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.
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.
Why People Visit 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.
