Most folks know there’s a stretch of the Gaviota Coast that’s referred to as Naples. But how did it get this name?
It was first called Naples all the way back in 1887, by a wealthy world traveler named John H. Williams, and his wife Alice.
They had a dream to build a world-class hotel called the Crescent Beach Hotel, a planned community called Naples-by-the Sea, and, of course, make a pile of money.
The Williams were a wealthy couple from Ohio that had a passion for world travel. They liked to spend their summers in Naples, Italy, and their winters in Santa Barbara, California.
They would frequently travel to San Francisco by steamship for business, and as they passed the Dos Pueblos Ranch area, they would always comment on the similarity in appearance to Naples, Italy.
One day in 1887, as they were sailing north and enjoying the serene views, their thoughts were influenced by the times. Why not buy this beautiful land and sell it for a profit?
At this time California was in the midst of a real estate boom, sparked by the completion of a San Francisco to Los Angeles railroad line. Investors were buying and flipping land all through Southern California.
In 1886 an acre of Los Angeles land went for $100, and the following year it was worth $1,500.
The promise of a Coastal Route railroad line connecting L.A. to San Francisco via Santa Barbara brought the frenzy to Goleta. Mr. and Mrs. Williams got caught up in the excitement, and decided to make their real estate dream a reality.
On June 2, 1887, John Williams bought 900 acres of prime ocean front real estate from the widower of Rosa Den for $50,000.
Thus began the Naples Improvement Company, and Williams took four partners, all executives with the Southern Pacific Railroad. They guaranteed him the completion of the coast line route was near, and that was crucial to the success of his project.
Immediately, a nationwide advertising campaign was launched, extolling the virtues of the climate and describing the town and hotel as if they already existed.
They described boating on Naples Bay and showed pictures of a lavish hotel. They also showed a picture of the “Dos Pueblos River” with an ocean liner docked in the magnificent harbor.
In reality, the “foaming cascades” of the upper Dos Pueblos River were usually just a trickle and the “harbor” was a duck pond, a few feet deep.
While the hype machine cranked out all these stories of a perfect wonderland, the Williams were still eagerly depending upon the completion of the Coastal railroad line.
The railroad was a necessity to bring construction supplies and it provided a major selling point; a railroad station.
Williams dumped thousands of dollars into his advertising campaign, but the returns were minimal. Without the rail customers, he turned his attention back to the sea-going public with a desperate marketing effort.
Huge wooden letters, 20 feet high, were erected on the bluffs, spelling out NAPLES. The huge white washed letters were visible 10 miles out to sea. They eventually blew down, one by one, in the wind storms of 1890, symbolic of things to come for John Williams’ dream.
Maps were distributed, proclaiming the development as a “Poetic Realm,” “Ordained by Nature,” and the “Queen of Summer and Winter Resorts.”
The advertisements called it the Bay of Naples, which is a stretch, to say the least.
If nothing else, the city was laid out on paper, featuring scenic avenues and parks, and detailing utility easements and landscaping. Streets running east and west were numbered 1 through 18, starting at the ocean.
Running north to south, the avenues featured “Neapolitan” names, such as Vesuvius, Aetna and Capri.
The only two roads that actually existed were named after celebrities of the day, to give the impression that the rich and famous were flocking to this new development.
There was Patti, named for the Spanish soprano Adelina Patti, and Langtry, named after theatrical sex queen Lillie Langtry.
Williams’ exaggerated advertising was not broadcast in California. It was mostly focused on the metropolitan areas back east, where potential investors would be less likely to come see Naples firsthand, because if they did, they would see completely undeveloped land.
Despite the Naples business not going as planned, Alice Williams still adored the land around their imaginary city, and she fell in love with the old Den adobe just across Dos Pueblos Creek.
They negotiated with Stephen Rutherford, the owner of Dos Pueblos Ranch, and purchased an additional 82 acres on the west side of the creek that included the adobe.
There, John and Alice lived with their beloved pug dogs while they waited for their dream to come true.
But there were complications. The economy took a downturn, and funds for the Coastal rail were diverted elsewhere, bringing the progress to a grinding halt.
The railroad got as close as Ellwood, where a roundabout was built, and that was where the line ended for 14 years. This spelled disaster for John Williams’ plan. By the time the railroad would finally get to Naples, the land boom would be over.
They finally did build a Naples Hotel, but it was not the hotel of his dreams, by any means.
He also managed to build a small town at Naples, using lumber he acquired from a schooner that anchored off the mouth of Dos Pueblos canyon and floated supplies ashore.
Williams’ alternate plan was to create a farming community to provide fresh produce and supplies for the future 5,000 residents of his dream city. He even created the Dos Pueblos Water Company, building a dam upstream and water mains down to the town site.
Despite the failure of his grand plan, the little town of Naples began to look like a small community.
The Naples Dance Hall became a popular social spot for the youth of Goleta and Santa Barbara. Couples would rent carriages for the long moonlit trips up the coast to attend a Naples dance.
Sounds like fun even today. And Naples even had a baseball team, the Naples 9.
On Dec. 15, 1895, John Williams passed away, leaving his dream to Alice. She was every bit as determined to see Naples By The Sea materialize.
To honor John, she decided to build a Gothic church on the east rim of the Dos Pueblos Canyon, where future residents could worship.
She spared no expense in the construction, hiring a prominent architect and importing stain glass windows and slate shingles from Tuscany. Gargoyles with panther heads graced the corners of the structure and cactus and century plants made up the landscaping.
The remains of John Williams were returned from an undertaker in San Francisco and sealed in one of the tombs built in the mausoleum.
Also entombed there, to the dismay of the community, were the embalmed carcasses of two of her precious pug dogs. Sculptured likenesses of the dog’s heads were also carved into the exterior of the church.
It was Alice’s desire to have a wedding held at the church, but no one accepted her kind offer. Locals declared it a spooky place from the day it was built, and some took to calling it a “dog cemetery.”
For 27 years it sat empty, the most prominent manmade landmark between Santa Barbara and Gaviota, and never once used for a religious service.
Beside the locked doors read an inscription dedicating the church to the memory of John Williams, the founder of Naples.
Kids dubbed it the Haunted Chapel, and bats made their home in its looming bell tower. In Walker Tompkins’ words, it was a monument to “The dead dreams of John H. Williams and his City by the Sea.”
Alice Williams never did give up on her husband’s dream. She did, however, become known as an eccentric, a penny pincher and a recluse.
On March 31, 1901, she stood on the platform of the brand new Naples train station, her arms full of roses. When the first ever train pulled in from Los Angeles, she “ceremoniously garlanded the cowcatcher with flowers.”
Three days later, when the first southbound train came in from San Francisco, Mrs. Williams flagged it down. J.J. Hollister told Walker Tompkins what happened next:
“She told the engineer it had been her husband’s fondest desire to ride the first train into Santa Barbara from Naples. Then a group of pallbearers lifted the coffin of John Williams into the train’s baggage car and, along with Alice, he made the trip to Santa Barbara and back.
“Upon their return, he was placed back in his vault in the Naples chapel. Even in death, John Williams hadn’t been cheated out of his fondest desire.”
Alice Williams had lived to see the completion of the railroad through Naples, but the land boom was over.
Meanwhile, the exquisite Potter Hotel had been built in Santa Barbara, attracting all the rich and famous Naples was intended for, and many of them were building multi million dollar mansions in Montecito. The little farm town of Naples was in decline.
In 1917, Naples was bought out by retired oil man H.G. Wylie, and his spokesman announced that the name “Naples” would be abolished and it would now be referred to in its proper name, Dos Pueblos Ranch.
Immediately, the old clapboard town of Naples was demolished and the ranch was enclosed by a barbed wire fence with prominent NO TRESPASSING signs on display. Where the town was, Wylie planted walnut trees.
One old Naples building survived the bulldozer’s blade. The Naples store was in existence until 1932.
As a final blow to the dream of Naples, the powerful Santa Barbara earthquake of 1925 reduced Alice Williams’ church to rubble.
The new owner, Wylie, quickly dismantled what was left of the spooky old structure and repurposed the stone elsewhere. Some of the stone blocks from the haunted chapel were used as walls and a gate for the big house at Dos Pueblos Ranch, where they can still be seen today.
Also still in existence today is Langtry Avenue. Evidently, the beauty queen’s name really had staying power … and a closer examination of the gutters of Langtry Avenue show the quality of craftsmanship that would have gone into The City By The Sea if it had ever been built.
While H.G. Wylie did his best to erase the Naples name from history, it lingered, and in 1927 a survey marker was labeled as Naples.
Fifty years later, the Morehart Land Company bought this oceanfront acreage, and they loved the Williams fantasy of Naples By The Sea.
After years of legal wrangling, Morehart got the county of Santa Barbara to approve an “Official Map” of the Naples Township, originally drawn up in 1888.
Nearly a century later, the modern developers went to work planning a whole new gated community by the sea, for a new generation of wealthy investors. This time, the railroad was already in place …
The Morehart developers even had a little three-quarter scale Naples train station built along the tracks as a fun little attraction for potential investors.
This building still exists today and we constantly get people asking if it was really the Naples train station, despite the small size. It was built in the 1980s and sat untouched until public access brought in vandals and graffiti artists.
After the Morehart Group faced too much resistance to their plan, they sold to an aggressive Orange County developer named Matt Osgood.
He picked up where John and Alice Williams left off, and they would have been proud of his determination. He battled for 10 years against environmental groups, and his reward was to be foreclosed upon by his lenders.
But another developer followed suit, and then another and the development attempts and the lawsuits continued to fly.
The most recent attempt in 2024, when just a couple of large homes and several outbuildings were proposed for an ocean front parcel.
They faced an overwhelming amount of public opposition, with hundreds of emails being sent in to the county, forcing the developer to withdraw his submission.
Times have changed since the Williams were around. Today, the general public has learned to appreciate the natural beauty of the Gaviota Coast, especially the empty bluffs at Naples. But the developers will continue to try, and we all know that even today, money talks …
Meanwhile, the beautiful stretch of California coast that resembles Naples, Italy, sits quietly, oblivious to all of the trials and tribulations fueled by man’s desire to capitalize on nature’s perfection.
Hopefully, this last unspoiled stretch of the southern California coastline will still be around for our grandchildren to enjoy.
Update: In Fall of 2026, The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County announced it will be going into escrow to purchase Naples and develop a preserve.
If you would like to help raise the needed funds to make this happen, visit www.sblandtrust.org/savenaplescampaign/.
There are a lot more interesting details to the story of Naples. Read them in Walker A. Tompkins classic book “Santa Barbara’s Royal Rancho.”
See a heavily illustrated version of this story and others at www.goletahistory.com.