homesteaded his ranch on the south side just below the summit. This later became a stagecoach stop where horses were changed after the long pull up the north side. The Kinevan Ranch still is in the Kinevan family and the old house still stands, although the barn, where the stage horses were changed, was bulldozed down at the time of the big fire in the fifties, which burned thousands of acres to the north and west of the Pass. About the time of Pat Kinevan’s arrival, another Irishman settled on the north side. This was Mike Fineran, who homesteaded his ranch where Deer Lodge now is located. Unfortunately, these neighbors did not get along well together, to say the least; and, it is said, they threatened to eliminate each other, although no shooting occurred and they both died natural deaths. At the foot of the old grade on the north side, near the junction with Paradise Road, two brothers, Samuel and Joseph Kelley, homesteaded their ranch in the seventies. Here, for many years, they operated a honey industry, the bees thriving on the mountain range. Later, they transported some highly bred goats and this herd became well known, although the bees undoubtedly were the more profitable investment. In the early days of the automobile, the Kelley Brothers purchased two Metz cars. However, these were run only a very few miles and then they were put to rest in one of the barns. In 1931, I stopped at the Kelley’s ranch to purchase a couple of goats and I saw one of these cars with a hen nesting comfortably on the seat. The road over the Pass undoubtedly will undergo other changes in the future, but, to the oldtimer, never can it again regain the charm of the old days of Slippery Rock, the Hairpin Turns, and the winding road along the River through the San Marcos Ranch.
Casitas Pass By Selden Sfaui.dinc
The eastern Casitas Pass differs from the three western passes in the Santa Ynez Range in that it has two summits and not one only; and so, in reality, it is two passes. Perhaps it would be better to call it a double pass. At any rate, there are two pairs of grades and two summits that, a half century age, went by the names of “Big Casitas” and “Little Casitas” respectively. Neither of these two sum mits is high when compared with the Refugio Summit. The first Europeans to enter the Santa Barbara region by land, know ing nothing about the Casitas Saddle, did so by the Rincon Route. They used the hard, wet sand of the beach at low tide as a roadway through those places where, at high tide, the waves broke with violence against the Rincon cliffs. These narrow places, or “Narrows”, lying as they did about half way between San Diego and Monterey, soon came to be recognized as the dividing point between Northern and Southern California. (This point is not to be confused with the boundary line a few miles south of San Diego that set Alta California apart from Baja California.) During the numerous 18