Santa Barbara Historical Museum

The Santa Barbara Historical Museum sits behind high adobe walls, marked by a heavy wooden gate that opens onto a quiet courtyard filled with fountain water and pepper trees. Inside the main gallery, a wooden statue of a Spanish saint stands carved from a single log, salvaged from the wreck of a ship that ran aground in eighteen forty-eight. The museum holds the city archives, but that saint remains the centerpiece of the collection, watching over the original maps of the seventeenth century.