A small jewel on the map along the coast of southern Santa Barbara County, Carpinteria--or "Carp"--has an enduring and endearing idiosyncratic character that suits locals, welcomes visitors, and resists
reinvention. Charlie Chaplin was married in Carpinteria, and Charles Lindbergh was an occasional fly-in visitor. The "world's fastest human" once hailed from Carpinteria, the same place where a single grape arbor consistently delivered 10 tons of grapes annually. Unspoken traditions included upstanding teachers by day using aliases at night to drive in rough-and-tumble jalopy races. The...

Carpinteria once featured a racetrack at one end of town and a gargantuan statue of Santa Claus at the other--"anchor" operations highlighting this unique southern corner of coastal Santa Barbara County. A few miles south, in the northern corner of Ventura County, nestles La Conchita, where an early seaside stagecoach route and a famous banana plantation helped shape the local flavor. The historical characteristics of Summerland, on the coast north of "Carp," as Carpinteria is known, have included a J. Paul Getty oil operation and youth baseball played on fields lighted by piped-in natural...