In comparison to other parts of California, Santa Cruz was missed by the early European explorers. The first voyage to come close was the Spanish expedition led by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who sailed north from Mexico in 1542 on a mission to explore the unknown coast.
Cabrillo gave names to many places in California, but, for some reason, none of those names were retained by future Spanish explorers. Cabrillo landed at places now known as San Diego, San Pedro and the Channel Islands. He sailed past Point Conception, missed the entrances to Monterey and San Francisco bays, and made it as far north as the mouth of the Russian River before turning back.
On the way south, he found and sailed into Monterey Bay but didn’t land. Still, Cabrillo was the first European to come anywhere close to Santa Cruz, so his is the oldest European name to appear on local signs: at Cabrillo College. The section of Highway 1 running through Santa Cruz County is known by some as Cabrillo Highway. The photo is of a sign from San Mateo County, but I haven’t found one locally. Maybe some observant blog reader knows where there is one?
On the basis of Cabrillo’s voyage, Spain claimed the California coast as part of New Spain, a huge area that included today’s Mexico and Central America in addition to much of the southwestern and south-central United States. England also had colonial ambitions, and Queen Elizabeth dispatched Francis Drake in 1577 to plant the British flag. During his round-the-world journey, Drake also sailed north along the California coast. The exact location of his landings is unknown, but no one has ever claimed he stopped in Santa Cruz.
Spain moved to follow up on that brief flurry of exploratory activity. A second sailing expedition, led by Sebastián Vizcaíno, arrived at the southern end of our bay in 1602. Vizcaíno named it Bahia de Monterrey, after the Viceroy of New Spain. The name stuck, superceding Cabrillo’s Bahia de los Piños (Bay of Pines). Vizcaíno named lots of other places around Monterey and further south, but never came to our end of the bay. His expedition left without establishing a settlement, and our quiet bay was left to the Ohlone once again.
Over 150 years later, Spain was finally roused to action by the expansion of British and Russian trading posts southward along the Pacific Coast from Alaska and Canada. In 1769, an expedition commanded by Gaspar de Portolà set out from Mexico to rediscover the bay described by Vizcaíno. They reached the bay on a typical summer day and found the bay obscured by fog. They didn’t even realize they were in a bay.
Thinking they had missed Monterey Bay, Portolà’s party turned north and marched until they got to a large river which they named Rio de San Lorenzo. Crossing the river, they explored the area and found a spring-fed creek, which they named Arroyo Santa Cruz. The creek, which flows into Neary Lagoon, is known today as Majors Creek or Laurel Street Brook. Soon, Portolà moved on up the coast to discover the San Francisco Bay before turning around and marching back to San Diego. He never returned to Santa Cruz, but those two names stayed on. Portolà's name is memorialized on signs up and down the California Coast, but not a lot in the Santa Cruz area. We have Portola Drive out in Pleasure Point, but that's about it.
After Portolà, more than 20 more years were to pass before the arrival of more European visitors. The next Spaniards, however, came to stay. They were the missionaries.
