Editing Santa Barbara, California (section)

===After World War II===

[[File:Santa Barbara Harbor by Don Ramey Logan.jpg|thumb|Aerial view of Santa Barbara Harbor and [[Stearns Wharf]]]]
After the war many of the servicemen who had seen Santa Barbara returned to stay. The population surged by 10,000 people between the end of the war and 1950. This burst of growth had dramatic consequences for the local economy and infrastructure. [[U.S. Highway 101|Highway 101]] was built through town during this period, and newly built [[Lake Cachuma]] began supplying water via a tunnel dug through the mountains between 1950 and 1956.<ref>[http://www.usbr.gov/dataweb/html/cachuma.html U.S. Bureau of Reclamation: page on the Lake Cachuma project] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090609100621/http://www.usbr.gov/dataweb/html/cachuma.html |date=June 9, 2009 }}</ref>

[[File:State Street, Santa Barbara - panoramio - Thomas Camargo.jpg|thumb|right|State Street, Santa Barbara]]
Local relations with the oil industry gradually soured through the period. Production at Summerland had ended, Elwood was winding down, and to find new fields oil companies carried out seismic exploration of the Channel using explosives, a controversial practice that local fishermen claimed harmed their catch. The culminating disaster, and one of the formative events in the modern environmental movement, was the [[1969 Santa Barbara oil spill|blowout at Union Oil's Platform A]] on the [[Dos Cuadras Offshore Oil Field|Dos Cuadras Field]], about {{convert|8|mi|km|spell=in}} southeast of Santa Barbara in the Santa Barbara Channel, on January 28, 1969. Approximately {{convert|100000|oilbbl}} of oil surged out of a huge undersea break, fouling hundreds of square miles of ocean and all the coastline from Ventura to Goleta, as well north facing beaches on the Channel Islands. Two legislative consequences of the spill in the next year were the passages of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the [[National Environmental Policy Act]] (NEPA); locally, outraged citizens formed GOO (Get Oil Out).<ref name="Baker, pp. 88-89">Baker, pp. 88–89</ref>
Santa Barbara's business community strove to attract development until the surge in the anti-growth movement in the 1970s. Many "clean" industries, especially aerospace firms such as Raytheon and Delco Electronics, moved to town in the 1950s and 1960s, bringing employees from other parts of the U.S. UCSB itself became a major employer.<ref name="Baker, pp. 88-89"/> In 1975, the city passed an ordinance restricting growth to a maximum of 85,000 residents, through zoning. Growth in the adjacent Goleta Valley could be shut down by denying water meters to developers seeking permits. As a result of these changes, growth slowed down, but prices rose sharply.<ref>Tompkins, 1975, p. 115</ref><ref>Baker, pp. 89–91</ref>

When voters approved connection to State water supplies in 1991, parts of the city, especially outlying areas, resumed growth, but more slowly than during the boom period of the 1950s and 1960s. While the slower growth preserved the quality of life for most residents and prevented the [[urban sprawl]] notorious in the [[Los Angeles Basin|Los Angeles basin]], housing in the Santa Barbara area was in short supply, and prices soared: in 2006, only six percent of residents could afford a median-value house. As a result, many people who work in Santa Barbara commute from adjacent, more affordable areas, such as Santa Maria, [[Lompoc, California|Lompoc]], and Ventura. The resultant traffic on incoming arteries, in particular the stretch of Highway 101 between Ventura and Santa Barbara, is another problem being addressed by long-range planners.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-mar-06-me-slowgrow6-story.html |title=Slow Growth Movement &#124; 'Slow Growth' Has Come at a Cost in Santa Barbara|newspaper= Los Angeles Times|date=April 13, 1999 |access-date=May 20, 2012|first1=Jeffrey L.|last1=Rabin|first2=Daryl|last2=Kelley}}</ref>

====Notable wildfires====
Since the middle of the twentieth century, several destructive fires have affected Santa Barbara: the 1964 Coyote Fire, which burned {{convert|67000|acre|km2}} of backcountry along with 106 homes; the smaller, but quickly moving, Sycamore Fire in 1977, which burned 200 homes; the disastrous 1990 [[Painted Cave Fire]], which incinerated over 500 homes in only several hours, during an intense [[Sundowner (wind)|Sundowner wind]] event; the November 2008 [[Montecito Tea Fire|Tea Fire]], which destroyed 210 homes in the foothills of Santa Barbara and [[Montecito, California|Montecito]]; and the 2009 [[Jesusita Fire]] that burned {{convert|8733|acre|km2}} and destroyed 160 homes above the [[#Neighborhoods|San Roque]] region of Santa Barbara.<ref name=city1>{{cite web|url=http://www.santabarbaraca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/00BDE41C-79A6-4862-8D02-89E16FCB01CB/0/0611_Get_Ready_Santa_Barbara.pdf|title=City of Santa Barbara: Historical Santa Barbara Area Fires|website=Santabarbaraca.gov|date=June 2011|access-date=July 31, 2012|archive-date=July 24, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120724101956/http://www.santabarbaraca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/00BDE41C-79A6-4862-8D02-89E16FCB01CB/0/0611_Get_Ready_Santa_Barbara.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=county1>{{cite web |url=http://www.sbcfire.com/au/dphist/history.htm |title=History of the Santa Barbara County Fire Department |access-date=July 31, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120720065051/http://www.sbcfire.com/au/dphist/history.htm |archive-date=July 20, 2012 }}</ref>

The [[Thomas Fire]] burned from its origins in [[Santa Paula, California|Santa Paula]] {{convert|60| miles|-1}} to the east of Santa Barbara and consumed {{convert|281,893|acre|km2}} in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, most of which consisted of rural land and wilderness areas. The fire started December 4, 2017, and was 100% contained by January 12, 2018. 1,050 structures were lost in the Thomas Fire, mostly east of Santa Barbara in Ventura County. The Thomas Fire has been the largest Santa Barbara County fire ever recorded to date.