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To
get to Coal Oil Point Reserve, take Hollister Avenue east until
you get to Storke Road. You will drive past the UCSB Storke Campus
and then you will come to an intersection. Turn right and follow
the road past Devereux Slough and pull into the reserve parking
lot.The region around Coal Oil Point has been occupied by humans for thousands of years. Shells more than 7,000 years old have been found a few kilometers north of the reserve. Objects found on Santa Rosa Island shows human occupation as early as 10,000 years ago.
In 1542, Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo sailed past the Santa Barbara coast and found a community of more than 1,000 Chumash east of the point and Goleta Slough. He noted that the the canoes were waterproofed with tar, and he ordered his ships to be sealed with the same material.
On January 28, 1969, a crack in the seabed near an offshore drilling platform began to scatter oil across 1,200 square miles of the Santa Barbara Channel. A huge effort was made to clean up the spill and the fouled beaches.
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