Elings Park - Santa Barbara, CA

The city of Santa Barbara, California is often associated with relaxation and the good life. This is mostly due to the high average income of the area and the natural landscape in which it is located. The city is roughly 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles right along the Pacific Ocean. It enjoys the same year-round comfortable weather and relaxed lifestyle of the rest of Southern California without the crowded urban atmosphere that persists throughout much of of it. Located on the northern fringes of Southern California and basically due to geographic constraints, Santa Barbara is an outdoor lover's paradise. The city, which is home to around 90,000 people, is relatively small but makes a concerted effort to conserve as much open space and parkland as possible within its boundaries. This is on top of the fact that much of the city is surrounded by huge amounts of undeveloped and protected land. Therefore, open space is a way of life in the region. One of the best examples of Santa Barbara's legacy of open space is Elings Park, which is located roughly three miles to the west of the heart of downtown.

Elings Park is a nationally unique and notable park. It holds the distinction of being the largest privately-funded public park in America. As a result, it is a non-traditional park in the way it is run but a completely traditional park in the way it operates and the valuable service it provides. It commands a magnificent piece of real estate, as it is located on 230 acres of coastal bluffs with unobstructed views of the Pacific Ocean. It consists of numerous sports fields, trails for hiking and biking, playgrounds, and beautifully landscaped walkways and gardens. It is also a premier regional wedding and special event destination. The park is the culmination of private efforts to claim public space from the site of the old City of Santa Barbara landfill, which was closed in 1965. The present-day northern half of the park is where the landfill once stood. City officials partnered with local residents to fund the clean-up and renovation of the site into usable public parkland.

A slow but consistent process was born were progress was made incrementally over the ensuing years. As funding and interest in the project increased, acres were added along with facilities and landscaping within the park. The grand opening was finally announced in 1985 with much fanfare. By 1987, the popular Vietnam Veterans Living Memorial was opened. Finally, in 1994, the park's foundation acquired an additional 133 acres of land directly to the park's south, inching it's territory closer to the Pacific Ocean. The acquisition more than doubled the size of the park.

A running theme throughout the history of the park has been a consistent outpouring of financial support from private citizens. As a result, it currently ranks as the largest and perhaps the most successfully-run privately-funded park that is completely open for public use. And it aligns perfectly with the spirit of Santa Barbara and the surrounding region