San Rafael Wilderness is a protected backcountry in north-central Santa Barbara County within Los Padres National Forest. Created in 1968 as the first wilderness established from a previously designated Primitive Area under the 1964 Wilderness Act, it was greatly enlarged in 1992. Its mountains, river drainages, Hurricane Deck ridge, and fault-crossed sedimentary landscape support chaparral, woodland, riparian forest, and important wildlife habitat, including the historic Sisquoc Condor Sanctuary. Human presence here reaches back more than 10,000 years, from Chumash rock art to a late-19th-century settlement along the Sisquoc River, while major fires in 1966 and 2007 have also shaped its modern history.