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The Cuyama Valley (Chumash: Kuyam, meaning "Clam") is a valley along the Cuyama River in Central California, in northern Santa Barbara, southern San Luis Obispo, southwestern Kern, and northwestern Ventura counties. It is about two hours driving time from both Los Angeles and the Santa Barbara area.
It is a sparsely inhabited area containing two primary towns – Cuyama and New Cuyama, and also Ventucopa. The land is largely used for ranching, agriculture, and oil and gas production. California State Route 166 runs along most of the east/west length of the valley, connecting Kern County and the southern San Joaquin Valley with Santa Maria and coastal Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties. State Route 33 runs north/south through the eastern end of the valley, connecting the southern San Joaquin Valley to Ojai and coastal Ventura County.
The headwaters of the Cuyama River are just north of Pine Mountain Summit on State Route 33. The valley widens from the river's entry to a maximum width near the highway junction of Routes 166 and 33, near the corner of the four counties. Then it narrows again as the river flows west out of the valley through a narrow canyon between the Sierra Madre and La Panza ranges, to the Santa Maria Valley and its river mouth on the Pacific Ocean.
The agricultural fields are in the center of the valley, near the Cuyama Highway junction and the two primary towns, where the alluvium is rich and the valley is a wide floodplain.Lantis, Steiner, Karinen, p. 193-4
Rising to the north above the major portion of the valley is the Caliente Range, north of which is the Carrizo Plain, a much larger inland valley. To the southeast is the high backcountry of Ventura County, which includes the highest summit in the region, Mount Pinos, and other features of the San Emigdio Mountains. The far eastern end of the valley is crossed by the San Andreas Fault, forming a low jumble of hills which Route 166 passes over to reach the southwestern San Joaquin Valley, with access to Maricopa, I−5, and Bakersfield.
The Los Padres National Forest lands are adjacent to the Cuyama Valley on its south, east, and northwest sides. Much of the land to the northeast, including most of the Caliente Range, is managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
Near the end of the Mexican period of Alta California, the valley was split into two land grants along the Cuyama River, the Rancho Cuyama de Rojo in 1843, and the Rancho Cuyama de Lataillade) in 1846. The main land use in the second half of the 19th century was cattle grazing, although some homesteading took place in the latter part, especially in the side canyons where there was more water. In 1939, the first successful water wells using a pumping system were drilled. The groundwater aquifer is deep below the Cuyama Valley. The availability of irrigation water introduced agricultural crops into the region with the grazing of cattle continuing.
Little further economic development took place in the Cuyama Valley until the discovery of oil in 1948 at the Russell Ranch Oil Field, and more significantly in 1949 at the much larger South Cuyama Oil Field. Richfield Oil Company, later part of ARCO, built the town of New Cuyama to house the oil workers and their associated services. They shipped the oil pumped from these two fields by pipeline to their refinery near Long Beach. For a brief time in the early 1950s, the Cuyama Valley was the fourth-most productive oil region of California.
As oil production declined − only about two percent of the South Cuyama Field's oil is estimated to remain California Department of Conservation, Oil and Gas Statistics, Annual Report, December 31, 2006, p. 67 − the main economic activity in the valley again became agriculture, although with the sharp rise in the price of oil in 2007 and 2008, petroleum exploration has again been of interest.
Around 2024, Cuyama Valley's groundwater levels started Water scarcity (part of a statewide trend), causing large amounts of water to be pumped in to maintain the valley farmlands. In May 2024, the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden received $818,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to start a farmland-restoration project in the valley to attempt to revert the water scarcity.
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