Santa Cruz Changes - 1: 555 Pacific Avenue

Now that most of the local history content has migrated over to the Santa Cruz County History wiki,  this blog can be home to another sort of local history project. In 2016, I began to notice that the pace of new development in Santa Cruz was picking up as we climbed out of the 2008 recession. Realizing how easy it is to forget what came before when something completely new replaces it, I decided to start documenting those changes with before-during-after photos.

One of the first changes to attract my attention happened at 555 Pacific Avenue, on a parcel that had held only a pile of broken concrete rubble for at least fifteen years. The long, narrow strip facing Pacific Avenue was what remained of the former Prolo Chevrolet dealership property after the larger rear portion was split off and developed as the Sycamore Street Commons apartments in the late 1990s. I'm still looking for a photo of the Prolo Chevy establishment, and will add it here when found, but in my memory it's always been a vacant lot. That may demonstrate how easy it is to forget what used to be, plus the fact that I didn't often get to this part of town before starting to hang out at the Firefly Coffee House (shout out!) in 2011. The Google satellite view at left from March 2016 shows the dogleg-shaped empty lot, with the green-roofed apartment buildings to the left. 

The first development proposal for this property was presented to the city in 1999, but failed to advance. Various other ideas came and went, until the current Barry Swenson (who else?) project finally broke ground in 2016. The photo at right was taken in November, 2016, from a position just off the bottom of the photo above.

The 2020 photo at left shows the completed project from about the same position.

Locations in the Santa Cruz Changes blog can be found on this Google Map.

President Hayes is a hero in Paraguay

In the History Page titled "Remembering (some of) the presidents", Rutherford B. Hayes is mentioned as one of the less-remembered holders of that office. I was surprised to learn that he's a national hero, however, in Paraguay. Thanks to Atlas Obscura for posting this story, and giving me a new tidbit for the "Remembering..." page.

Ch-changes

The History Pages and other content have migrated over to the Santa Cruz County History wiki. Those pages continue to expand with additional information, now extensively interlinked on a wiki platform.

A Hike to the Powder Works dam

The wooden dam (upper left) and concrete diverter (mid-right)

This past Sunday, I joined a walking tour organized by Lisa Robinson of the San Lorenzo Valley History Museum.

Besides Lisa, our local expert guides included lime industry expert Frank Perry and SLV historian Fred McPherson (not to be confused with Freds of the Santa Cruz Sentinel family).

Our goal was the remains of a dam that once held back and diverted river water into a long wooden flume, into a tunnel through the intervening ridge, and out into another elevated flume for eventual use in powering machinery at the California Powder Works. The 60-ft drop provided plenty of water pressure.

For those unfamiliar with the Powder Works, the SCPL website has an informative series of articles by Barry Brown, at: https://www.santacruzpl.org/history/articles/508/ The photo above is from the "CPW dam" article.

We started from the Rincon parking lot on Highway 9, formerly the location of a lime-production operation. The structures are all gone or buried, but evidence remains if you know where to look. Lisa and Frank brought photos from the early 1900s, when the lime operation was still busy.

Following the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park trail (on an old road) down to the San Lorenzo River, we speculated about the original purpose of the road. Was it connected with the lime operation, or was it to provide access to the dam/flume operation? Was it a fire road built for the state park, or was it something else we couldn't guess?

Turning north along the river, it's about a mile to the dam site. The wooden dam and other wooden parts are long gone, but much of the concrete base of the flume diversion wall and a concrete riverside retaining wall remain. We found iron parts of the mechanism that raised and lowered the flume gate.

Back south along the river, we found traces of the flume, and tried to guess where the tunnel began. The opening, about 10 feet above river level by that point, has been erased, but it's possible to approximate where it must have been. Closer examination might reveal some of the rock to be the hard granite that slowed the diggers when they reached the center of the ridge.

On the way back up the steep road, I learned a lot from Fred about the local ferns and other plants we saw along the way. Great fun!

Eastside 'Moderne'

A recent post on the RA Facebook page asked about the Ideal Laundry building that used to be at 506 Soquel Avenue (between Ocean and Ocean View). That building, built in the 'Streamline Moderne' style popular here in the late 1930s, has been replaced by apartments, but a number of similar small commercial buildings remain in this section of Soquel Ave, and also over on Water Street.

Next door to the former Ideal Laundry location, at 510 Soquel, is an example of the slightly older neo-classical revival style, with square, fluted pilasters imitating Greek columns. The 'Moderne' movie-theater-style marquee over the entry, perhaps inspired by the 1936 Del Mar Theater, gives the building an eclectic feel. The building has been home to Woodstove & Sun for many years. To the right, part of the apartment complex that replaced Ideal Laundry can be seen.

Up the street at 536 Soquel is a tiny, cute building with prominent rounded corner columns. Such rounded elements are characteristic of the Streamline Moderne (note also the planting beds). A large fabric awning obscures the original above-window treatment.

Yet another nicely preserved/restored/imitative example of the Moderne style can be found at 1315 Water Street. the rounded elements are there, along with flat, projecting hoods over doors/windows - another common Moderne characteristic. The steel-frame windows were also common in this period.

I haven't checked the age on any of these buildings, or looked for old photos, so can't say which features are original.


As always, The Sidewalk Companion to Santa Cruz Architecture is the place to look for other examples of this style in downtown Santa Cruz. Check out the Alsberge building (p.64) at the Church-Chestnut corner, and the 'Judah House' (p.12) on Third Street.

End of an era: the last Hawaiian sugar cane harvest

A story from Hawaii Public Radio, reprinted at KQED Public Media, describes the final days of the cane sugar industry in Hawaii (on Maui). After decades of the TV jingle for C&H Sugar, singing the praises of "pure cane sugar from Hawaii", the iconic crop has fallen victim to global competition. There will be no more Maui sugar cane harvest after 2016 - Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar (HC&S) will move on to other crops. The fate of the shipping destination for that sugar - the equally iconic C&H plant in Crockett, California, is equally uncertain.

What does all this have to do with Santa Cruz County? Glad you asked - HC&S was founded in the 1890s by a partnership including "Sugar King" Claus Spreckels, the same Spreckels who once owned over 2,000 acres of today's Aptos. That purchase was made in 1874, when Spreckels was working to develop California-grown sugar beets as a competitor to tropics-loving cane. He knew that Hawaiian growers faced a big disadvantage in the cost of shipping their products to the mainland. That is still true today, and is one of the main reasons, along with lower-cost labor in other countries, that Hawaiian sugar is no longer cost-competitive.

Spreckels was, in one respect, the Donald Trump of his era - he liked to put his name on things. In Hawaii, he established Spreckelsville as headquarters for his operations. Here in California, he built the company town of Spreckels just east of Salinas, in Monterey County. Company operations moved there in 1899, closing the older plant in Watsonville. The sugar king and his resort hotel development are remembered in the Aptos area in a number of street and place names: Spreckels Drive, Claus Court, Polo Drive, and Deer Park.

There is irony in the fact that C&H Sugar began as a reaction by Hawaiian sugar plantation owners against mainland investors like Spreckels who tried to dominate the industry. Now, at the end of the Hawaiian sugar era, the old rivals decline together.

Book Review: A Description of Distant Roads (2001)

A Description of Distant Roads: Original Journals of the First Expedition into California, 1769-1770, by Juan Crespí. Edited and Translated by Alan K. Brown. San Diego State University Press, 2001.

One of the frustrating things about studying early California history is the scarcity of published editions of original Spanish-language writings. Even harder to find is the original Spanish set side-by-side with English translation. Alan K. Brown's massive edition of the missionary chaplain's diary from the Portolá expedition is therefore doubly rare and valuable (and a bargain at $60). And I do mean massive - it's not a book you can tuck into your beach bag, or even comfortably hold in your two hands for very long. For study, a reading stand is highly recommended.

The layout is in four columns, across facing pages. On the left page is Crespí's journal text, in Spanish. Because there exist different revisions of the original field notes, the text is presented sometimes in one column, other times as two (where there are significant differences between versions). The right hand page contains Brown's translations. Brown inserted white space where necessary to keep the text aligned horizontally across the facing pages. This layout makes it relatively easy to compare the Spanish and English - a functionality not available in translation-only editions. A good thing, too, in my view - some of Brown's translations seem far from literal.

This book is an invaluable resource, and of course the first date I turned to was October 17, 1769. On that day, the expedition forded the river Crespí named after San Lorenzo (St. Lawrence). "Quinientos pasos" (five hundred paces) beyond the river, the party came to a smaller stream, which received the name "el arroyo de la Santisima Cruz" [sic] (the stream of the Most Holy Cross). The rest, as they say, is history. At some later time, the superlative was dropped and the name was transferred to the mission founded nearby in 1791.

I hope that Crespí appreciated the great privilege of being the one to give new official Spanish names to dozens of places in California never before seen by Europeans. Not all of them stuck, however. In our county, the only surviving Crespí names are San Lorenzo and Santa Cruz.

Book Review: Quite Contrary (2014), part 2

Harry Love in 1865

In part one of the eventful life of Mary Bennett Love, she was just Mary Bennett. Part two concerns her second marriage - to the legendary bounty hunter Harry Love. Everyone in northern California knew of Harry Love, first and only Captain of the California Rangers, who claimed (disputed) to have killed the notorious bandito Joaquin Murrieta.

By 1854, at the age of 44, Love's career in law enforcement was over, and he began to look for other opportunities. It's unclear where and how he met the 50-year-old widow Bennett (Vardamon died in 1849), or whether they ever married, but by 1857 they were entering into contracts as husband and wife.

By that time, the couple had moved from Mary's house in Santa Clara to the sawmill property in the San Lorenzo Valley. What had been known as the "Bennett mill" became the "Love mill". We have no record of any further contacts with Isaac Graham (d. 1863), even though they lived only a few miles apart.

Love's efforts at milling and farming suffered a series of misfortunes, beginning with the winter floods of 1861-62, which washed the mill away. Those same floods destroyed the first Santa Cruz Powder Works and flooded downtown Santa Cruz. In later years, several fires destroyed Harry's buildings and crops.

Harry Love's last chance to find a place In Santa Cruz County passed when he unsuccessfully ran for Justice of the Peace in 1867. That same year, he moved back to Santa Clara and confronted Mary. The relationship between Mary and Harry seems to have been stormy at best. Mary moved back to Santa Clara in 1858, and sued for divorce in 1866. Thereafter, she felt threatened enough to hire a man to protect her from Harry. Harry died in 1868 after a shootout at Mary's house, and Mary died the same year of natural causes.

During the 1840s-50s, the population of Santa Cruz County rapidly swelled with new arrivals from the wagon trains and gold fields. Vardamon Bennett and his family came by way of the Oregon and California Trails. Isaac Graham came as a trapper, following southern trails. Harry Love came first by sea, returning later from Texas.

Many of these pioneers were bound to encounter each other before settling here. In Quite Contrary, several other names of future County residents appear. John Daubenbis crossed the plains in the same wagon train as the Bennetts, in 1846. The Adna Hecox family shared a miserable first California winter with the Bennetts at Santa Clara mission, 1846-47.

Note: Vardamon Bennett never lived in Santa Cruz County, although several of his children did. Vardamon and Mary's family should not be confused with the unrelated Eben Bennett, a "limeburner" in Felton in the 1860s.

Book Review: Quite Contrary (2014), part 1

Subtitled The Litigious Life of Mary Bennett Love, this well-researched and well-written biography was an unexpected find at Santa Cruz Public Library. Written by David S. Langum Sr., a law professor at Samford University in Birmingham Alabama, this life of Mary Bennett Love is a fine contribution to Santa Cruz County history - even though most of the story takes place outside of our county.

Born Mary Amanda McSwain in Virginia (1803), into an Irish family of very modest means, Mary met and married Vardamon Bennett in Georgia. The young couple and a growing family kept moving west - to Arkansas; then to Independence Missouri where they joined one of the earliest wagon trains to Oregon in 1842, led by Lansford Hastings. Still restless, the family moved south to California in 1843 - first to Sutter's Fort and eventually to the little port town of Yerba Buena, one of three settlements destined to be part of the future San Francisco.

The Bennetts, while not wildly prosperous, were getting along for a couple of years until, because of some not-well-explained marital difficulties, Mary decided to take the children and move south to the settlement around Mission Santa Clara. There she began a career as an independent entrepreneur, acquiring land first through land grants from the Mexican government, and later through preemptive claims ("squatting") filed with the new U.S. state of California after 1850.

Catherine Bennett Graham, ca. 1865

In 1845, the Mary Bennett story came to what was soon to become Santa Cruz County. Mary's oldest daughter, 21-year-old Catherine, decided it was time to leave the nest. She moved to Monterey, staying briefly with the Thomas Larkin family, before suddenly marrying our own Isaac Graham - a man three years older than Catherine's mother. The two likely met through Catherine's older brother Winston, who was running farming operations for Graham. Graham's previous exploits are described elsewhere but, by this time, he had established himself as a successful ranchero, proprietor of Rancho Zayante, across the San Lorenzo River from modern Felton.

Mary's immediate unhappiness about the match began many years of feuding between the Bennetts and Grahams, but the deed was done. The rough-hewn frontiersman took his new bride back to his Zayante ranch, to commence a brief and stormy marriage. Two children helped to mitigate Mary's hostility for a few years, and Winston Bennett (aided by a couple of brothers) built his own sawmill a few miles up the San Lorenzo River from Zayante, on what later became known as Love Creek, for reasons we'll come to later.

A lot of other history was happening during the early marriage years of Isaac and Catherine Graham. In 1846, the Mexican-American War began, and the Monterey Bay area was one of the first areas occupied by U.S. forces (there hadn't been a Mexican military presence in Santa Cruz since the secularization of the mission in 1835). Still under U.S. military governorship, the Gold Rush of 1848 suddenly brought the world to northern California. The sudden influx of tens of thousands of fortune hunters from all over the world initiated a chaotic period, but the main effect in isolated Santa Cruz was that most able-bodied men headed off to the gold fields for a year or two. Isaac Graham was apparently not one of those, having already made his place in the world.

The Graham marriage was suddenly upended by the arrival of Isaac's son Jesse in 1850. It's unclear whether Catherine knew of Isaac's first family, but she was almost certainly surprised to learn that his first wife was still alive in Tennessee, a fact which made her children illegitimate. Catherine had had enough.

While Isaac and Jesse were away in San Jose on business, Catherine took the children and several thousands dollars' worth of Isaac's gold, possibly aided by her mother and/or brothers. Isaac and Jesse's search for Catherine and the gold led them to the Bennett sawmill. Shortly thereafter, the younger of the mill partners - another Bennett brother named Dennis - was killed in a gunfight with Jesse Graham (not the first Bennett-Graham gunfight). Charged with murder, Jesse disappeared, but Isaac's search continued.

Finally tracking her down a year later in Oregon, Isaac Graham went to get his gold, his children, and his wife - probably in that order. Recovering the remaining $3,000, Isaac took the children and returned to Zayante. Catherine followed, beginning more years of litigation in her attempts to regain custody of her children. By now, you probably understand why this story was of interest to a law professor.

There are many more sordid legal details, but Catherine never returned to Zayante, dissolving her marriage with Graham. Mary Bennett, however, entered another chapter in Santa Cruz County history, which will be chapter 2 of this story.

Book review: A Legal History

A Legal History of Santa Cruz County, was published in 2006 by the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH). The multiple authors and contributors are: Bob Bosso, Sara Clarenbach, Austin Comstock, Dwight Herr, Pat Pfremmer, Alyce Prudden, Stan Stevens, and Mark Thomas. A helpful section of the Acknowledgements breaks down authorship by chapter.

The scope of this history is sweeping, beginning with pre-statehood days and continuing right up to 2003. It includes a wealth of information not previously collected, plus never-before-published interviews with many retired judges and attorneys, covering much of the late 20th-century legal happenings in Santa Cruz County.

This book was especially valuable for a member of the current History Publications Committee at the MAH, which is beginning work on issue 9 of the Santa Cruz County History Journal - an issue that will focus on land use history of the past 50 years or so. Most of those land use issues ended up in court, and the legal complexities are described in some detail in this book.

When I got semi-serious about local history in 2009, it was distressing to find differing versions of historical facts in different publications. Getting all local historians on the same factual page was one goal of this blog. With that in mind, there are a number of questionable statements in this book. As is often the case, the inaccuracies occur in the less-well-researched "background" sections, rather than in the core legal history material - especially in the earlier chapters.

In contrast to the History Journals, the MAH History Publications Committee had little or no control over content in A Legal History. For that reason, a disclaimer was inserted on the publisher's page. With that caveat, this book is a valuable addition to the local history library. In the core subject areas, where the authors put most of their expertise and research, A Legal History adds a lot to the published historical record of Santa Cruz County. 

You can see in the book cover image that the copy reviewed here came from Santa Cruz Public Library. Volunteers should perhaps be instructed not to cover up book titles with bar code stickers, but the unpaid helpers make valuable contributions to our library system. SCPL doesn't get enough credit for its efforts to remain a major repository of local history materials, and for supporting the Genealogical Society of Santa Cruz County.