(updated Jan.
17, 2015 )
Only minor copy-editing needed to update this post, but new at the top is a detail from the panoramic 1876 Trousset oil painting.
Bridges to Somewhere: Eastside Santa
Cruz in the 1870s (Oct. 28, 2012)
On the east side of the river was the pueblo of
Branciforte, originally planned around a never-completed plaza at today’s
intersection of Branciforte Avenue
and Water Street . The
vee-shaped junction of Branciforte Avenue
with the road to Monterey (now Soquel
Avenue ) became the de facto center of the eastside
community. The only direct way to travel between Santa
Cruz and Branciforte was to ford the river at one of
several relatively wide and shallow spots. If you didn’t have a horse and/or
wagon, you got your feet (at least) wet. In the winter, when it rained and the
river rose, you didn’t cross at all.
All of that changed in the 1870s. The first bridge over
the river was at Water Street
(one of the two main fords). After a couple of short-lived attempts in the late
1860s, a more-or-less permanent bridge was completed in 1872. Next came the Soquel
Avenue bridge (near the other popular ford), in
1874. Completion of the two bridges, followed by the Santa Cruz Railroad
trestle in 1875, provided year-round connections between the two sides of the
river. Those new connections made the east side much more desirable as a place
to live and to do business.
The new Soquel Bridge Soquel
Avenue . The bridge itself had one distinctive
feature – it was covered. One of only four covered bridges ever built in this
county, it stood until 1921 (the earlier Powder Works and later Felton covered
bridges remain). The photo here shows the west end of the bridge, sometime after
a later streetcar trestle was added. The bridge can also be seen in the upper-left background of the detail from an 1876 painting seen at the top of this post.
One theory behind covered bridges was that horses were
afraid to cross high bridges (the Soquel bridge stood twenty-four feet above
the river) – but, cover the bridge and the horses were OK. Another, simpler
theory is that the covering protected the wood structure from the elements,
increasing the life-span of the bridge-span.
One of the first to see new opportunities created by the
bridge was the hotelier and former grocer Alfred (Fred) Barson. He bought
thirty acres along the river, south of Soquel Avenue, in 1870 (today’s Barson
Street was the northern boundary of the property). After the bridge opened,
Barson built the Riverside Hotel in 1877 and, with his wife and children and
descendents, ran it successfully until 1945. With its extensive gardens, river
access and home-grown meat and produce for its restaurant, the Riverside
was a unique and attractive tourist resort.
A previous post on this blog noted the hotel’s
distinctive “Second Empire ” architectural style, which featured
the mansard roof seen in the photo. Access to the hotel from the bridge and
Soquel Avenue was via Riverside Avenue, which soon filled up with modest but
stylish new homes, many of which survive today.
A few years later, Barson made another major contribution
to the city’s current configuration. He deeded to the city two rights-of-way
through his land. One, running along the north boundary of his land, became
Barson Street. The other (now Campbell-Riverside Street) extended from Barson
Street to the riverbank. This new street became the approach to the next bridge
to be built over the San Lorenzo (more on the “cut bias” bridge in future), and
to today’s Riverside Avenue Bridge (the ninety-degree curved section of
Riverside Avenue from Barson to Campbell – and the section south of the bridge
that leads to the Boardwalk - came much
later. If you’ve ever wondered why the bridge isn’t at the end of Ocean Street,
blame Fred Barson.
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Businesses also found new homes on the east side of the
river, and/or increased business after the bridge was built. A large and
popular one was the Henry Bausch Brewery (est.1872), located on the north side
of Soquel Avenue, in the triangle formed by that street, Ocean Street and Branciforte
Creek. Judging by his name and occupation, Mr. Bausch was probably another of
the many German immigrants who settled in Santa Cruz
during this period. The Bausch brewery was the second in town, after the Otto
Diesing Brewery (1850s) on Mission Street .
Unlike the Diesing Brewery, Bausch had enough land to include a German-style
beer garden adjacent to the brewery, which became a popular social center.
A little farther from the bridge, where Soquel Avenue
climbs the hill, another fashionable residential neighborhood grew up. One
established Santa Cruzan who moved to this area during the 1870s was Richard
Harrison Hall. Hall was a Vermonter who came to the California gold fields in
1849, but found Santa Cruz first when his ship landed here by mistake.
Undeterred, Hall found his way to the gold country, but returned to Santa Cruz
in 1863 and opened a butcher shop on Front Street. Prospering in that business,
he bought 300 acres of land out on the Westside and established a dairy farm.
The dairy apparently also did well, and in the late 1860s
or early 70s he built a new home on the Soquel Avenue grade, just below what
became the corner of Ocean View Avenue, and across the street from the original
Branciforte School. The house was later
moved around the corner, where it remains today.
You can see the blue oval "historic" plaque in the photo.
Hall’s lot on Soquel Avenue
was sold to an up-and-coming young entrepreneur named Fred Swanton, who had
married Hall’s daughter. The name Swanton was destined to figure prominently in
the later history of Santa Cruz, so we’ll return to him at a later date.
Just up the hill from Hall’s house, Ocean View Avenue was
created in 1871 to access a hotel/boarding house called Ocean Villa, located on
the bluff where Ocean View now dead-ends at the public park. Ocean Villa is prominent in an 1876 painting that can be seen at the Santa Cruz Art and History Museum. A detail from that painting can be seen at the top of this post.
Beginning shortly thereafter, and especially after construction of the Soquel Bridge, the large “ocean view” lots created along the top of the bluffs became some of the most desirable residences in town. The street still boasts probably the largest collection of large, well-preserved Victorian-era homes of any street in town.
Beginning shortly thereafter, and especially after construction of the Soquel Bridge, the large “ocean view” lots created along the top of the bluffs became some of the most desirable residences in town. The street still boasts probably the largest collection of large, well-preserved Victorian-era homes of any street in town.
One of the early residents and developers of Ocean View
Avenue and the eastside was Martha Pilkington Wilson, a successful
businesswoman and founder of what became today’s Wilson Bros. real estate
company. She built a home there in 1878, and another a few years later. The
photo shows the first Wilson house,
as it looks today after a major facelift in the 1880s. You can see what it originally looked like in the image at the top of this post. It's the two-story house all by itself on the far upper right.
