The majesty of Point Conception is a condensation of all the majesty that is California. An idea of such beauty was born in the human imagination of the 1500’s in the form of “Califia”, the warrior queen of a mystical and alluring island called “California”. This is the place, America’s storied “Left Coast”, where a great land and sea finally meet. It is an island only in theory and state of mind, separate and exceptional. This spectacular gift that is California’s coastal intersection is on and around the “hip” of Point Conception, a physical embodiment of Yin and Yang, earth and water, that is Northern and Southern California.
Its name has been many, from the Chumash “Humqaq” to “Cabo de Galera” (“Galley Cape”) in 1542 by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, the Spanish/Portuguese conquistador. A month of storms had prevented Cabrillo from rounding this formidable point. On December 8, 1602, Spaniard Sebastian Vizcaino sailed past the point and renamed it “Punta de la Limpia Concepcion”, or “Point of the Immacualte Conception” in honor of that day’s
Feast of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, which is still observed. The name remains in its English abbreviation, Point Conception.
Before it had a name, Conception was and still is a distinct geographic “cleave” between the colder, more turbulent and wilder shores of California’s north and the warmer, serenely inviting beaches of its south.The solitary Point Conception lighthouse stands at the division, an entrance to the Santa Barbara Channel. Blinking silently, it’s beam is visible to ships as far as twenty miles out at sea. It beckons relief in softer seas for those storm-weary, rugged mariners caught in the Pacific’s angrier elements. Conception’s coastline is sensual given its raw elements of wind, wave, sound, and the blue-white stripe of long, untouched beaches. Rugged cliffs stand alongside wind swept sand dunes, bared sandstone, and carpets of ice plant. Spanish settlers brought the succulent as a water source in case the unfamiliar surroundings were arid. The Chumash Indians before them knew otherwise.