[13] The first known European visitor to the Goleta area was the mariner Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who spent time around the Channel Islands in 1542, and died there the following year.

During the 1980s, the discovery of a 16th-century cannon on the beach led to the advancement of a theory that Sir Francis Drake sailed into the Goleta Slough in 1579.

Spanish ships, associated with the Manila Galleon trade, probably stopped in the area, intermittently, over the following 167 years; no permanent settlements were established.

At that time, the estuary was a very large, open-water lagoon that covered most of (what is now) the city of Goleta, stretching as far north as Lake Los Carneros (adjacent to Stow House).

For that reason, expedition engineer Miguel Costanso called the group of towns 'Pueblos de la Isla', or 'towns of the island'.

Franciscan missionary Juan Crespi, who accompanied the expedition, gave the towns the name 'Santa Margarita de Cortona'.

A second Spanish expedition came to the Santa Barbara area of Alta California in 1774, led by Juan Bautista de Anza.

De Anza returned the following year, and the road along the coast of Santa Barbara County (today's Highway 1) soon became the El Camino Real, connecting the string of Spanish missions.

Sometime after the De Anza expeditions, a sailing ship ("goleta") was wrecked at the mouth of the lagoon, and remained visible for many years, giving the area its current name.

To the east of today's Fairview Avenue was Rancho La Goleta, named for the shipwreck and granted to Daniel A. Hill, the first American resident of Santa Barbara.

[18] The parts of Goleta to the west of Fairview Avenue were in Rancho Dos Pueblos, granted in 1842 to Irish immigrant Nicholas Den, son-in-law of Daniel Hill.

Rancho Dos Pueblos included the lagoon, airport, UCSB and Isla Vista, extending to the west as far as the eastern boundary of today's El Capitan State Beach.

In the 1920s, aviation pioneers started using portions of the Goleta Slough that had silted-in due to agriculture to land and takeoff.

Starting in 1940, boosters from the city of Santa Barbara lobbied and obtained federal funding and passed a bond measure to formally develop an airport on the Goleta Slough.

The necessity for an airport – or at least a military airfield – became more apparent after a Japanese submarine shelled the Ellwood Oil Field in 1942.

[19] After the war, Goleta Valley residents supported the construction of Lake Cachuma, which provided water, enabling a housing boom and the establishment of research and aerospace firms in the area.

The dead included Charlotte Colton, 44, Beverly Graham, 54, Ze Fairchild, 37, Maleka Higgins, 28, Nicola Grant, 42, Guadalupe Swartz, 52, and Dexter Shannon, 57.

[25] It consists of Holocene and Pleistocene alluvium, colluvium, estuarine deposits, as well as marine terraces created during interglacial high sea level episodes.

[25] Between the flattest part of the Goleta Valley and the ocean is an area of uplift paralleling the shore which includes, from west to east, Isla Vista, Mescalitan Island, More Mesa, and the Hope Ranch Hills.

They consist of multiple layers of sandstone and conglomerate units dating from the Jurassic Age to the present, uplifted rapidly since the Pliocene.

Rapid uplift has given them their craggy, scenic character, and numerous landslides and debris flows, which form some of the urban and suburban lowland area, are testament to their geologically active nature.

[27][28] Covered by chaparral, the range exceeds 4,000 feet (1,200 m) in height to the northwest of Goleta, at Broadcast and Santa Ynez Peaks.

[38] Goleta has a mediterranean climate influenced by maritime winds from the Pacific Ocean with moderate average temperatures.

Several technology sector businesses operate in the area due to the proximity to the university, including Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, AppFolio, FLIR and InTouch.

[45] Following the statewide passage of Proposition 64 in 2016, the city began accepting retail applications on a first-come, first-served basis in August 2018.

In November 2018, the voters of Goleta passed Measure Z-2018, establishing a tax on cannabis business operations within the city.

[46] A medical marijuana dispensary was issued the first license for sales of recreational cannabis and began selling in January 2020.

[47] Companies must be licensed by the local agency and the state to grow, test, or sell cannabis and the city may authorize none or only some of these activities.

In November 2018, Paula Perotte was elected to a two-year term as Mayor, defeating fellow council member Michael Bennett.

Santa Barbara Airport is adjacent to the City of Goleta, near the intersection of Hollister and South Fairview avenues.