The Ranch refers to two historically separate, adjacent ranches, Bixby and Hollister, which together encompass some 8 1/2 miles of Santa Barbara County coastline and a host of high-quality point and reef set-ups.

It’s a gated and guarded community, and everywhere from from the security gate to the “mean high-tide line” is strictly out of bounds to the public. Besides trespass, the prospective surfer is thus left with three options: accessing the line-up by boat is the standard method, though some choose to hike west from Gaviota State Park along the beach below the high-tide line; the third alternative is forking out for some real-estate. Many of the landowners surf, and neither they nor the dedicated crew who regularly make the trip by boat take kindly to newcomers. Certainly the waves are less crowded than elsewhere in California, but to describe them as empty would be an exaggeration.

The Hollister Ranch now consists of 133 parcels of land, each of at least 100 acres, which first went on the market in 1971. A quick look at the Hollister Ranch Realty website reveals two parcels currently for sale: one is fully developed with a three-bedroom principal residence plus a guesthouse, and could be yours for a mere $12m (although “partial interests” are also available); the other, a bare plot of land with development rights, is priced at $3.4m. When plans to install a public access trail were proposed in 2013, they were met with outrage, followed by legal challenges, on the part of landowners.

Incidentally the faux surf brand Hollister, an offshoot of Abercrombie & Fitch, was named after an heir of the Hollisters who originally acquired the ranch in the wake of the Civil War. Much of the brand’s clothing bears the date “1922” on logos and labels, in reference to a surf shop supposedly established by John J Hollister Jr on the ranch in that year, but the story has no historical foundation; no such shop ever existed, and in fact the company was not founded until 2000.