Ellwood Devereux: Walking through Local Land Use

The land now known as Ellwood Mesa and Devereux Slough (what we will call Ellwood Devereux on this tour) has over 13,000 years of human history on it. It has gone by many names during that time, such as Anisq’oyo and Kuwa’a, Rancho Dos Pueblos, the Campbell Ranch, Devereux Ranch School, Marine Corps Air Station Santa Barbara, and now the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

And it may also be your home.

Ellwood Devereux is a “nature” area, a public open space where at any given point there can be big projects regarding water conservation or the preservation of flora and fauna (plants and animals), and all of this happening where people hike and surf. This tour seeks to help you, UCSB student, to connect to the nature surrounding where you study (and maybe where you live) through Ellwood Devereux’s history. 

The idea of “home” is already complicated (e.g. is it where you sleep at night, where your favorite animals are, or where your heart is, maybe?). It becomes even more complex in a place with many natural resources (e.g. the ocean, the plants and animals living in it, the land, the plants and animals living on it, and the oil underneath both). Ellwood Devereux is not only home to you, potentially, but it is also home to a whole ecosystem! And, when we apply this idea of “home” to land management, how the environment has been used for over thousands of years, it can become even more complicated. 

In learning the natural history of Ellwood Devereux, this tour hopes that you use the information to get to know and love the land and your fellow creatures on it.

This tour has been made for walkers of Ellwood Devereux to follow a step-by-step tour of the conserved parcels of Ellwood Mesa and Devereux Slough that follows the chronological history of the area. It begins with the stories of the traditional custodians of the land, the Chumash, who have continued to live, work, and play in and on their ancestral lands for over 13,000 years. Walking through history by stopping at several marked sites of Ellwood Devereux (with accompanying pictures to help walkers navigate), this tour then considers the area's historical threads of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, extraction, recreation, knowledge-production, and ecological restoration.