This page was created by Anonymous. The last update was by The 2018-2019 Mellon Sawyer Seminar at UCSB.
Coal Oil Point
Coal Oil Point (COP) is especially accessible to students of UC Santa Barbara and local residents of Isla Vista. To access it, one has to follow Slough Road, which weaves around an undeveloped landscape of native California grasses, eucalyptus trees, and big skies at the ends of Storke Road and El Colegio Road.
Upon reaching the road’s end, visitors can park and either visit the reserve’s nature center, with further documentation and interpretation of the scientific and cultural history of the area, or walk towards the shoreline. If visitors choose the latter, they can either follow a more direct road or take a more winding trail smelling of sweet grasses, Eucalyptus, and salty oil.
This leads to a collection of infrastructure left from the site’s former twentieth-century inhabitants, including ragged brick fence markers, an imposing Celtic cross grave marker, a small school building, and a dissolving dovecote. These pieces of COP history overlook crashing waves and signs advertising mindfulness of the site’s mascot - the Snowy Plover.
The smooth sand sinks visitors into itself as they walk out to shore where the plovers nest. Small rocks and sand hoppers dot the coast, while the outline of a shadowy Channel Island framing the most obvious evidence of COP’s oily past, Platform Holly, lies on the horizon.
Visitors who investigate the ground further will see globs of taffy-like black tar, called tar balls, and perhaps better understand that there is a reason that Coal Oil Point has its name.
