Early Life

Robert “Bobby” Hyde was born in Chicago in 1900. His father, Robert Wilson Hyde, was a major figure in the West Coast Arts & Crafts movement, and helped shape Santa Barbara’s cultural identity, founding the Community Arts Association and guiding discussions that led to the opening of the new Lobero Theater in 1924. Bobby grew up in Santa Barbara but pursued an adventurous life of his own. After time in Europe, he returned to New York, where he began a career as a writer and became connected with the Lawrence–Tonetti artistic circle in Snedens Landing.

Family and Domestic Life

Bobby’s first marriage to Dorothy Borden Hamilton ended tragically when she died soon after the birth of their daughter, Susy. His second marriage, to Lydia Lawrence Tonetti, tied the Hydes into the Lawrence and Tonetti families of Snedens Landing, where the couple lived and raised their three children, Angy, Joe, and Francy. Summers were often spent on Martha’s Vineyard, where Bobby built a family camp on Lake Tashmoo in 1931.

In 1932, after Lydia’s untimely death, Bobby reunited with his youthful love, Florence “Floppy” Tuckerman, whom he had first known in Santa Barbara, and returned to California with her. They married and later had a son, Gavin Hyde (1930-2019).

Mountain Drive and the Bohemian Community

Bobby Hyde became a visionary community builder in Santa Barbara. Beginning in 1940, he purchased property in the Mountain Drive area above Montecito. After the Second World War, he began selling one-acre parcels to like-minded neighbors. Building codes were minimal, and residents constructed their homes from local stone, wood, and earth in highly individualistic styles. By the mid-1950s, some 20 families lived in the enclave, growing to 40 by the early 1960s.

The community embodied a bohemian, “live-and-let-live” spirit. Its calendar filled with communal celebrations: the Wine Stomp (first held in 1952, when neighbors stomped the year’s harvest in a giant vat), Twelfth Night Revels, Halloween bonfires, Fourth of July picnics, Bastille Day festivities, and even a Robert Burns Night. The 1960s “Pot Wars,” in which local potters competed to sell wares roadside (often with wine as an extra enticement), laid the groundwork for the later Renaissance Pleasure Faire.

Fire, Resilience, and Reinvention

In 1964, disaster struck when the Coyote Fire swept through the Santa Ynez foothills. Fourteen houses were destroyed, including the Hyde home. The family moved back into town, but Bobby’s restless creativity continued. At his property in Painted Cave, he circumvented restrictive building codes by constructing a lake and floating upon it a houseboat–residence, which did not fall under county regulations.

In Popular Culture

Hollywood captured Mountain Drive’s eccentric vitality when director John Frankenheimer filmed the 1965 Rock Hudson movie Seconds. A grape-stomping bacchanal was staged with Mountain Drive residents as extras; the company paid the community $5,000, which helped in rebuilding after the fire.

Legacy

Bobby Hyde’s legacy was not only as father to a line of creative Hyde children and grandchildren, but as founder of a unique Santa Barbara enclave that embodied freedom, creativity, and community. His experiment in communal bohemian living, rooted in the arts and in shared celebration, became one of the most distinctive cultural stories of postwar California.

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