You might not easily recognize this Goleta landmark now because these days it’s much drier, partially covered in concrete, and has a steady stream of airplanes landing on and taking off from it.

Back in the 1940s the area we know as the airport wasn’t much more than a vast wetland, prone to flooding and popular with boaters, not pilots. The Goleta Slough was deep enough to have hosted the schooners from whence Goleta got its name, and Mescalitan Island, a longtime home site for the Chumash, rose up from its waters.

Even in the earliest years of the 1900s however, tiny airstrips began to appear in and around the Good Land: an Air Circus in Hope Ranch, an impromptu airfield south of Hollister between Storke and Los Carneros and a cow pasture-turned-airstrip near the intersection of Fairvew and Hollister that became a flying school.

Around 1930, a 3,000 foot piece of land near the slough was stripped of its willow trees by a county road grader and became the new “Goleta Airport.” It became the site of a small aviation company, General Western, which moved from Burbank to Goleta.

Yet another small airport was built in the Good Land, called the Santa Barbara Airways at Goleta, which consisted of two small hangars near Fairview south of Hollister, as well as a 3,500-foot main strip and a 3,200-foot alternate. This airport hosted planes and passengers until 1961.

The need for a municipal airport became obvious in the late 1930s, and the Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce commissioned a survey to see where the best site for a city-owned airport might be. Their recommendation? The seemingly useless Goleta Slough.

Over the next few years work was done to acquire title from the nearby landowners and to purchase the slough land. At the time it was estimated that it would take at least $1 million just to reclaim the slough.

Fortunately, the federal government, because of the rumblings of war, had undertaken a program to build airports across the country, sharing costs with the municipalities in the program. T.M. Storke, with his political ties, was able to get the city of Santa Barbara added to the federal airport program.

By early 1941, money for the airport in Goleta we now know as the Santa Barbara Municipal Airport had been provided and the land purchased. By mid-June, ground was broken and construction was underway. By early fall, crews were grading and filling and the ancient Mescalitan Island was on its way to being leveled to raise the airport level by up to 12 feet.

The airport, complete with terminal, was finished just about the time America joined World War II.

Photo courtesy Goleta Valley Historical Society