Pursuant to the requirements of the Coastal Act, the California Coastal Commission adopted a comprehensive Public Access Program for Hollister Ranch in 1981, which would provide daily public land access to 8.5 miles of shoreline at Hollister Ranch, a 14,000 - acre residential subdivision in Santa Barbara County. The program was amended in 1982, to implement the program in three phases, with daily caps on the number of visitors, as suggested by an environmental assessment report.

That was over 40 years ago. For a variety of reasons, the Program has never been implemented, and the public has never been able to exercise their constitutional right of access to the beaches at Hollister Ranch. In 2018, Assemblymember Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) introduced a bill, AB 2534, that would have authorized new funding to secure public accessways at Hollister Ranch. Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the bill, on the grounds that the access program should be updated first. In response, Assemblymember Limón introduced AB 1680 which was signed into law in 2019 and mandated that four State agencies – the Coastal Commission, Coastal Conservancy, State Lands Commission, and State Parks collaboratively prepare an updated Hollister Ranch Coastal Access Program.

Below is a list of various background items that document past and current planning efforts by the State.