Santa Cruz California — Retro Vintage History

Santa Cruz runs the last great seaside boardwalk in America. The Awaswas-speaking Ohlone have been the original peoples of this coast for thousands of years. On August 28, 1791, Father Fermín Francisco de Lasuén — Junípero Serra's successor as president of the California missions — raised the cross at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River and founded Mission Santa Cruz, the twelfth of the twenty-one missions and the only one named not for a saint but for the Holy Cross itself. The river flooded the mission its first winter, so the padres rebuilt on the bluff above; the Neary-Rodriguez Adobe of the rebuilt mission still stands today at Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park, and it is the best-preserved Native-housing building in the entire California mission chain. In 1796 the Spanish founded a pueblo across the river called Branciforte. An 1840 earthquake cracked the bell tower, and the great 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake brought the rest of the mission down; Holy Cross Church went up on the site in 1889, and a half-size replica of the original chapel was built in 1932 with Gladys Sullivan Doyle's money. The city incorporated in 1866. Down at the mouth of the river, the beach had been a bathing destination since John Leibrandt opened his bathhouse there in 1865; in 1907, the promoter Fred W. Swanton — chasing the dream of a Coney Island of the West — opened the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, which has been running every season since and is today California's oldest surviving amusement park. Charles I. D. Looff delivered his hand-carved carousel from Long Beach in August of 1911, with a 342-pipe organ already eighteen years old at the time of installation. Charles's son Arthur Looff built the Giant Dipper, a 70-foot-tall, 2,640-foot-long wooden roller coaster, and opened it on May 17, 1924 — today one of the oldest operating wooden coasters in the United States, the fourth-oldest in the country. On February 24, 1987, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior designated the Carousel and the Giant Dipper, together, as a National Historic Landmark, and the entire Boardwalk is California Historical Landmark No. 983. On October 17, 1989, at 5:04 in the afternoon, the magnitude-6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake on the San Andreas Fault struck with its epicenter in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and downtown Santa Cruz's Pacific Garden Mall was rebuilt afterward as the pedestrian district that runs Pacific Avenue today. Steamer Lane breaks off Lighthouse Point, Pleasure Point breaks at the eastern end of town, and Natural Bridges State Beach holds the sea arches and the monarchs. Big Basin, the first state park in California, was set aside in 1902. The redwoods start where the boardwalk ends. On Monterey Bay since 1791.

What's with the Cliff Chants of Santa Cruz? The coast here is all edge and sound, with waves hitting rock and wind running along bluffs like a steady drumline. Cliff Chants is the nickname for the way the shoreline seems to speak, when a set rolls in and the roar rises and falls in a rhythm you can feel in your ribs. A quick cue is the gull-pause rule: if seabirds go suddenly quiet, a bigger set is about to land and the chant will deepen. That is animals reading water, not myth. In salt air and late light, the cliffs keep chanting, and the town listens without trying to stop it. West Cliff Drive runs the chant from the Boardwalk past Lighthouse Point to Natural Bridges — three and a half miles of the same conversation.

The Awaswas-speaking Ohlone fished, gathered acorns, and stewarded the Monterey Bay coast for thousands of years before the Spanish arrived. Lasuén's 1791 mission and the Branciforte pueblo of 1796 brought European agriculture and ranching to the San Lorenzo lowlands; secularization arrived in 1834. The American era began with statehood in 1850, and by the 1850s and 1860s Santa Cruz was a lumber town, milling the redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains and shipping the wood north to rebuild San Francisco after every fire. The city incorporated in 1866. Henry Cowell, who gave his name to the state park up the river, ran the lumber that ran the town.

The Boardwalk era began in 1907 and never really ended. Swanton's first casino burned, his second one in 1906 burned too, and his third one opened in 1907 — the one that stuck. The Looff Carousel arrived from Long Beach in August 1911 with hand-carved horses and a 342-pipe Ruth & Sohn organ already from 1894. The Giant Dipper opened on May 17, 1924, used 327,000 board feet of lumber, climbed seventy feet at its lift hill, and ran 2,640 feet of red-painted track over Beach Street; both rides have been continuously operating ever since. Other parts of the Boardwalk came and went — the Pleasure Pier, the Natatorium plunge pool, the casino fun center, the Cocoanut Grove banquet hall — but the Carousel and the Coaster were named together as a single National Historic Landmark in 1987 and they are the heart of the park. The entire Boardwalk property is California Historical Landmark No. 983.

Santa Cruz's lore is the lore of every California coast town that has had to live with the San Andreas Fault: the 1840 quake that brought down the mission bell tower, the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake that finished the rest of it, the 1906 fires that put a generation of Santa Cruz lumber into the rebuilt San Francisco, and the magnitude-6.9 Loma Prieta on October 17, 1989, whose epicenter was nine miles northeast of town in the redwoods of the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park and whose downtown damage led to the rebuilt Pacific Garden Mall along Pacific Avenue. The bluffs along West Cliff Drive watch all of it and keep their pace. Steamer Lane has been the great Northern California surf break since the first redwood plank ever caught a wave here in the 1930s; Pleasure Point, at the eastern end of town, joined it as a world-class right-point break a decade later. The monarchs come to Natural Bridges every winter. Big Basin Redwoods, the first state park in California, was set aside up the road in 1902. UC Santa Cruz opened in the redwoods above the town in 1965.

Our Santa Cruz retro logo carries the California Bear and the star of the 1846 Bear Flag tradition, with "1850" stamped beneath for the year of statehood. The black-and-white styling is retro, in the vocabulary of crate labels, mid-century beach signage, and the old wooden-coaster placards that once told boardwalk visitors how tall they had to be to ride. The bear and star, paired with the date, do the work of placing the design in the founding generation of the state — and the city that has been running its boardwalk longer than any other California town has been running anything along the Pacific.

Today Santa Cruz is, above everything, a coast town: the Boardwalk on the bay, the Carousel still spinning, the Giant Dipper still climbing its lift hill into the marine layer, West Cliff Drive running the bluffs from Lighthouse Point to Natural Bridges, and the redwoods of Big Basin and Henry Cowell standing the way they have stood since the mission was a wooden tent. Our Santa Cruz designs are made for that coast — the city that ran the lumber that rebuilt San Francisco, that came back from Loma Prieta with a new downtown, and that has carried the last great seaside boardwalk in America through every decade since 1907.

Santa Cruz California — Travel Guide

Visiting Santa Cruz California Today

Santa Cruz sits on the northern shore of Monterey Bay, an hour south of San Francisco and forty minutes from San Jose over the Santa Cruz Mountains. The Boardwalk season runs Memorial Day through Labor Day, with weekends in spring and fall; whale-watching season runs December through April; surf is year-round but the big winter swells run November through March. The redwoods are open year-round.

The Boardwalk, the Mission, the Cliffs, and the Redwoods

For visitors searching for things to do in Santa Cruz California:

• Walk the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk — California's oldest surviving amusement park, on the bay since 1907, with the 1911 Looff Carousel and the 1924 Giant Dipper wooden roller coaster, both National Historic Landmarks since February 24, 1987. The entire property is California Historical Landmark No. 983.
• Visit Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park on School Street — the Neary-Rodriguez Adobe is the only surviving original Mission Santa Cruz building, and the best-preserved Native-housing structure in the entire California mission chain. The half-size replica chapel sits on Mission Hill across from Holy Cross Church (1889).
• Walk West Cliff Drive — the paved three-and-a-half-mile coastal path from the Boardwalk past Lighthouse Point to Natural Bridges State Beach, with the surf breaking below the whole way.
• Watch the surf at Steamer Lane off Lighthouse Point — Northern California's most storied surf break, with the small Santa Cruz Surfing Museum in the lighthouse itself.
• Watch the surf at Pleasure Point at the eastern end of the city — a long right-point break running off the cliff at 32nd through 41st Avenues.
• Walk Natural Bridges State Beach — sea arches, tide pools, and the eucalyptus monarch-butterfly grove that fills up every October through February.
• Walk Pacific Avenue through the Pacific Garden Mall — the downtown pedestrian district rebuilt after the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, with murals, shops, and buskers along the corridor that survived the quake by being rebuilt around it.
• Hike Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park up Highway 9 — old-growth coast redwoods, the Roaring Camp narrow-gauge steam railroad, and the San Lorenzo River running through it.
• Hike Big Basin Redwoods State Park — California's first state park, set aside in 1902, with the tallest old-growth coast redwoods south of Humboldt and trails through the canyons.
• Walk the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park near Aptos — the epicenter location of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, in the redwoods.
• Walk the Santa Cruz Wharf — the long public pier into Monterey Bay, with the sea lions barking from the pilings underneath.
• Visit the Mystery Spot on Branciforte Drive — the 1939 gravitational-anomaly tourist attraction in the redwoods east of downtown.
• Visit the UC Santa Cruz campus in the redwoods above the city — opened in 1965, with the Arboretum, the Cowell College buildings, and the trails through the upper meadow with views of Monterey Bay.
• Drive Highway 1 south through Capitola, Aptos, and on to Watsonville and Monterey, or north up the San Mateo coast toward Pescadero and Half Moon Bay.

Why People Visit Santa Cruz California

Santa Cruz offers California's oldest surviving amusement park on the bay, the 1911 Looff Carousel and the 1924 Giant Dipper as a paired National Historic Landmark since 1987, the only original Mission Santa Cruz building still standing as the best-preserved Native-housing structure in any California mission, the world-class surf breaks at Steamer Lane and Pleasure Point, the three-and-a-half miles of West Cliff Drive, the sea arches and monarch grove at Natural Bridges, the rebuilt Pacific Garden Mall downtown, the redwoods of Henry Cowell and Big Basin — California's first state park — and the long Monterey Bay shoreline from the Wharf east to Pleasure Point. It is a coast town that has been running its boardwalk longer than any other California city has been running anything along the Pacific. On Monterey Bay since 1791.

For deeper reading on Santa Cruz, California history described here — the long Awaswas-speaking Ohlone heritage of the Monterey Bay coast, the August 28, 1791 founding of Mission Santa Cruz by Father Fermín Francisco de Lasuén as the twelfth of the twenty-one California missions and the only one named for the Holy Cross, the 1796 Spanish founding of the Branciforte pueblo across the San Lorenzo River, the 1834 secularization of the mission, the 1840 earthquake that cracked the mission bell tower and the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake that brought the rest of it down, the 1866 incorporation of the city, the 1865 opening of John Leibrandt's bathhouse as the start of seaside use of Santa Cruz Beach, the 1889 construction of Holy Cross Church on the original mission site, the 1902 establishment of Big Basin Redwoods State Park as California's first state park, Fred W. Swanton's 1907 founding of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk as California's oldest surviving amusement park, the August 1911 delivery and installation of the Charles I. D. Looff Carousel with its 1894 342-pipe Ruth & Sohn organ, the May 17, 1924 opening of the Arthur Looff Giant Dipper wooden roller coaster, the 1932-1933 construction of the Mission Santa Cruz half-size replica chapel by philanthropist Gladys Sullivan Doyle, the 1939 opening of the Mystery Spot on Branciforte Drive, the 1965 opening of the University of California, Santa Cruz campus, the February 24, 1987 designation of the Looff Carousel and the Giant Dipper as a paired National Historic Landmark, and the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake with its epicenter in the Santa Cruz Mountains and the subsequent rebuild of Pacific Garden Mall — it may be useful to consult (1) the Museum of Art & History at the McPherson Center in downtown Santa Cruz, the primary scholarly repository for Santa Cruz County history with the Boardwalk archive, the Mission Santa Cruz papers, and the 1989 Loma Prieta documentation, (2) the Santa Cruz Public Library Local History Collection on Church Street for the city directories, Sanborn maps, the long-running Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper microfilm, and the local-history photograph collection, (3) Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park at 144 School Street for the Neary-Rodriguez Adobe tours, the 1791-1834 mission records, and the Ohlone and Yokuts neophyte registers, (4) the California State Library in Sacramento for the 1791 mission founding records, the 1796 Branciforte pueblo papers, and the 1866 incorporation documents, (5) the UC Santa Cruz Special Collections at McHenry Library for the Regional History Project, the Loma Prieta oral-history archive, and the central-coast manuscript holdings, (6) the U.S. Geological Survey Loma Prieta archive and the USGS Open-File Report 90-690 for the October 17, 1989 seismological record, (7) the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk Archives at Neptune's Kingdom for the 1907-forward Boardwalk operating records, the Looff Carousel papers, and the Giant Dipper construction documentation, (8) the National Park Service National Historic Landmarks file for the February 24, 1987 carousel-and-coaster designation, and (9) the California State Parks archive for the Mission Santa Cruz State Historic Park records, the Big Basin 1902 founding documents, and the Henry Cowell and Forest of Nisene Marks holdings. For deeper local Santa Cruz research, it may be useful to reach out to (1) the Museum of Art & History (MAH), (2) the Santa Cruz Public Library Local History Collection, (3) Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park, (4) the UC Santa Cruz Special Collections, (5) the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk Archives, (6) the California State Library, (7) the U.S. Geological Survey Loma Prieta archive, and (8) the California State Parks Pacific Coast District office. For travel and visitor information in Santa Cruz, it may be useful to contact (1) Visit Santa Cruz County for citywide tourism information, (2) the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk for ride seasons, hours, and event programming, (3) California State Parks for Henry Cowell Redwoods, Big Basin Redwoods, Natural Bridges, the Forest of Nisene Marks, and Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park information, (4) the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum at Lighthouse Point for Steamer Lane history and exhibit hours, (5) the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary for the bay-coast natural history, and (6) the Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation Department for Pacific Garden Mall, the Santa Cruz Wharf, West Cliff Drive, Lighthouse Field, Cowell Beach, and Main Beach information. Readers interested in the broader cultural reception of Santa Cruz and its Monterey Bay coast identity — the Awaswas-speaking Ohlone presence on the coast before contact, the 1791 mission of Lasuén and the 1796 Spanish pueblo of Branciforte, the 1834 secularization and the 1840 and 1857 earthquakes that brought the mission down, the 1866 incorporation, the 1865 bathhouse opening as the seaside origin of the Boardwalk site, the 1902 establishment of Big Basin as California's first state park, the 1907 Boardwalk founding, the 1911 Looff Carousel, the 1924 Giant Dipper, the 1932-1933 mission replica, the 1939 Mystery Spot, the 1965 opening of UC Santa Cruz, the 1987 National Historic Landmark designation of the Carousel and Coaster, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the subsequent rebuild of Pacific Garden Mall, and the long Monterey Bay shoreline from the Wharf east to Pleasure Point with its surf breaks at Steamer Lane and Pleasure Point — will find that the named places (the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, the Looff Carousel, the Giant Dipper, Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park, the Neary-Rodriguez Adobe, Mission Hill, Holy Cross Church, the 1932-1933 mission replica chapel, the Branciforte pueblo site, Pacific Garden Mall, Pacific Avenue, the Santa Cruz Wharf, Lighthouse Field, Cowell Beach, Main Beach, West Cliff Drive, Lighthouse Point, Steamer Lane, Pleasure Point, Natural Bridges State Beach, Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park, the Mystery Spot, the UC Santa Cruz campus, the San Lorenzo River, Monterey Bay, the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary), the named historical figures (Father Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, Charles I. D. Looff, Arthur Looff, Fred W. Swanton, Henry Cowell, and Gladys Sullivan Doyle), and the named historical moments (the at-least-thousands-of-years Awaswas Ohlone heritage of the coast, the August 28, 1791 founding of Mission Santa Cruz, the 1796 founding of Branciforte, the 1834 mission secularization, the 1840 and 1857 earthquakes that brought down the mission, the 1865 Leibrandt bathhouse, the 1866 incorporation of Santa Cruz, the 1889 construction of Holy Cross Church, the 1902 establishment of Big Basin Redwoods State Park, the 1907 founding of the Boardwalk, the August 1911 installation of the Looff Carousel, the May 17 1924 opening of the Giant Dipper, the 1932-1933 mission replica chapel, the 1939 opening of the Mystery Spot, the 1965 opening of UC Santa Cruz, the February 24 1987 National Historic Landmark designation, and the October 17 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the rebuilt Pacific Garden Mall) recur across all of these traditions as a shared cultural grammar of foundational Santa Cruz history grounded specifically on the northern shore of Monterey Bay at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River.