Goleta Depot is the oldest commercial building in the town of Goleta.

It was built in 1901 during the completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad Coast Line which linked San Francisco and Los Angeles. The line had a major impact on patterns of settlement, tourism and agriculture throughout the 20th century.

Goleta Depot, a Victorian Stick Style building, is a Southern Pacific Combination Station No. 22 (CS-22). Southern Pacific used standard plans to simplify the design and construction its depots. Most of these depots were wood-frame buildings in small towns and in the country.

From about 1894 until the 1930s, Southern Pacific built at least ninety-one CS-22 depots in California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Oregon and Utah.

Eight CS-22 depots were built in Santa Barbara County.

Except for Goleta Depot, all were razed by Southern Pacific.

Most were gone by 1980.

In 1981, Goleta Depot was moved from its original site, about two miles from here, to Los Carneros County Park. The tracks in the photograph are not functional.

Source: Adapted from the NRHP nomination submitted in 2001.

The Goleta Depot is also Santa Barbara County Landmark 22. An interpretive marker reads:

Buildings that Moved

It's not just that the people of the American West are restless, the buildings themselves sometimes pack up and move when - for one reason or another - the neighborhood no longer suits them or the neighbors no longer want them or opportunity waits down the road.

And when buildings remain in place, they are often searching for their identities.

Of the buildings and structures we have visited, the original Reno Arch holds the record for number of moves. It has been moved five times since it was built in 1926.

Jax Truckee Diner holds the distance title. The building moved from New Jersry to Pennsylvanis in 1948, then from Pennsylvania to Califonia in 1992.

Probably the most ambitious relocation occurred on July 4th 1904, when the Southern Pacific Railroad loaded most of the town of Wadsworth, Nevada, onto rail cars and transported the town thirty miles west to create a new town which became known as Sparks.