Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History
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| Established | 1916 |
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| Location | 2559 Puesta del Sol Santa Barbara, CA |
| Coordinates | 34°26′18.77″N 119°42′53.38″W / 34.4385472°N 119.7148278°W |
| Type | Natural history museum |
| Website | http://www.sbnature.org |
Founded in 1916, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History reconnects more than 150,000 people each year (including their 5,700 members) to nature indoors and outdoors. Uniquely nestled in nature, the Museum is located along Mission Creek in the Mission Canyon area. The Museum has ten indoor exhibit halls focusing on regional natural history including astronomy, birds, insects, geology, mammals, marine life, paleontology, plant life, and the Chumash Indians. Also, the Museum is home to the only full-dome planetarium on the Central Coast, a research library, and the John & Peggy Maximus Art Gallery.
The early roots of the Museum date back to the 1880s, when a group of professional and amateur scientists, including botanist Caroline Bingham, started the Santa Barbara Natural History Society and an accompanying museum at 1226 State Street. Though the effort waned at the end of the century, the arrival of ornithologist William Leon Dawson from Ohio re-ignited the effort. Dawson and a group of prominent Santa Barbarans founded the Museum of Comparative Oology, which was first located in two outbuildings on his property on Puesta del Sol Road in Mission Canyon. The initial holdings were assembled from his own extensive collection of bird eggs as well as collections of other community members. According to the Museum's website, Dawson believed oology—the study of bird eggs—“would throw a flood of light upon the trend of life itself,” yielding “the secrets of life’s origins and its destiny.”
Though it began from a collection of bird eggs, the holdings of the Museum were soon expanded into other realms by its Board of Directors. The successor to William Dawson as director was Ralph Hoffmann, a Harvard-trained educator, botanist, and ornithologist. The next director Paul Marshall Rhea who had been President of the American Association of Museums, Director of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and Director of the Carnegie Foundation in Washington, D.C.. Some of the notable benefactors of the Museum included Dr. Caroline Hazard who was President of Wellesley College at the time: she donated part of her estate in Mission Canyon for a new museum building. This building was built with funds donated by Mrs. Rowland G. Hazard in memory of her late husband and opened in 1923. The architect was Carleton Winslow.
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