The first recorded encounter between the island Chumash and a Spanish expedition in the 16th century ended badly for the Spanish. The Spaniards’ leader fell, broke a limb, and died on one of the islands. And after that, Europeans were slow to colonize the area. But in 1803, a Spanish friar reported that Santa Cruz “abounds with timber, water, and soil,” and, in 1864, when the American Civil War was nearing an end, Santa Cruz was a vast ranch with 24,000 sheep worked by Italian immigrants and Chumash laborers.