Short answers, pulled from the story.
Goleta is Spanish for "schooner." The name comes from a sailing ship that wrecked at the mouth of a coastal lagoon sometime after the 1770s and remained visible for many years, giving the surrounding area its name.
Goleta was incorporated as a city on the 1st of February 2002, when the first five city council members began their terms after voters passed Measure H-2001 in November 2001. Before incorporation, it was the largest unincorporated populated area in Santa Barbara County.
The Chumash people inhabited the Goleta area for thousands of years before European contact. The coastal Chumash were called Canaliños by the Spanish. One of their largest villages, S'axpilil, was located north of the Goleta Slough near the site of today's Santa Barbara Airport.
In 1942, a Japanese submarine surfaced and shelled the Ellwood Oil Field on the western edge of Goleta, making it one of the few direct-fire attacks on the continental United States during the Second World War. The Marine Corps subsequently completed the airport and established Marine Corps Air Station Santa Barbara on the site.
The University of California, Santa Barbara, is the dominant economic force in Goleta. Deckers Outdoor Corporation, parent company of UGG Australia and Teva, is headquartered in the city. Defense and technology firms including Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and AppFolio also operate there.
The More Ranch Fault, one of the most geologically active faults in the region, runs beneath the southern Goleta Valley. It has pushed land upward over time, creating the coastal bluffs and placing impermeable rock units between the ocean and the Santa Barbara Formation, which is the principal groundwater aquifer for the region.