“Out around Glen Annie and Cathedral Oaks if you look toward the Front Range after a pretty good rainstorm you can sometimes see a tiny little set of falls that has a vertical drop of circa 100.’ It is set against an outcropping of rock and drains a quite small drainage. With good optics, it will appear as just a small thread of sparkling water and, if the wind is blowing, mist.
I’ve always known it by the name ‘Widow’s Tears.’ The name that old timers used…My main source for the name was Chuck Begg from a pioneer Goleta family. He pronounced it ‘Widda’s Tears.’
There seem to be a lot of Widow’s Tears falls around the US so I think the stories are probably apocryphal. After Chuck told me the name years and years ago, I heard it from other old timers.”
—woodman40 on SantaBarbaraHikes.com (2005)
Widow’s Tears is the one big waterfall, a cascade really, draining off the frontside of the Santa Ynez Mountains that’s seen from places throughout Goleta after heavy rains.
A blurb about Chuck Begg can be found in the Congressional Record (2002).
In an outcrop on the slope rising out of the steep and tumbling creek, not far above the falls, there is a cave with ocean and island views.
The top of “Widda’s Tears.”
