Coach’s First-Class Tour of Santa Barbara : Excursions: Don Beck shows visitors the Wine Country, historic churches and ‘the other side’ of the region from a 1940 limo.

People come here and after they’ve taken in Cabrillo Boulevard, State Street, the mission and the courthouse, they’ll sometimes ask: What else is there to do?

As it happens, Don Beck, former basketball coach at Santa Barbara City College, has an answer: His Classic Style Tour & Limo, which explores Santa Barbara sites off the beaten path from a restored 1940 Buick limousine.

“I wanted to show the other side of Santa Barbara,” says Beck, whose 12-year coaching career took him to Rutgers University and Fresno State before he decided to return here. After six months researching Santa Barbara and its environs, he launched the tour in January, drawing upon his experience not only as a history major but also as a coach.

“Part of being a college basketball recruiter was giving (potential players) a feel for a city, so I knew it wouldn’t be hard to apply that to a tour,” he says.

Beck offers two basic tours--for groups up to five--but the itinerary is flexible, depending on passenger interest. The local version, usually 90 minutes to two hours, encompasses five Santa Barbara areas, including the oceanfront and the estates of neighboring Montecito. A four-hour Wine Country expedition to the Santa Ynez Valley includes picturesque scenery well worth the trip for teetotalers.

The local tour usually begins at the commercial harbor, where, driving onto the dock, Beck takes his guests back in time. Santa Barbara, he says, was settled by the Spanish in 1782 and began to flourish with an 1887 railroad expansion from Los Angeles, the building of grand hotels in 1872 and 1903, and an 1872 book exalting the temperate winter climate.

(Here as throughout the tour, passersby stare and admire the eye-catching, teal-colored Buick.)

Next, Beck points out a 23-acre estate purchased by Sen. William Andrews Clark in 1922. Down the road are the Andree Clark Bird Refuge--a former horse-racing track with a pond and flocks of pigeons and gulls--and a fountain designed to accommodate both humans and horses. The latter area features a lion’s head to show that this is where the critters go.

Santa Barbara’s historical and architectural aspects are emphasized, particularly in Montecito--the Bel-Air of Santa Barbara--with its winding wooded roads, multimillion-dollar estates and celebrity homeowners such as Michael Douglas and Steve Martin.

“There are a lot of ways now to express your wealth, but in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the only way was with your house,” Beck notes. “The sign of status was who your home’s architect was. The house was an expression of who you were, so there were many different styles.”

Also viewed are the designs of Los Angeles architect Reginald Johnson, including the Mediterranean-style, pastel-pink Music Academy of the West. Originally built in 1911 as a golf country club, it was remodeled by Johnson as a private home with stately public gardens; Charlie Chaplin and Oona O’Neill were reportedly married at one of the villa’s guest cottages.

Then there is the Craftsman style, seen in the dark brick-colored All Saints by the Sea Episcopal Church, which Beck characterizes as “the hippie period of the 1880s. It was a return to the earth--they wanted a building to conform to nature around it, with low roof lines and earth tone colors. And any time a natural resource could be used, it was encouraged.” The area’s only Frank Lloyd Wright home also reflects the Craftsman influence.

Next up: the Hammond Beach area, a quarter-mile walk from a burial ground still used by the Chumash, Southern California’s first Indian settlers. Nearby are the blue-roofed buildings of the Miramar Hotel, christened thus by a member of the Royal Doulton china family who bought the then-14-acre estate during the 1880s. The hotel had its own train depot; on display is a private railroad car and an Amtrak car-turned-luncheonette.

Visitors also motor to Montecito’s Lower Village, past the deluxe Montecito Inn, financed in 1928 by Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle.

Then it’s on to the more historic Upper Village, with its charming gingerbread houses by Harriet Moody. En route to the Upper Village is one of the tour’s most striking locations: the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church.

Built in 1856, the church might easily have been transplanted from New Mexico or Arizona, with its 17th-Century Spanish Pueblo Mission style and walled forecourt and cactus garden. The interior is a visual feast of boldly colored red and blue carvings, silver tabernacle, lamps and crucifix, and tin lighting fixtures.

Another standout is the San Ysidro Inn, site of the Vivien Leigh-Laurence Olivier wedding and Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy honeymoon. The former citrus ranch, once owned by Ronald Colman, still caters to such celebs as Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford.

Heading higher into the hills toward the Riviera area of Santa Barbara allows for panoramic city and ocean views as well as a glimpse of the Brooks Institute of Photography, once the estate of Ford attorney David Gray. The Riviera, which overlooks a red-tile-roofed city, was designated in 1909 the first site of what would become the UC Santa Barbara.

Back on level ground, the tour stops across from the Santa Barbara Mission to see the rose gardens and the seven Plaza Rubio homes across the street, built with funds raised by a Mrs. J. A. Andrews with the mandate that their exteriors never be changed, so to maintain a pleasant view from the mission. After visiting the city’s upper Eastside, a neighborhood of numerous architectural styles, the tour ends with a drive by downtown sites, such as the Lobero Theater and Meridian Studios, designed by George Washington Smith for artists and architects.

Beck’s Wine Country tour is particularly popular with residents of Los Angeles. “It’s closer than the Napa Valley, and it’s not as commercial,” he says. “In Napa, you could go down a street and see 25 wineries. Here, they’re placed in a 25-mile radius, off of country roads.”

Riding the 45 miles north from Santa Barbara is refreshing in itself. An old Camino Real wagon-train route gives way to the freeway, which passes through the Los Padres National Forest and the spectacular Santa Ynez Mountains. Because the mountain range runs east-west rather than the customary north-south, it entraps the marine layer, keeping the air cleaner and the soil moister and yielding higher-quality vineyard grapes.

Also spotted en route: scenic Cachuma Lake, the San Marcos Bridge, horses and grazing cattle, and the Figueroa Mountain Road turnoff to Michael Jackson’s ranch. Among the usual stops are the Firestone and Zaca Mesa wineries (the region’s two largest), Gainey Winery, Austin Cellars and the Los Olivos Tasting Room and Wine Shop, where for $3 patrons can sample the wines of boutique vineyards that do not have tasting facilities.

“Some of the larger wineries offer tours from grapes to bottling,” Beck says. “But most of the people I take know the procedure. They’re here to taste and have a great day, and they don’t have to worry about a designated driver. They can just relax.”

There are plenty of non-liquid proceedings to appreciate, though, such as lunch at the rustic Cold Springs Tavern in the national forest, or a roadside picnic at Dittmar’s Greenhaven Orchard in Los Olivos under the gaze of thoroughbred and Arabian horses. The quaint town was the setting for the TV movie “Return to Mayberry, R.F.D.”

Other sights include: the little red schoolhouse in Ballard, pumpkin and tomato patches and, if requested, a drive through Solvang’s Danish-American village.

With Classic Style Tour & Limo, the more the merrier. Rates are $50 per hour for up to five people Monday through Thursday and $60 per hour Friday through Sunday. Reservations required; phone (805) 687-1316.