Los Olivos, Calif.--Barely two hours north of Los Angeles, vacationers breach the twilight zone, discovering a 19th-Century village that’s a scene out of a Grandma Moses painting.

Passing through little Los Olivos involves mere seconds, which tells something about its appeal. After this the land unfolds to infinity, taking in vegetable gardens and vineyards, country inns, cattle, horse ranches and a bright red one-room schoolhouse that stands in the shade of towering trees.

Hidden in the Santa Ynez Valley, Los Olivos is a flashback to a time when life seemed secure and neighbors were friends, not strangers. Publisher/historian Jim Norris calls it “turn-of-the-century togetherness.”

It’s a rural community where apples and grapes are harvested in the fall when fields lay yellow with pumpkins; great oaks spread their shade over grassy hills and summer evenings come alive with a concert of crickets. It is a town without a pizza parlor or a Jack-in-the-Box, and that’s how the residents of Los Olivos intend to keep it. It’s big on patriotism as well, with a flagpole rising dead center of Grand Avenue honoring America’s war veterans.

Visitors stop for cool drinks and submarine sandwiches at Stan Montanaro’s country store, which Montanaro’s grandfather founded in 1889. Shelves are stocked with jars of relish and jellies and there’s a walk-in refrigerator filled with soda pop and beer.

Montanaro, who wouldn’t trade Los Olivos for a Paris mansion or a San Francisco estate, recalls graduating from grade school with a class of nine. He went away for a while but the lure and memory of this small town where he grew up was irresistible, and so he returned for good.

The store where he spends his days is an old-fashioned calendar scene. Step outside the door in summertime and the air is alive with the hum of bees and the rich good smell of the earth.

In the autumn, Los Olivos sponsors “A Day in the Country” (Oct. 25 this year) when city types drive up from Los Angeles and Santa Barbara to lose their cares in a scene straight out of the early ‘20s. Apples and grapes are ready for picking and the air is crisp and crafts booths are scattered up and down Grand Avenue.

A parade moves down Grand Avenue with kids in costume, vintage cars, horses and bands. Afterward everyone gathers for a picnic in the park along with games at Stagecoach Plaza, an apple pie contest, wine tasting and dog races.

Earlier, Los Olivos puts on a re-enactment of the Stagecoach Mail Run, and December is dedicated to an old-fashioned Christmas celebration with mulled wine, hot cider and period costumes.

Los Olivos: population 850. At one time the town was lively with livery stables, blacksmith shops and a major hotel. For 100 years Mattei’s Tavern has drawn crowds to its dining room with its 19th-Century sense of well-being. Originally it fed passengers on the Los Angeles-San Francisco stagecoach run.

Later Los Olivos became the terminus of the narrow-gauge Pacific Coast Railroad Line and passengers continued to dine and seek shelter at Mattei’s, whose register contains the names of guests without important portfolios as well as celebrities: Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Edmund Lowe, Rosalind Russell and William Jennings Bryan.

Promoters surveyed the valley and saw an opportunity to auction off land. They offered free barbecue excursions to Los Olivos, but both times they were rained out and both times residents of the sparsely settled land were silently grateful.

Although a scattering of homes and ranches appears throughout the valley, mostly it remains rural and unspoiled, its rolling hills as green in springtime as Ireland itself. With summer, the grass turns brown, presenting a striking contrast to the gnarled old oaks that spread their shade across the landscape.

Antique shops and artists’ studios line the main street of Los Olivos where Mary Hollister and Barbara Buell Phillips welcome visitors at the Stuff Store and white-haired Esther Anderson sits behind a teller’s cage at Village Antiques, fashioning lamp shades.

A kitchen behind Miss Anderson’s turns out homemade chocolates and across the street Jedlicka’s stocks “everything for you and your horse.”

Visitors browse through Roeser’s Variety Store, Prys Gallery, the Red Duck, Zaca’s and a variety of other antique shops and galleries.

Dead center of town, visitors up from Santa Barbara and Los Angeles bid for rooms at a remarkable new small hotel, the Los Olivos Grand, which appears like a country inn out of Burgundy or the Loire Valley. Guests are welcomed by General Manager Alex Murphy who did a 14-year stint at the popular Salishan Lodge on the Oregon coast. The hotel is one of those rare inns with a superb restaurant and rooms to match.

The rooms are graced with French armoires, fresh flowers, brass beds, down comforters and fireplaces featuring hand-painted tiles.

At the Grand, guests sunbathe beside a swimming pool and soak in a Jacuzzi and relax in a parlor with deep sofas, a cheery fireplace and handsome paintings.

Presiding over the Remington restaurant with its candlelight dining are Paul and Virginia Vercammen, who spent 14 years operating the successful Olive Mill Bistro in Montecito before establishing themselves in Los Olivos.

Champagne Brunch

Sunday brunch at the Remington features pasta, a terrine of salmon en croute, veal with pine nuts and lemon, roast leg of lamb, pepper steak, salmon served with an old-fashioned mustard sauce and swordfish with cream of capers. The price per person, including dessert and complimentary champagne, figures out to $18.50.

Guests do tours of the wine country and Arabian horse farms and the somnolent town of Ballard with another fine inn that operates simply as The Ballard.

With 15 individually appointed rooms, the Ballard is another prize for the discriminating guest who seeks out solitude sans saunas, swimming pools, telephones and TV. In place of soap operas on the tube, The Ballard delivers chamber music and movies in its parlor along with hot buttered popcorn. It is, indeed, a country inn in the true sense of the word.

At The Ballard guests gather on a porch lined with white wicker furniture where tea is served at 4 o’clock along with choice hors d’oeuvres and local wines.

‘Truly Fond’

Manager Beth Bryan describes The Ballard as a place where the couple must be “truly fond” of one another; otherwise, the romance of the setting, she says, is wasted on would-be lovers.

Bryan describes herself as a “corporate Gypsy” who’s traveled the world and one day, on a busy California freeway, decided she’d had it up to here with stress and pressure. That’s when she found contentment as an innkeeper in Ballard.

The inn conjures up pictures of 19th-Century America, the old red, white and blue America of a time and a period seemingly lost in haste and waste. Impeccably furnished, the guest rooms feature queen-size beds, thick comforters, baskets of books, wine-scented soaps, chocolates, cheese, fruit and crackers.

In addition, each room represents a special moment in the area’s history. Besides rockers and brass headboards, there are lace-trimmed pillows, country wallpaper, copper teakettles and a butter churn. One room honoring a pioneer teacher contains school desks converted to night stands and a quilt designed to carry the theme.

Carriage lamps light hallways and potted plants grace The Ballard’s public rooms. Across the street, guests dine at the old Ballard Country Store with its French ambiance and splendid wine cellar.

‘No Dogs or Livestock’

Only a few steps away, children swing from a lofty tree rising above Ballard’s one-room red schoolhouse with its bell tower and a sign at the grassy entrance that reads: “No dogs or livestock allowed.”

Operating since 1882, the school faces a country lane lined with vegetable gardens, pastures and fields of flowers.

Finally, only a few miles away, other visitors find shelter at Alisal Ranch near the Danish village of Solvang.

A working cattle ranch, Alisal provides accommodations in bungalows near an 18-hole golf course and a huge swimming pool. The 10,000-acre spread draws families dedicated to riding, square dancing, cookouts and hay rides. Deer graze in a sheltered canyon and guests fish and boat on a private lake while others hike among sycamores and play tennis and croquet.

Rooms at Alisal feature wood-burning fireplaces and the sort of relaxed Western atmosphere one expects at ranches in Colorado and Arizona.

Only at Alisal you’re barely two hours from Los Angeles--and the world you came to forget.

Coming events in Los Olivos:

--Re-enactment of stagecoach mail run from Santa Ynez to Los Olivos, Oct. 4.

--Art show and wine tasting (Mattei’s Tavern) and Los Olivos art benefit with entertainment, Oct. 5.

--”A Day in the Country” (10k run, parade, booths, food, tours, pie contest, period costumes, craft exhibits, entertainment, wine tasting), Oct. 25.

--Los Olivos old-fashioned Christmas, Dec. 6.

For details, contact Jim Norris, Olive Press Publications, P.O. Box 99, Los Olivos, Calif. 93441, or telephone (805) 688-2445.

Accommodations:

--Los Olivos Grand Hotel, 2860 Grand Ave., Los Olivos, Calif. 93441. Telephone (805) 688-7788 or toll free (800) 654-7263 within California; (800) 626-7249 outside California. Rates: $150/$275.

--The Ballard Inn, 2436 Baseline, Ballard, Calif. 93463. Telephone (805) 688-7770. Rates: $120/$150.

--Alisal Guest Ranch, 1054 Alisal Road, Solvang, Calif. 93463. Telephone (805) 688-6411. Rates: $185/$235 double occupancy (modified American plan).