The school 's central campus , referred to by alumni as “ the Mesa , ” has moved four times since its inception . As the Miramar School , the campus was located in Santa Barbara 's Mission Canyon in a leased private residence known as the Gane House . The school 's first academic building , the Gane House was destroyed in the Jesusita Fire in 2009 . Mr. Cate moved the school to the Stewart Walcott Ranch in the Carpinteria Valley the next year under its new name , the extra space of which allowed him to pursue a program he had admired in his year of teaching English at the nearby Thacher School . Each one of Cate 's boys was given a horse to care for , and much of the school 's early campus and activities were dependent on horseback riding . In 1914 , Walcott offered to sell Mr. Cate his 150-acre “ mesa property ” , a former ostrich farm , which was accepted . The school relocated immediately to the southwest mesa slopes , and then again in 1929 to its current location atop a hill within the property near the Santa Ynez Mountains . Architect Reginald Davis Johnson , son of the school 's first president of the board of trustees , Episcopal bishop Joseph Horsfall Johnson , designed the first permanent campus buildings on the Cate Mesa between 1928 and 1929 . Campus buildings have continued to be designed in keeping with Johnson 's original Monterey Colonial style to the present day
Jesusita Fire
Jesusita Fire
Cate School