Santa Barbara Map 1877 Bird's-Eye View - Santa Barbara, Stearns Wharf, Santa Barbara Mountains

Eli Sheldon Glover drew and published this rare two-stone lithographed view of Santa Barbara, California, in 1877, printed in San Francisco by A.L. Bancroft & Co., during the same period Glover and his wife lived in Los Angeles and he focused his work on views of California cities including Los Angeles and San Diego. Glover's Santa Barbara view is the earliest large-scale printed view of the city, predated only by a much smaller sixteen-by-nine-inch view drawn by A.E. Mathews in 1873. The view is extremely scarce on the market; aside from one example the gallery itself offered in 2019, the last known example was the Amon Carter Museum's copy, offered for sale by Midland Books in 1967. Reps locates surviving examples at the Library of Congress, UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library, the California State Library, the Santa Barbara Historical Society, the Huntington Library, the Amon Carter Museum and the Oakland Museum.

The view's legend identifies more than two dozen specific Santa Barbara landmarks, including Santa Barbara College, St. Vincent School, the Old Mission School, the County Court House, the Arlington and Occidental Hotels, the Santa Barbara Press Office and the Santa Barbara County Bank, giving the panorama an unusually thorough index of the city's civic and religious institutions in 1877. Natural features named in the key include Mission Canyon, Sycamore Canyon, Hot Springs, an oil district and a Quicksilver Mine, reflecting the resource economy alongside the city's better-known mission heritage. Multiple churches appear individually identified, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist and Congregational, a level of denominational detail unusual even among city views of this period. Los Angeles and San Diego, the two larger Southern California cities Glover also depicted around this time, situate Santa Barbara's place within the region's small but growing chain of coastal towns.

This rare view makes a fitting gift for a Santa Barbara family with roots in the city's mission-era institutions, or for a collector already holding Glover's companion 1877 view of Los Angeles and looking to round out the pairing with its smaller, equally scarce Santa Barbara counterpart. Its detailed institutional key sets it apart as a genuinely useful historical reference alongside its decorative appeal as a wall piece. It ships unframed and is available in the full range of sizes we offer, from a compact desk print to a large-format piece for a study or office wall.