Devereux Point, Coal Oil Point, Sands. These are all names for a beautiful part of the Goleta coast. But another name should be Campbell Point.

The Campbell family lived here for less than 10 years, but they made an impact that can still be seen today.

And it was all accomplished by two powerful women.

Nicholas Den was the first individual to claim ownership of Coal Oil Point, but after he died, his massive Dos Pueblos Rancho was divided into lots of smaller parcels.

In 1913, Jack and Coto Cavaletto bought 200 acres of Coal Oil Point from the Den family. They managed to make a meager living by farming there, but when a wealthy foreigner came along, they were eager to sell.

Col. Colin Campbell was just another English army officer until he married a wealthy American heiress. Colin met Nancy Leiter while serving in the Central India Horse Regiment.

Nancy had come to visit her sister who was married to the viceroy of India. Both of her sisters had married royalty, one a viceroy and the other an earl, but Nancy wasn’t impressed by titles.

Despite her parents’ wishes, she quickly fell in love with a man without a royal title — a career military man.

Colin proposed to Nancy as they rode in a carriage on top of an elephant.

Nancy Leiter was born into riches, and the fame that comes with it. She was the daughter of Levi Leiter, a successful Chicago businessman and real estate tycoon, who reportedly owned one-third of all the commercial real estate in Chicago.

Her father passed away in 1904, and shortly thereafter Nancy and Colin were married in a brilliant social affair in Washington, D.C.

Nancy was used to an opulent lifestyle, and she had the means to live luxuriously. When she and Colin were able to choose what they believed would be their permanent home, they chose the imposing seaside Kingsgate Castle in Kent, England.

They lived happily and had their four children in the giant castle, but they grew tired of the excessive taxes the English government charged on their American income, so they decided to move to the United States.

Col. Campbell arrived in Santa Barbara in 1919 on the hunt for a location for a country estate like he was leaving behind. While many fellow millionaires had settled in Montecito, Campbell wanted room to build a polo field and raise dogs.

His first choice was Hope Ranch, but it had just been sold to developers by the Pacific Improvement Company.

Some prominent local citizens told him Goleta had lots of open space and after looking around, he decided that Coal Oil Point was the place to build his new empire.

While the soil was marginal and there was no fresh water, there was plenty of room for a sprawling estate and a mile of private beach.

Colin was especially drawn to the large lagoon, and he envisioned a lake for canoeing stocked with fish and elegant white swans.

Campbell bought 100 acres of Coal Oil Point from Jack Cavalletto for six times what he paid for it.

In 1920, the Campbells brought their children, their “domestic staff,” and six train car loads of furnishings to Esther Hammond’s oceanfront Bonnymede Estate.

The Hammond estate would be their home for a year while their new country home was being built.

Access to the Coal Oil Point had always been via a battered old road from Hollister Avenue, down between the marshy sloughs to a sharp left turn that was nicknamed El Rincon, or the Corner.

In fact, the Den family called this area the Rincon Ranch for years. This road was narrow, and when there was rain it was a nearly impassable mess.

Col. Campbell offered to pave the road at his expense, as long as his neighbors agreed not to haul excessively heavy loads on it.

One grumpy old local didn’t like this fancy foreigner coming to town and telling people what they can and can’t do, and he proclaimed Campbell had to pave it or he couldn’t get to his own property!

The colonel didn’t like to be bullied, so he purchased a parallel strip of land just west of the old road, paved it, fenced it off for his private use and named it —Campbell Road.

Years later, the county took over both roads, removed the dividing fence and renamed the combined thoroughfare Storke Road, after C.A. Storke, who owned the ranch adjacent to it on the east.

Beginning at the “rincon,” Campbell built a windy and scenic concrete slab road that ran alongside the lagoon and looped around the knoll where he would build his mansion.

The concrete for the mile long road was all mixed and laid by hand. The current road still follows the same route, and the original concrete road can be spotted in a few locations.

Col. Campbell was very involved in the details of the ranch, designing the landscaping, planting the eucalyptus and cypress trees for windbreaks, and converting the Cavaletto bean field into his private polo grounds.

He had the slough dredged in a failed attempt to make a harbor, and he made a landing strip on the bluffs for his Hollywood friends’ private planes.

Colin enjoyed the hard work of running a ranch, participating in all the most menial of tasks. They planted hundreds of apricots, olive and walnut trees, fields of beans, wheat and alfalfa, and assorted flower and vegetable gardens.

Prefab houses were built for temporary housing for his family, and a beach house was built early on, showing Colin’s appreciation for the beauty of his new surroundings.

Campbell was enjoying his new life in humble little Goleta and he had big plans for his ranch. Unfortunately, his time here was cut short.

Returning from a trip to Chicago by train with Nancy in 1924, Colin Campbell suffered a fatal heart attack. His will directed he be buried on his new ranch in Goleta.

Mrs. Campbell had a private family cemetery built at the tip of Coal Oil Point. The entrance pillars can still be found there.

An elaborate but private funeral was held and a 10-foot-tall cross, made of Scottish granite, marked Col. Colin Campbell’s final resting place. It, too, is still there.

The tall granite Celtic cross was carved with ancient and legendary Scottish life symbols, worth examining the next time you’re out there.

Also, note at the bottom of the cross, the vandalized inscription dedicated to Ian Drummond Campbell,1909-1911, one of their children who died of meningitis at only 2 years old.

With a heavy heart, Nancy devoted her life to fulfilling Colin’s dream of a successful working ranch home.

Unhappy with all the plans from a variety of architects, she enlisted the help of her also recently widowed friend Mary Osborne Craig.

Mary McLaughlin Craig is worthy of her own separate story. Briefly, her husband James Osborne Craig designed the El Paseo in Santa Barbara and was an up-and-coming young architect when he suddenly died.

Mary Craid had been an able assistant to her husband, but this would be the first major project she would take on by herself, and it was crucial to her career as one of the first female architects.

Doing the project for a dear friend made it a little easier. Mary would go on to have an amazing career, becoming one of the most important woman architects in history, and having a huge influence on the Spanish Colonial style of Santa Barbara.

Nancy’s brother Joe Leiter was a called “one of the most colorful figures in the history of Chicago,” and he was the manager of the Leiter family’s huge fortune.

Joe was a huge help every step of the construction process, using his business savvy and experience to help young Mary Craig get the big job done.

Despite his reputation for being wild and careless, Joe got along well with Mary and he helped her become a renowned architect in her own right, despite a lack of formal training and being “a woman in a man’s world.”

After living in European castles, the Campbells had decided they wanted to live in a “plain living house,” and that’s what Mary Craig set out to build for Nancy.

While plain by the Campbell’s standards, it was still quite a large home. They used local adobe bricks to build the 20,000-square-foot main house in California Mission Colonial style with arched windows and doorways, 30 rooms, 18 bathrooms, and a 12,000-square-foot basement.

The home was designed hacienda style, around a central courtyard, and the finished product still stands strong today, despite a lack of maintenance by the current owners, UCSB.

Also on the grounds were tennis courts, a blacksmith shop, a guest house, employee housing, a boating lagoon, the beach house below the bluff, and lots of other buildings including a large garage that would house their five Rolls-Royces.

The estate was a working ranch that produced livestock and crops for consumption and sale. Construction cost more tan $500,000, and it was the showplace of the Goleta Valley.

With the house complete in 1925, an army of moving vans delivered all the belongings of a mega wealthy family to the Campbell Ranch.

The manager of the house and the ranch would be George Churchill and his wife, who had been working for the Campbells for 20 years.

The Campbell Ranch soon became a hot spot for celebrity parties like Goleta had never seen. Guests included high society from all around the globe. Celebrities would land their private planes on the bluff.

A most notable affair was a grand ball for Prince George of England, and a beautiful wooden dance floor was installed on the patio for the occasion.

While there were some lavish parties, Nancy Campbell mostly lived a quiet ranch life, enjoying smaller gatherings.

Mary Craig often brought her young daughter and stayed weekends with her dear friend. Many mornings they awoke to bagpipes being played outside the window by one of the Campbell’s Scottish staff members.

Nancy Campbell once wrote about her Goleta home: “I am glad to be here, in God’s wonderful world, all clean and sunshine, and honest — It’s the only way to live — one can die easily then.”

Another unique attraction Mary Craig designed at the Campbell Ranch was a beautiful redwood barn for Colin’s polo horses. Today, this is the largest wooden building standing on the UCSB campus.

It is the only barn Mary Craig ever designed, and it was built in the classic style of English Polo Barn architecture. Built with old growth redwood, this is most likely the only surviving example of this design in California, which makes it even more historically significant.

On a small hill overlooking the West Campus Stables, the barn was still being used up until the 1978 earthquake caused serious damage, making it unsafe.

It’s sad to see a once noble structure in such disrepair and being completely overlooked by the current owners, UCSB.

Another unique feature of the Campbell Ranch that is still standing is an unusual little building that looks like a fancy outhouse. It is actually a useful ranch building called a dovecote.

Dovecotes were used to house doves and pigeons for eating. The small openings at the top encouraged doves and pigeons to nest safely inside where there are a bunch of cubbies to serve as individual nest holes. They are also elevated, to deter most predators, except the rancher with a ladder, who would harvest them at will. Their droppings were also used as fertilizer for their farm.

The dovecote was built in 1923, and is particularly special because it was designed by Mary Craig, but also because it was built in the Spanish Colonial Style.

The only Spanish Colonial dovecote known to exist in California, it is yet another valuable historic treasure sadly being overlooked and slowly deteriorating on UCSB’s West Campus.

Yet another unique feature of the Campbell Ranch was the beach house, today called “the jailhouse” due to metal bars that once were in the small door on the back wall.

Once decorated with abalone shells, today “the jailhouse” is catchall for litterbugs and a canvas for a constantly changing display of street art.

When it was new, it was beautifully adorned with abalone shells. The front area was an open barbecue fireplace area.

Legend has it the beach house was used as an unloading spot for illegal spirits during prohibition. Supposedly, the back opening led to tunnels and storage rooms that extended well into the bluffs behind.

In 1930, a mere five years after the completion of her Goleta ranch, Nancy died suddenly at age 57. She was on a trip to England, and her remains were returned to Goleta to be buried next to Colin’s on Coal Oil Point.

Their son, Colin Leiter Campbell and his family lived on the estate for another 10 years.

When Colin Jr. decided to move on in 1941, a huge auction of all the Campbell furnishings attracted the rich and famous.

Charlie Chaplin took home the extremely rare English silver from the 1600s that bore Colin Campbell’s initials, C.C., since that was a perfect fit.

The Campbells’ friend Cary Grant spent more than $1,000 on a rare book by T.E. Lawrence.

The wooden dance floor that English royalty had danced on was sold to Goleta farmer Peter Irvine. Irvine moved it to Oak Park in Santa Barbara, where it still serves the public today.

The whole ranch property was for sale, but no satisfactory bids came for it. Their loyal employee George Churchill and his wife stayed on at the ranch as custodians until a buyer could be found.

The Campbell Ranch sat unoccupied for a while but there was still plenty of activity.

In 1942 Word War II came to our shores, and a Coast Guard radar station was installed at Coal Oil Point to watch out for possible attacks.

Two 75 mm-field guns were strategically placed on the property, since Japan had already attacked Goleta once.

The Cliff House, which is still there, was built by the Goleta Marine Corps Air Station and served as the officers’ club and mess hall.

After the war, the soldiers took their big guns, but left the buildings. Soon after, the most noble use of the property was about to begin, and it would change the name of Coal Oil Point forever.

Enter another powerful female force, Miss Helena Devereux of Philadelphia. She had 20 schools for children with special needs in the eastern U.S. and wanted one in the Santa Barbara area.

In 1945, her Realtor directed her to the former Campbell Ranch, which she felt was a perfect fit.

Her foundation bought the whole 500-acre ranch for a bargain price of $100,000, one-fifth of what Mrs. Campbell paid just to build the main house. The Campbell’s trusted ranch manager, George Churchill, handed the keys over to the new owners to begin a new era.

The Campbell’s private cemetery on the property created a cloud on the title that could only be cleared be removing the human remains. So, the Campbell children arranged to transfer their parents remains to Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, DC. The ring of cypress, the brick entrada and the granite cross remain to this day.

The Devereux Foundation went to work converting the once luxurious ranch into a functioning school, and the Coal Oil Point got a new name, Devereux Point.

In the 1950s and ’60s the Devereux Foundation sold off much of the ranch acreage, and UCSB purchased more than 220 acres, including the Campbell family cemetery. 

The Campbell Mansion was renamed for Helena T. Devereux, who died in 1975 at the age of 90.

In 2007 UCSB bought another portion of the Devereux School and created the UCSB West Campus.

Today the Campbell Manor, the beautiful Campbell Barn and the unique Spanish Colonial dovecote, all sit unmaintained and slowly deteriorating.

All were designed by the groundbreaking female architect Mary McLaughlin Craig, just over 100 years ago. If you’d like to learn more about her, the Art, Design and Architecture Museum at UCSB has an archive of her correspondence, drawings, and photographs from other projects.

She is an inspiration and her story should be shared with future generations.

If you think UCSB should make an effort to preserve these important historic structures, please email the new chancellor, Dennis Assanis at chancellor@ucsb.edu.

See a more detailed and fully illustrated version of this story at www.goletahistory.com.