Santa Cruz California — Retro Vintage History

Santa Cruz runs the West Coast's last great seaside boardwalk. On August 28, 1791, Father Fermín Francisco de Lasuén raised the cross at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River and founded Mission Santa Cruz, the twelfth of the twenty-one missions, named not for a saint but for the Holy Cross. The river flooded it that first winter and the padres rebuilt on the bluff above; the Neary-Rodriguez Adobe still stands at Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park, the best-preserved Native-housing building in the California mission chain. In 1797 the Spanish founded a pueblo across the river called Branciforte — one of only three civil settlements Spain ever planted in Alta California. An 1840 earthquake cracked the mission's bell tower and the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake brought the rest 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.

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What's with the Three Princes? In July 1885, three Hawaiian princes — David Kawānanakoa, Edward Keliʻiahonui, and Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, nephews of Hawaiʻi's Queen Kapiʻolani, at school across the hills in San Mateo — spent their summer break in Santa Cruz, had surfboards milled from local redwood, and rode the waves at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River. It is the first documented surfing in the mainland United States, two decades before the sport reached Southern California, and it happened here. Kūhiō went on to serve as Hawaiʻi's delegate to Congress; Santa Cruz went on to become a surf town for the ages, and a marker near Lighthouse Point remembers the princes and their redwood boards. Steamer Lane, Pleasure Point, The Hook, Cowell's — the breaks have carried the line they started for a hundred and forty years.

For thousands of years before the Spanish, the Awaswas-speaking Ohlone fished, gathered acorns, and stewarded this coast — and their descendants, among them the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, remain part of the region today. The mission and the Branciforte pueblo 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 burning lime at the Cowell works, shipping both north to build — and after the 1906 earthquake, rebuild — San Francisco. Henry Cowell, who gave his name to the state park up the river, ran the lumber and the lime that ran the town.

The beach at the rivermouth had drawn bathers since John Leibrandt opened his bathhouse 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, running every season since — California's oldest surviving amusement park. His Neptune Casino of 1904 was lost in 1906; the grand successor of June 1907 was the one that stuck. Charles I. D. Looff delivered his hand-carved carousel from Long Beach in August 1911, its 342-pipe Ruth & Sohn band organ built in 1894 and still playing. Charles's son Arthur Looff built the Giant Dipper — 327,000 board feet of lumber, a seventy-foot lift hill, 2,640 feet of red-painted track over Beach Street — and opened it on May 17, 1924. The Pleasure Pier, the Natatorium plunge, and the Cocoanut Grove ballroom came and went, but on February 24, 1987, the Carousel and the Giant Dipper were designated together as a single National Historic Landmark, and the entire Boardwalk is California Historical Landmark No. 983.

The town's modern story runs on the San Andreas Fault as much as on the surf: on October 17, 1989, at 5:04 in the afternoon, the magnitude-6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake struck, its epicenter nine miles northeast of town in the redwoods of the Forest of Nisene Marks; downtown's Pacific Garden Mall was rebuilt as today's Pacific Avenue pedestrian district. The surf never stopped. Steamer Lane, off Lighthouse Point, has been the great Northern California break since the Santa Cruz Surfing Club formed in 1936 — half a century after the princes' redwood boards — and its cold-water surfers helped pioneer the modern wetsuit; Pleasure Point joined it on the eastside as a world-class right point, with The Hook at its far end. A bronze surfer statue stands watch on West Cliff Drive. The monarchs fill the eucalyptus grove at Natural Bridges every winter, bright-yellow banana slugs cruise the redwood duff up the hill, Big Basin — California's first state park — was set aside in the mountains in 1902, and 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 where mainland America first surfed, and that came back from Loma Prieta with a new downtown. The redwoods start where the boardwalk ends. On Monterey Bay since 1791.

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 on Highway 17. 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, past the bronze surfer statue, with the surf breaking below the whole way.
• Watch the surf at Steamer Lane off Lighthouse Point — Northern California's most storied surf break, near the marker remembering the three Hawaiian princes who first surfed here in 1885.
• 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, with The Hook at its far end.
• 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.
• Hike Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park up Highway 9 — old-growth coast redwoods, the Fremont Tree, the Garden of Eden swimming hole on the San Lorenzo, and the Roaring Camp narrow-gauge steam railroad next door.
• Hike Big Basin Redwoods State Park — California's first state park, set aside in 1902, with Berry Creek Falls 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 and whales feeding offshore in season.
• Visit the Mystery Spot on Branciforte Drive — the 1939 gravitational-anomaly tourist attraction in the redwoods east of downtown — or the UC Santa Cruz campus in the redwoods above the city, opened in 1965, with trails and views of Monterey Bay.
• Drive Highway 1 south through Capitola, Aptos, and on to Watsonville and Monterey, or north past Four Mile Beach and Wilder Ranch 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, the only original Mission Santa Cruz building still standing, the surf breaks at Steamer Lane and Pleasure Point where mainland American surfing began in 1885, the sea arches and monarch grove at Natural Bridges, the rebuilt Pacific Garden Mall downtown, and the redwoods of Henry Cowell and Big Basin — California's first state park. 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.

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Kindred Cities

Welcome, friends from Shingu, Japan (ようこそ) and Sestri Levante, Italy (benvenuti) — fellow coasts of the sacred and the storied.

Santa Cruz looks out on Monterey Bay from beneath the redwoods, and its sisters share its feel for a beautiful, story-rich shore. Shingu sits on Japan's sacred Kumano coast, gateway to the great shrines and pilgrim trails of Wakayama; Sestri Levante curls around two Ligurian bays, one named the Bay of Fables for Hans Christian Andersen, who stayed there. Santa Cruz answers with its boardwalk, its surf, and its own stretch of storied coast.

The bond with Sestri Levante turns on a shared love of stories: each year Santa Cruz sends local writers to the Italian town's Hans Christian Andersen fable contest, on the Bay of Fables where the author once stayed.

Come from Shingu or Sestri Levante and Santa Cruz will win you over: a vintage beach boardwalk and its wooden coaster, surfers in the bay, redwoods a short drive uphill, and a sunny, easygoing spirit all its own. Come and visit us soon.

When you plan the trip, Visit Santa Cruz County is the place to start.

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For deeper reading on the Santa Cruz history described here — the Awaswas-speaking Ohlone heritage of the Monterey Bay coast, the August 28, 1791 founding of Mission Santa Cruz, the 1797 Villa de Branciforte, the 1866 incorporation, the three Hawaiian princes' 1885 first mainland surfing at the San Lorenzo rivermouth, Fred W. Swanton's 1907 Boardwalk, the 1911 Looff Carousel and 1924 Giant Dipper, the 1987 National Historic Landmark designation, and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the rebuilt Pacific Garden Mall — it may be useful to consult (1) the Museum of Art & History at the McPherson Center, (2) the Santa Cruz Public Library Local History Collection, (3) Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park, (4) the UC Santa Cruz Special Collections at McHenry Library, and (5) the California State Library. For travel and visitor information, it may be useful to contact (1) Visit Santa Cruz County, (2) California State Parks for Henry Cowell, Big Basin, Natural Bridges, Wilder Ranch, the Forest of Nisene Marks, and the mission park, and (3) the Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation Department for Pacific Garden Mall, the Wharf, West Cliff Drive, and the city beaches.