Goleta, CA news and local guide

The first known European visitor was the Portuguese mariner Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, sailing for Spain, who spent time around the Channel Islands in 1542 and died there the next year. A 16th-century cannon found on the beach in the 1980s led to a theory that Sir Francis Drake sailed into the slough in 1579, making Goleta the southernmost of many proposed sites for his New Albion, which is generally placed at Drake's Bay north of San Francisco. Sebastian Vizcaino named the Santa Barbara Channel in 1602, and Manila galleons probably stopped occasionally over the next 167 years, but no settlement was made. The Portola expedition spent several days in the area in 1769 and camped on August 20 near a creek north of the estuary. The estuary was then a large open lagoon covering most of present Goleta, with at least five Native towns, the largest on an island in its center, so the engineer Miguel Costanso called them Pueblos de la Isla, soldiers named the island town Mescaltitlan and Juan Crespi called the towns Santa Margarita de Cortona. Mescalitan Island kept its name until it was bulldozed in 1941 for fill for the military airfield that is now Santa Barbara Airport. Sources Wikipedia: Goleta, California