as witness. John and Jacqueline Kennedy spent their honeymoon in a cottage in September 1953. The Warner family bought the property in 2000, and Ty Warner, who also owns the Four Seasons Biltmore down the hill, rebuilt it. In January 2018 the Montecito debris flow buried much of the ranch in mud; it closed for more than three years and reopened in 2021 with every cottage restored.

Architecture and design

The ranch is a collection of stone and clapboard cottages scattered through 500 acres of gardens and groves, some of them original nineteenth-century buildings, with the old adobe and the stone packing house at the heart. There is no main block; guests walk between cottages along lanes lined with lavender and roses. After the 2018 disaster the gardens were replanted and the stone walls rebuilt by hand.

Rooms and suites

The 38 cottages and suites each have a private garden, a fireplace and, in most cases, an outdoor rain shower or a hot tub on the terrace. Several are named for the guests who stayed in them: the Kennedy Cottage, the Churchill Cottage. Dogs are welcomed with their own menu, a tradition at the ranch for decades.

Dining

The Stonehouse, in the former citrus packing house of the 1800s, is the main restaurant, with a fireplace, a terrace and a kitchen garden supplying the menu. The Plow and Angel, in the cellar below, is the bar and casual dining room, open late. Both draw on the ranch's own orchard and vegetable beds.

Wellness

Spa treatments are given in the cottages or in the garden pavilions rather than in a central spa, and the ranch has a pool, tennis courts and a fitness room. Hiking trails lead straight from the property into the Santa Ynez foothills.

Weddings and events

Weddings have been held in the garden since Colman's time and the Olivier ceremony of 1940 is the one guests still ask about. The ranch hosts ceremonies on the lawns under the old oaks and receptions in the Stonehouse and on its terrace, for parties of modest size, with the cottages taken for the wedding party. Meetings and retreats use the same rooms and favour the small and private.

Location

The ranch sits at 900 San Ysidro Lane in the foothills of Montecito, east of Santa Barbara, with the ocean about three kilometres away down the hill. Santa Barbara Airport is some 20 minutes by car; Los Angeles International is about two hours. Santa Barbara's Amtrak station on the Pacific Surfliner line is about 15 minutes away. Among the luxury hotels in Montecito it is the oldest by half a century.