Renovated Santa Barbara resort will no longer carry Fess Parker name

They’ve dropped Fess Parker’s name from his hotel in Santa Barbara. 

What was initially the Fess Parker Red Lion Inn and more recently the Fess Parker DoubleTree Hotel has been rebranded again. This time it’s just the Santa Barbara Beachfront Hilton Resort. No Fess.

As a kid growing up in the 1950s who drained his life savings to buy himself a coonskin cap, the name of Fess Parker is something pretty special to me. 

For those too young to remember, Walt Disney cast Fess as Davy Crockett in a TV miniseries that took the country by storm. It became a national craze exemplified by us kids wearing our coonskin headgear nearly 24 hours a day. And then there was a theme song that couldn’t be avoided no matter how hard you tried. In 1955, there were no fewer than three versions of “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” that charted in the top 10. Fess Parker himself crooned one of those hits.

But if you missed Fess Parker in the ’50s, you had another chance in the 1960s when he again put on his coonskin cap and became Daniel Boone. This time, his top-rated series ran for six years instead of just the handful of episodes of the Davy Crockett era.

If you missed Fess Parker in the ’50 and ’60s, and you lived in this part of Southern California at the time, you still had another chance in the 1980s.

Several decades after all that Davy Crockett mania and Daniel Boone success, Parker was in the news again. He had bought land from Southern Pacific Railroad that fronted Cabrillo Boulevard in Santa Barbara and wanted to build a lavish oceanfront hotel. At the time, that side of the street was a wasteland and was referred to as “hobo jungle.” Yet Parker faced massive opposition to his plan.

It was quite a battle, but Parker prevailed and in 1986, the Fess Parker Red Lion Inn became a reality and a real asset to Santa Barbara. It brought conference facilities to a town that had few. The 360 rooms added significant bed tax dollars to the city’s coffers, as well.

Last month, $14 million worth of renovations were completed. Fess Parker’s hotel is now officially the Santa Barbara Beachfront Hilton Resort. The place has definitely been spiffed up Hilton-style. The lobby is light and airy and the rooms updated, especially the bathrooms. The spacious grounds are still beautiful. The resort remains low-rise and spread out on some very choice real estate.

Although Fess Parker died in 2010, his son and daughter still live in the Santa Barbara area. I caught up with Eli Parker to find out about how the family feels about dropping his father’s name from the property he fought so hard for. 

And you know what? They’re fine with it. He and his sister are still part-owners of the hotel but have no operational control. Hilton’s management team runs it — as it has for years (DoubleTree is owned by Hilton). 

“We don’t believe we should use our brand on anything we don’t have operational control over,” Eli Parker told me. The family does have a total hands-on management of their properties in the Santa Ynez area. There, the name “Fess Parker” is still prominently featured on both their winery and hotel. 

So if the family’s fine with it, I am too. I recommend the snazzy new version of Fess Parker’s 1986 hotel. It makes an easy getaway for Ventura County residents celebrating a special occasion. The beauty of Santa Barbara never disappoints, and the location Fess personally picked out right across from the beach has lost none of its charm.

David Loe was the co-owner of a travel business in Ventura County for 25 years. His column appears monthly. He welcomes your feedback at davidloe@sbcglobal.net.