Another New Page

A link to the new page, Santa Cruz Patch blog - Errata and Notes, can be found in the sidebar to the left. I'm still working on the index.

New Page

See the sidebar to the left for a link to the new Names on the Signs - Table of Contents page for the blog on Santa Cruz Patch. The Table of Contents will be continuously updated and replaces the periodic listings on this page. Next project is a Names on the Signs index page.

Names on the Signs: Thanksgiving Update

A pattern has emerged - each Names on the Signs post covers about four-five years. Were that rate to continue, I would reach the end of the 19th century before spring. I expect, however, that the post-Civil War posts will only cover one-three years each.

• Oct. 19 - The County
• Oct. 28 - More 1850s Names
• Nov. 4 - Uptown and Downtown
• Nov. 12 - Lime and Wine
• Nov. 18 - Ante-bellum

Names on the Signs: Update

Links to posts on the Names on the Signs in Santa Cruz blog:

• August 30 - The Sailors
• September 8 - The Frontiersmen
• September 15 - The Bear Flag
• September 21 - Before La Bahia
• September 30 - The Territory
• October 6 - Gold!
• October 13 - Mills and Tanneries
  

New post at Santa Cruz Patch

The latest posting to Names on the Signs in Santa Cruz is called The Ranchos. Read it here.

Names on the Signs: Branciforte

Only a few years after the founding of Mission Santa Cruz, another group of Spaniards came to Santa Cruz on a very different sort of mission. In 1796-97 Lt. Alberto de Cordova, a Spanish military engineer, and Diego de Borica, Governor of Las Californias, came to survey the site for a new civilian settlement. The spot they selected was across the San Lorenzo River from the Mission, up the hill and out of the flood plain. The Governor proposed to call the new establishment Villa de Branciforte. Where did that name come from?

Unlike the missionaries, Borica did not choose to honor a saint or a holy day. Being a smart politician, he named the new town after his superior, Don Miguel de la Grua Talamanca y Branciforte, Marques de Branciforte, Viceroy of New Spain. In those days, the length of a man’s name and title indicated his social status, so Branciforte apparently enjoyed a rather elevated level. He was actually born in Sicily, became an officer in the Spanish army and rapidly rose to prominence through political skill and marriage into a Spanish noble family. Our home town thus acquired its first Italian name many years before any Italian ever set foot here - Branciforte never saw the town named after him.

The Villa was one of only three civilian pueblos established in California under Spanish colonial rule: the other two are Los Angeles and San Jose. The designation of Villa meant that it was intended as a settlement for retired veteran soldiers who would act as reserves who could be recalled to active duty if needed. That method of colonization goes back at least to the Roman Empire.

The Villa centered where Branciforte School is today - the State Historical Site monument is on the front lawn. Villa boundaries were roughly at today’s Soquel Drive on the south, De Laveaga Park on the north, Branciforte Creek on the west and Morrissey Boulevard to the east. The Villa also had grazing rights on ‘common lands’ extending as far as Aptos Creek. Despite the local attractions, the Spanish colonial government had trouble inducing folks to leave their homes in established towns and move to the isolated wilderness of California.

Nevertheless, the first census listed forty men, women and children living in 13 households at Branciforte in 1797. A year later, this group was supplemented by a few more civilians and six retiring soldiers, still young after a 10-year enlistment. By 1799 the population had grown to seventy; in 1801 it reached a high of 107, including 20 veterans.

From the start, the worldly ways of the Villa clashed with the pious padres across the river. The main street doubled as a race track. Dog fighting and bear baiting were popular activities (the area had many bears back then).

These pastimes were, no doubt, accompanied by a certain amount of drinking and gambling. Some Branciforte residents raised suspicions by choosing to build their dwellings hidden in the trees down along the creek, rather than on the open hilltop where they could be observed from the Mission. Another Mission grievance was that the Ohlone converts were tempted to sneak off to party across the river, neglecting their labors and religious duties. Actually, that sounds a lot like me as a teenager at church summer camp – I guess some things haven’t changed so much in 200+ years.

The Villa’s fortunes varied through the years, but it never established itself as a commercial center. Instead, the City of Santa Cruz grew out of the industries established by the Mission, and eventually annexed the Branciforte neighborhood in 1905. A little-remembered fact is that, following California statehood in 1850, our county was originally named Branciforte County. Protests by citizens living on the other side of the river soon got the name changed to Santa Cruz County.

Still, the name Branciforte is not forgotten, even if few know its origins or its founders. The old main street of the Villa is today’s North Branciforte Avenue. We have two Branciforte schools and a Branciforte library. Nearby is Branciforte Creek, its course followed into the hills by Branciforte Drive (named after the creek, not the Villa). The one remaining Villa structure in the area is a private home known as the Branciforte Adobe. The most impressive use of the name is at Branciforte Plaza, the nicely-executed conversion of an old hospital which has, however, no relationship to the Villa (if you look closely at the stone facing under the raised letters spelling 'Branciforte, you can see the original incised letters spelling 'Hospital').

A few of the Villa’s founding family names can still be seen on signs around the area, although not inside the original boundaries. These include: Arana Gulch (above the Small Craft Harbor), Rodriguez Street in Live Oak and Pinto Lake in Watsonville. Another early family, the Castros, rose to prominence in the next era: the Ranchos of the Californios.

Further reading:

• Art and History Museum of Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz County History Journal, Issue Number Three. (1997)
• Villa de Branciforte Preservation Society
  

Names on the Signs: The Missionaries

One of the marvels of traveling to Europe and the Mediterranean is the mind-boggling antiquity of some of the places you can visit.

From 1000-year-old castles in England to 2000-year-old ruins in Rome to 3000-year-old pyramids in Egypt, then back to England for 5000-year-old Stonehenge.

I get feelings of historical inferiority when I compare those to the oldest structures in California – the adobe buildings of the Spanish missions, which were built between 1769 and 1823.

Even so, missions in other California towns are a big deal. I recently visited Mission Santa Barbara and watched busload after busload of tourists disembark and start taking photos of each other.

Not so at Mission Santa Cruz. Why? Well, mostly because there’s not much left to see, but there once was a lot more.

Mission Santa Cruz (1791) was not the first or the last of the California missions – it was number 12 of 21. The fact that it was established 21 years after Carmel Mission reflects a reality of geography all Highway 17 commuters understand: it’s not easy to get here or, once you are here, to continue to anywhere else.

Even our founding explorer Portolà only ended up here because he got lost in the fog and made a wrong turn looking for Monterey. Once you finally do get here, of course, you don’t want to go anywhere else.

The Spanish Franciscan missionaries who came north from Monterey were led by Fermín Lasuén, successor to Junípero Serra. They followed in the footsteps of the Portolà expedition more than 20 years after Serra established the third California mission in Carmel.

Lasuén was encouraged by Portolà’s earlier writing, in which he reported that our end of Vizcaíno’s Bahia de Monterrey had plenty of fresh water in the Rio de San Lorenzo and Arroyo Santa Cruz.

He had also found fertile, open land for farming and pasturage, a mild climate, friendly natives and all the seafood you could eat.

Lasuén adopted the name Santa Cruz for the mission, which at first was located on flat land near the San Lorenzo River. One rainy winter convinced the friars to move to higher ground, and the mission was rebuilt in its current location up on the hill.

At its peak, the mission complex included some 32 buildings, but only one survives today. For a variety of reasons, Mission Santa Cruz never really prospered. By the time the mission was secularized in 1834-36, only a few native converts still lived there, and even fewer were local Ohlone.

The Mexican government took away most of the mission’s extensive lands, which originally included all of the coastal area from Point Año Nuevo to Aptos, and divided them up into Ranchos.

The former mission was reduced to a parish church. The chapel was apparently not well constructed and/or maintained, and most of the front and roof of the adobe structure (including the bell tower) collapsed following a series of earthquakes in 1857.

The current Holy Cross (English for Santa Cruz) church was constructed in 1889 on the original site. Today’s half-size replica of the original chapel, based entirely on a painting created from oral descriptions, was built in 1931.

The only surviving adobe building, originally a residential dormitory for neophytes (native converts), is now part of the Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park on School Street.

Did the missionaries give us any names for our signs?

There’s Mission Street, of course, and many other uses of the name Mission. The names of the missionaries themselves have been oddly neglected here.

When I was a kid, every fourth-grader learned about the saintly Father Serra (his reputation was tarnished somewhat by later studies). Serra never made it to Santa Cruz, however, so there’s no big statue like the one on Hwy 280.

Lasuén, the successor, founded as many missions as Serra, but is not as well known. Still, other mission towns have streets and schools named for him, but not Santa Cruz.

The Santa Barbara mission has a prominently-displayed statue of Lasuén, but when I finally discovered that Santa Cruz also has a statue, it was hidden in the enclosed garden behind the mission museum. As I approached, I could see that it’s the same bronze statue as the one at Santa Barbara. Makes sense, I thought - both missions were founded by Lasuén, so save a little money by using the same casting. But wait – the name plate on our statue says it’s Junípero Serra, “founder of the California missions”!!!!

Lasuén’s successors at Mission Santa Cruz are even more thoroughly forgotten. One of them, Andres Quintana, achieved some notoriety in 1812 by becoming the first California missionary to be murdered by neophytes, and the subject of the first autopsy performed in California.

Allegedly, Quintana was killed because he used torture to discipline the native laborers. That’s not a good way to get a statue in the park, but we do have a two-block-long Quintana Street in the flats below the hill, in the area of the original mission. It runs next to the railroad tracks, well hidden away from the traffic of River Street.

Another possible reason for the neglect of the Santa Cruz missionaries was the perceived failure of the mission, relative to others around the state. Some of the missions managed to hold on to quite a bit of their land after secularization, and again when California statehood nullified many of the Mexican land grants after 1850.

The Santa Cruz parish only retained a narrow slice of hill north of High street, the bluff and the flats below. Another of the reasons for the mission’s failure was the arrival of a new group of Spaniards in Santa Cruz. They formed another unique part of our history - the pueblo named Branciforte.