Santa Maria History
The first ones to explore the valley of Santa Maria were the Portola explorers, while they were trekking on the California coast, trying to find Monterey Bay. Once the San Lui Obispo mission was founded in the year 1772 and the La Purisima Mission was established fifteen years later, many settlers decided to come, in part because of the gold fields which were found in the state. The free land was the thing that got them here and not the rich soil.
Santa Maria Valley was just a stretch where bears, deer, rabbits and sagebrush could be found before the arrival of the Spanish. It went from the mountains of Santa Lucia to the area where the Pacific could be found. In this area you could find Chumash Indians back then, a tribe that used the hills and their slopes to create their houses, near sycamores and oaks, which provided plenty of shelter and moisture. They also used the areas of beach in some cases. In the middle of the 19th century, California became a state and many settlers and farmers came to this valley, thanks to its extremely productive areas. These days, agriculture is still one of the main components of the city’s economy.
Starting from 1869 and going on for 5 years, a number of settlers like Isaac Miller, Isaac Fesler, John Thornburg and Rudolph Cook used the land between Main Street and Broadway and farmed it. The map of the town was recorded in 1875, in Santa Barbara. At first, the name of the city was to be Grangerville, which was later changed to Central City. In 1885, the name became Santa Maria, thanks to the mail being delivered by mistake to another city which had the Central City name. The new name of Santa Maria was based on the property name of the Ontiveros Juan Pacifico settler.
