For the last 45 years or so Jesusita was known, if it was known at all, as a hiking trail. From the afternoon of Tuesday, May 5, and likely forever more, Jesusita will be known and remembered as a wildfire.

The Jesusita Fire burned some 160 structures and 8,733 acres before the stubborn blaze was finally put out two weeks after it began. Rarely is the name of a footpath affixed to a fire.

That’s probably because to most people, fire officials included, a trail is not as dominant a feature of a particular geography as, say, a canyon or a mountain, which are more easily understood reference points for both firefighters and the public at large.

Jesusita sounds like one of those names the Spanish left behind two hundred years ago when Santa Barbara was a mission and colonial outpost. You imagine Spanish vaqueros riding up the Jesusita Trail to the upper grasslands where their cattle grazed. Actually, Jesusita Trail is of mid-1960s’ vintage. After private property was purchased and easements secured, a four-mile-long trail was constructed from San Roque Canyon to Mission Canyon.

Jesusita Trail has its fans among Santa Barbara hikers, but most locals, as well as the many visitors who trek the front country footpaths, prefer hiking the canyon trails: Rattlesnake Canyon, Cold Spring Canyon, Hot Spring Canyon, Romero Canyon. In fact, Jesusita is just about the only one of Santa Barbara’s major trails that doesn’t have a north-south orientation and doesn’t follow a canyon.

Jesusita Trail extends east-west across the foothills—the same direction taken by the now infamous Jesusita Fire—so perhaps it’s fitting that this trail and this fire will be forever linked.