Bird’s Eye View of Santa Cruz, 1870 [highlights]

Bird’s Eye View of Santa Cruz, 1870 [highlights], A. L. Bancroft & Co. Lith, S. F.

(https://prezi.com/0jzehm8b43q2/birds-eye-view-of-santa-cruz-1870-highlights/) 

Go here for an overview of the "Six Panoramas" project.

These notes accompany a Prezi slide show presentation designed for the 2016 Santa Cruz County History Fair, focused on the most significant features. The “expanded” version includes all structures noted as being built before 1871 in Sidewalk Companion to Santa Cruz Architecture, by John L. Chase (3^rd edition, 2005). The information presented here is from Chase, unless noted otherwise. Text tags shown in the slides are underlined in the text below, in the order of their appearance in the animation.

Slide 1.

This lithograph is an early panoramic pictorial view of Santa Cruz. The original was 30” x 20”. A cropped copy of it hangs in the Archives office at MAH. A larger-than-original-size print hangs in Room 8 at City Hall. When studying this image, it’s important to remember a few things:

1. The airborne viewpoint is imaginary - the artist couldn’t actually see all the features shown from one place. That accounts for many of the inaccuracies.
2. It’s not a photograph. The drawing of most features is simplified, especially those farther away. Some streets, structures and landscape features are drawn incorrectly.
3. The artist manipulated perspective to get a wider field of view. In some spots the result is noticeable in skewed street directions and apparent distance. Some more distant buildings are drawn larger than life (e.g. Holy Cross church).
4. Judging from the inclusion of several structures built in 1870, it seems that this view must have been composed late in the year.  

Slide 2. - Zoom to title.

The “Bird’s Eye View” was a popular type of graphic image in the second half of the 1800s. Many of them have been collected by the Bancroft Library, digitized, and made available online for viewing and/or download.

Slide 3.

The original includes, in its bottom border, a key to 26 items number-tagged on the image. The key is split to left and right of the title. Just above the key is the name of the artist, C. [Charles] B. Gifford. (What is “Delt. S. J.”? Society of Jesus? San Jose?)

Slide 4.

To the right of the title is the second half of the numbered key. Just above the key is the name of the lithographer and publisher. A. L. Bancroft was the brother of historian Hubert Howe Bancroft, and publisher of his historical books.

Slide 5.

Using the number-tags as a starting point, it’s possible to identify a number of historical Santa Cruz features.

1. Coast Road. This is actually Bay Street, originally known as Lime Kiln Road because it was built to haul lime from the Lime Works to the wharf. The 1866 city map has both names. In this view, the shape of the road as it approaches the bay doesn’t show the actual bend that follows the bluff line above the lagoon (see 1857 Coast Survey map in Slide 7).

2. Road to Lighthouse. This is today’s Lighthouse Street. The field of view is not wide enough to show the lighthouse itself (built 1869). The road was new when this view was drawn (not shown on the 1866 map).

3. Davis and Cowell’s Wharf. Henry Cowell bought out Isaac Davis’ original partner A. P. Jordan in 1865.

·        The steeply-sloping upper part of the wharf may be the original “chute” built by Elihu Anthony in 1853, or a rebuilt version of it. Later photos show a less-steeply-sloped upper section.

·        Davis & Jordan added the lower part in 1857.

·        Santa Cruz’ first bridge (also built by Anthony, in 1849). Built with simple piles and spans like a wharf, the low bridge was replaced by a higher truss-type span in 1875, so that the new Santa Cruz Railroad trains could pass beneath.

Slide 6

Detail from the 1866 Foreman-Wright city map (copy in MAH archives). The following features are indicated by arrows, in this order:

• “Bay Street” and “Lime Kiln Road” names both shown
•  “Rountree’s Lane” was the access to the A. L. Rountree lands. Rountree sold Lighthouse Point to the government.
• The future Road to Lighthouse is not shown, as it was not built until 1869.

Slide 7 - back to the lithograph. Moving up Bay Street (with another number 1):

• Rountree’s Lane
• 1869 Bayview School building (SCPL 0546) can be seen at the intersection with Mission Street, where the school’s later incarnation stands today.
• Follow Lime Kiln Road on up to its end at the vaguely-indicated Lime Works – now the main entrance to the UCSC campus.
• The final leftward bend shows today’s Cardiff Place continuing straight (High Street not shown) to the 1864 home of original lime works partner A. P. Jordan. In 1865, the house (now called Cardiff House) passed to Henry Cowell.
• Where Laurel Street goes up the hill, one or more of the smaller buildings may be remnants of the old mission grist mill, first constructed in 1796 (Chase says the mill buildings were all gone by 1866).
• The cluster of buildings with the smokestack is the R. C. Kirby tannery complex, located on Majors Creek – the original Arroyo Santa Cruz and today’s Laurel Street Brook. Kirby moved to this location in 1863. The middle of the smokestack is about where Emily’s bakery stands today. Another view of the Kirby tannery can be found on page f14 of Elliott. Note that Elliott’s 1879 view shows considerable differences in the tannery buildings.

Slide 8

  Farther to the right:

• In 1870, Walnut St ended at Mission, with a short private drive beyond.
• The approximate creekside location of the Joseph L. Majors mill (grist) is perhaps indicated by the disembodied mill wheel (There are photos and drawings of the mill in Marion Pokriot’s biography of Majors).
• On the higher terrace, the one large house may represent the one Majors built.

Slide 9

  Beach Hill and vicinity:

4. Laurel Street Public School. An 1862 Santa Cruz Sentinel article noted that construction of a school was underway. The school is shown at the corner of Laurel and Washington, where the park is now.

5. Pacific Avenue. – called Willow Street before 1866. The evenly-spaced trees shown around the junction with Laurel St could be some of the last remaining willows, originally planted by the padres to delineate and fence the mission’s food-crop fields.

Notice also how the wide bend of the San Lorenzo River, unconstrained by today’s levees, swung over almost to Pacific Avenue near the end of Laurel St.

6. California Powder Company’s wharf. Originally built by David Gharkey in 1857, the wharf was acquired by the Powder Co. in the 1860s. Powder Company buildings cluster around the top of the wharf near today’s intersection of Main and 1^st (back corner of La Bahia). For more wharf info, see the article by Frank Perry, Barry Brown, Rick Hyman, and Stan Stevens (http://limekilnlegacies.com/pdfs/Notes-on-Santa-Cruz-Wharves.pdf).

Note: 2^nd Street – shown running behind the Powder Company warehouses - provided the only road access to Beach Hill in 1870 (from Pacific), and is not shown clearly in this view. Neither Beach Street nor Riverside Avenue existed.

• Powder storage. The small box structure off the side of the wharf was added by the powder company for storage of explosives awaiting shipping (thanks to Frank Perry for that tidbit).

Slide 9 (cont.)

  Also in this area:

• Blackburn residence, built c.1854. The location shown, opposite the end of Washington Street, is too far west. The structure remains today as the Blackburn House hotel, located between today’s Center and Cedar Streets.
• Chinatown. The 1^st Santa Cruz Chinatown was on the west side of Pacific between Lincoln and Elm. The structure with a smokestack may be the cigar factory located in that area.

Slide 10

  All of the early downtown Protestant churches are in this view:

7.   Episcopal Church. 1865 Calvary Episcopal is the oldest Santa Cruz church building still standing.

8.   Congregational Church. Church Street got its name because this 1858 church was built on it, located between Cedar and Center streets.  

9.   Unity Church. (1868) Built on Walnut Street, just off Pacific (See SCPL photo #339).

10.  Baptist Church. On Locust Street, up on the terrace, built in 1867 (later moved to Center St). Note that both Locust and Union streets continued up the hill at this time, and Union appears to have steps on one side.

11.  Methodist Church. Shown is the second iteration of the town’s oldest Protestant church, built in 1863 at the corner of Mission and Green streets.

Also in this area:

• Boston and Jones (formerly Kirby and Jones) tannery, with the tall smokestack, which developed from the original mission tannery. Boston’s widow closed the tannery for good in 1875 and subdivided the land, but the 60’-tall smokestack remained for another ten years. Homes nearby included:
• R. C. Kirby (1850s), still standing at 117 Jordan St. – not shown.
• Rafael Castro-Joseph Boston (1836 adobe with frame 2^nd story added). Formerly located on today’s High Street, it may be the large structure partly visible behind the tannery. Note that High Street is not shown to the west beyond this point.
• Alexander McDonald house (1867), still standing at 330 High St. This may be one of the two structures shown to the left and behind the tannery.
• John B. Perry (1850s), still standing at 114 Escalona Dr. (then called Davis St.) It may be the one house shown on the short street in front of the tannery. Perry designed and built many early frame buildings, including Cardiff House and the 1866 County Courthouse.
• Pope House hotel on Mission Street (see SCPL photo 0019). The street to the left appears to be today’s Storey Street, which no longer connects with Mission.
• Field. The Storer and Lucy Ann Field house (early 1860s) remains today, at the top of the Locust Street stairway.
• Kunitz. Johann Kunitz moved his soap and glue factory to River Street before 1872, when F. A. Hihn built his mansion. This block is now the City Hall complex.

Slide 11

  Mission Hill:

12.  Roman Catholic Church.  Shown is the wooden Holy Cross Church built in 1857 (see Elliott, p.f6).

• The repaired remainder of the adobe chapel, with a wooden façade, is to the right.
• Adobe?. The location and shape of this building suggest that it may be a small remaining section of one of the long mission residence buildings, similar to the Neary-Rodriguez adobe. The building is included in the mission model on display at Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park.

13.  Upper Plaza. Note the lack of any landscaping at this date. According to Chase, the area had just been remodeled in 1870. Streets were laid out on three sides of the plaza and the old mission water supply ditch was under-grounded.

·        The 1850s Alzina house still stands on the plaza.

14.  Mission Street.

15.  Sisters’ School.  The second home of the Sisters of Charity School.

·        The school’s previous home can be seen behind the newer. The old adobe “juzgado” had previously been repurposed and enlarged as William Blackburn’s Eagle Hotel in 1848 (see Elliott, p.f6). The Sisters first used it as a school, then as a student dormitory, and finally as a convent.

·        Neary-Rodriguez adobe – originally one of the mission neophyte dormitories. The street shown parallel to the near side did not exist.   

16.  Public School. Shown is the first Mission Hill School, built in 1857 and replaced in 1875.

17.  Temperance Hall. A public meeting hall built in 1861 by a local temperance society (see photo in Chase p.87).

Also:

·        Schwartz - 214-222 Mission. – Louis Schwartz built three 1½ story houses in 1867 that remain today.

Slide 12

Downtown:

18.  Lower Plaza. Many buildings are identifiable from photos.

·        Pacific Ocean House hotel (1865). Next door on the right: Lulu Carpenter’s (1865), which remains today.

·        Across the street is the Zoccoli’s building (1866), which remains today (see SCPL photo 0093).  

19.  Stage Road to San Jose – Water Street bridge, first across the San Lorenzo River at Santa Cruz. Shown is an early iteration of the bridge, built on piles.

20.  IOOF Hall and Post Office. The building indicated is not what we remember today as the Oddfellows building (where the town clock was originally), which was not built until 1873 - on the other side of Pacific. A photo in Chase (p.143) shows this building but the text does not identify it. Partly visible behind is the 1868 Duncan McPherson building, which still exists.

21.  County Courthouse – This is the first courthouse, built in 1866. It burned down in 1894 and was replaced by the “Cooper House” building. The empty corner of Cooper and Main is where the Octagon building is now. (See photo in Chase, p.178)

22.  Main Street. The first city street map (Foreman and Wright, 1866) showed the name changed from Main to today’s Front Street, but no doubt many still called it Main Street in 1870. The section south of Cooper Street was still relatively new in 1870 (see SCPL photo 0093) 

23.  San Lorenzo River - meandering prettily but prone to flooding before levees.

25. Branciforte River. Now called Branciforte “Creek”, it retained the name of the original Spanish pueblo.

·        Ford 1. The old ford can still be seen at Branciforte Creek / San Lorenzo. The location marked ford 2 appears to be another ford.

·        Bridge. Brand-new (in 1870) wharf-style bridge at today’s Soquel Avenue, replaced in 1874 with a covered bridge.

Slide 13

  Ocean Street area:

19.      The second “19” label is on today’s north Ocean Street, just above the intersection at Water Street.

24.      Watsonville Road. Today’s Soquel Avenue follows the old Spanish road.

·        The horse-drawn wagon is starting up the hill from the intersection of today’s Ocean St. and Soquel Ave., past the first Branciforte School (today’s Branciforte Plaza).

·        At far right, Branciforte Avenue (original main street of Branciforte) follows the top of the bluff.

25.      Branciforte River. The second “25” is a short distance upstream from the bridge at Water Street.

Slide 14

  River mouth area:

23.  San Lorenzo River. The lower river didn’t yet have any roads following its frequently-flooded shoreline in 1870, and Ocean Street simply ends at river’s edge. There was no railroad bridge crossing the river near its mouth until 1875.

·        Barson. Fred Barson had just bought this property, and had not yet built the Riverside Hotel (1877).

·        Beach Flats. Nothing built there in 1870.

·        Ocean View Avenue was laid out the next year. Ocean Villa (shown prominently in the 1876 Trousset painting) was built at the end.

26.      Bathing House –The structure shown is not one of the more-permanent “baths” (e.g. Dolphin, Neptune) built later and closer to where the Boardwalk is now. The rope or cable shown extending out into the surf was a safety precaution, in the days before lifeguards.

• The artist? Many landscape artists put themselves somewhere in the scene. 

Santa Cruz County History Journal, Number 8

Hot off the presses, the newest History Journal, titled Do You Know My Name?,  is available now at the MAH shop, cost = $25. The new issue will soon be available online, as well as in local bookstores and at upcoming history-related events around the County.

Mark your calendars for the upcoming kickoff event:

"Authors’ Talk and Book Signing: 5:30-6:30 pm First Friday, September 2, 2016 at the MAH, Auditorium"


Article descriptions for Press Release

Indigenous Justice or Padre Killers (Martin Rizzo)

In 1812, Padre Andrés Quintana, the Franciscan friar who presided over Mission Santa Cruz, was assassinated by a group of indigenous men and women living in the mission. Who were these so-called Padre Killers? What were their reasons, their background, their names, and their fate?

Diaries of Sebastian Rodriguez  (source document)

In 1828, a Spanish soldier based in Monterey led two expeditions into the interior of California. They were searching for neophyte Indians who had run away from the missions and for stolen horses, an important item in the Indians’ diet.

He Came From an Indian Kingdom (Martin Rizzo)

Macedonio Lorenzana, originally from Spanish Mexico, settled in the Villa de Branciforte in the early 1820s and became a pillar of the community, serving as Alcalde (or Mayor). How did it happen that after California became a state in 1850, he became an outcast within his community?

Rancho Bolsa del Pájaro: Squatters and Recipients (Joan Gilbert Martin)

In 1860-61 a group of squatters were evicted from the Bolsa del Pájaro rancho (future site of the city of Watsonville), and a different group of recipients were granted title. Who were these “squatters?” Why were they evicted? Who were the “recipients” and why were they the lucky ones?

Quercus agrifolia The Live Oak District (Phil Reader)

Prior to statehood, the Live Oak District of Santa Cruz County, named for the coastal live oak (Quercus agrifolia), was the site of yearly rodeos, where the early Californio settlers, rounded up their stock and celebrated by dancing the fandango at weeks-long fiestas.

The Bostons: A Pioneer Family of Santa Cruz County (Dana Bagshaw)

The Boston family saga began in 1848 when Joseph Boston, an enterprising young man from New York City came west to make his fortune. His family followed, he married, had children, and prospered. With his wife, Eliza, he built a church. Yet under the surface this family was plagued by insanity and early death.

The Children of Evergreen Cemetery (Sangye Hawke)

Children buried in Evergreen Cemetery died from disease, accident, stillbirth, or natural causes. A surprising number of these deaths, fifty percent in 1864, were from natural causes—an incidence that coincided with the use of “soothing syrups” to treat childhood ailments.

Jason Brown: Ben Lomond Mountain Resident . . . (Lisa Robinson)

Jason Brown, the son of abolitionist, John Brown, left the South and politics behind to move to Ben Lomond Mountain. There he lived a solitary, minimalist life in a crude cabin. Yet he had an extensive library and was experimenting with an “aerial” machine in which he planned to fly down and surprise the town.

AKA George Linden (Lisa Robinson)

A man calling himself George Linden arrived in Boulder Creek around 1892 and set out single-handedly to design and build a park, a “beauty spot,” out of a wilderness sloping down to the San Lorenzo River. But after he died in 1901, people wondered: Was he the man he said he was?

“All Well” Entertainment in Santa Cruz, 1900 to 1910 (Conor O’Brien)

Mary Ann True kept a diary recording every single day of her life between 1893 and 1948. Reading this diary we enter into the life of a Santa Cruz family. What did they do to pass the time before there was television and the internet?

Black and Tan Baseball (Geoffrey Dunn)

In 1907, the city of Santa Cruz boasted an all black baseball team, the Colored Giants. Even before then, local African American and Latino ball-players joined otherwise all-white teams. Later these same men would play on all black teams such as the Chicago American Giants. Who were these players? What were their names? What were their stories?

African American Churches in the City of Santa Cruz (Stanley D. Stevens & Joan Gilbert Martin)

In the first third of the twentieth century, three African American churches were founded in Santa Cruz: the AME Episcopal Zion church established in 1905 following Reconstruction in the South; the Missionary Baptist Church that came here in 1947 just after World War II, and the break-away Progressive Missionary Baptist Church built in 1963, a pivotal year in black history. What were the origins of these churches?

Noch and the Kid (Phil Reader)

Not too long ago in the days of Prohibition, tramps riding the rails dropped off at a “hobo jungle” near Schwan Lake, in Live Oak. What happened when Sheriff “Noch” Enoch Alzina confronted hobo “Kid” McCoy on a rainy night by the tracks?

Tragedy on the Cliff (Greg Gardner)

Law enforcement can be a dangerous profession. In 1925, two lawmen, Howard Trafton and Richard Rountree, tried to reason with eccentric loner Paul Woodside in his cliffside shanty above Seacliff Beach. What happened that they were killed?

A Meeting of Woodworking and Art (Frank Perry)

A talented cartoonist and woodworker, George Perry grew up in hard times, dropping out of school and enduring the Great Depression. Refusing to succumb, he and his talented wife, Edith, built a business making toys—toys that brought joy to him and his family, as well as to many generations of children.

Noboru Tanimura’s Camera by Frances (Eiko Tanimura) Schwann

Barely a week after Pearl Harbor, on December 13, 1941, the Watsonville Police Department confiscated a camera belonging to US citizen Noboru Tanimura. Because of his Japanese descent, he and his family spent the war years in an internment camp in Poston, Arizona, where he made numerous attempts to retrieve his camera.  

The Inn (poem)

Corrigan’s Brookdale Inn was a gathering place for the men and women of Boulder Creek. During World War II, when the men were all off to war, Harold Pilger wrote this poem recalling the good times at the inn.

Lily the Cat Lady by Lisa Robinson

Lily Christian was a tiny woman with a debilitating illness, but it did not stop her from going out every day to feed the stray cats of Boulder Creek. Being frail, it took her all day to pull her cart of food, milk, and water through the town, always followed by a trail of cats.

Remembering Phil Reader (Sandy Lydon, Desiree Steber, Norman Poitevin, Rachel Mckay, Marion Pokriots, Stanley D. Stevens, and Frank Perry)

Do You Know My Name? was inspired by and is dedicated to the late historian Phil Reader. Seven memoirs describe a dedicated researcher, a remarkable storyteller, and a fierce advocate for the underdog. As Sandy Lydon says, he was “a champion of the working stiffs, those who were born, lived, and died out on the edges.”

Book review: Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization

That's the title of a very well-researched and clearly written 1995 book by Robert H. Jackson and Edward Castillo (available at SCPL). As the title indicates, the research looks at how Spanish colonization began the rapid decline of the native peoples of California. The best thing about the Spanish/Mexican occupiers, from the native point of view, is that there never were very many of them.

Over the previous 200+ years of colonial occupation and exploitation of the Americas, The Spanish empire had developed a brutal but effective system for dealing with aboriginal peoples. The mission system was a key component of that system, its job being to turn the natives into Spain's labor force. The paucity of colonists moving from Spain to the New World made that conversion of the indigenes essential if the Spanish Empire was to maintain a hold on its conquests.

The system worked reasonably well in areas of settled, agricultural peoples used to a central government authority. The Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas had authoritarian systems that Spanish conquistadors were able to take over simply by supplanting the native leaders.

In California, the soldiers and missionaries found a very different situation. Small numbers of native peoples lived in small, decentralized tribal arrangements, and the people were unaccustomed to strict authority, regimentation and close-quarters living conditions. When brought into the missions, attrition rates from disease were horrific, and runaways were a constant problem.

At Mission Santa Cruz, Jackson and Castillo document the effects of these twin forces. Within 25 years of the mission's 1791 founding, most of the local natives had either died or run away to areas farther inland. To make up for the lost labor, expeditions were sent far into the interior - as far as the Central Valley - to 1) catch and return runaways, and 2) to compel new tribal groups to relocate to the mission.

The last structure built at Mission Santa Cruz (1820s), and the only one still standing (now the centerpiece of the State Historic Park), was a dormitory for these new arrivals. They had to be kept under guard and separated from the earlier local neophytes, who spoke a different language and were at least partly acclimated to mission life.

The mission system gradually declined until mission secularization dealt the final blow in the 1830s. No longer possessing vast tracts of pasture land, and stripped of authority to requisition native labor, Mission Santa Cruz crumbled away, to be replaced by the Holy Cross parish church we know today. Native neophytes who were supposed to be the eventual beneficiaries of the mission's stewardship were left with very little, and very few fellow natives to share it with.

Things got even worse for native Californians when the 1848 Gold Rush brought tens of thousands of fortune hunters from all over the world to the Sierra foothills. Very few of the newcomers showed much consideration for the people already present, whether Indian or Mexican. Less than two years later, California became the 31st state in the US of A, sealing the fate of native Californians. The second half of the 19th century produced anti-Indian campaigns some have called genocide.

A recent article asks, "On the 140th anniversary of Custer's well-remembered demise, why is California genocide forgotten?" While "genocide" may be too strong a word, it's not far from the truth. Not much more than 200 years ago, the southern and central California coast had the densest indigenous population of any area in all of North America (north of central Mexico).

It's not hard to understand why Californians don't want to talk about the less pleasant parts of the state's history, but we need to be reminded frequently that less-than-noble behaviors are never far below the surface of human nature. There has been social progress in the last 150 years, but we're not out of the cave yet.

Electricity in Santa Cruz: Timeline

As this chronological study of Santa Cruz County history moves into the 1890s, a few topics cross multiple years and decades. A handy way to begin with those broader topics is with a text timeline, as with the Santa Cruz water system timeline.

Local use of electricity is another story that developed over many decades. See the page Santa Cruz electricity timeline  for an expansion of this summary:

1860s: The electric telegraph came into our county from the wider world and remained important for three decades or more.

1880s: Developments in electrical lighting, and in dynamos to produce electrical current enabled the first electric light and power enterprises, including hydroelectric generation.

1890s: Electric-powered trolleys replaced horse-drawn streetcars. Residential electric lighting and telephones become common.

 

Sandy Lydon on Chinese (and other) immigrant history in Santa Cruz

For those who haven't yet read Sandy Lydon's Chinese Gold, there's a new short piece on his website, titled Hate Speech, Santa Cruz Style (1879), that gives some concise but broad perspective on the history of anti-immigrant politics in Santa Cruz County and beyond. The Chinese who came to California to mine for gold and stayed to build railroads and work the farms were just one of many immigrant groups to feel the wrath of scapegoaters, nativists, exploiters and political opportunists.

Lydon's brief survey gives a wider historical and political setting to Santa Cruz Once Had a Chinatown.

Trescony

An original source of inspiration here (and the blog's original title) was "Names on the Signs". Street names, in particular, are a rich source of local history connections. Just found some new info on one such: Trescony. A side-street off of Mission Street, the name commemorates an Italian immigrant named Alberto Trescony, who moved to Santa Cruz around 1870 (in a UC Davis oral history interview, son Julius says it was 1876), and remained for several years before returning to Monterey County, where he died in 1892 (while staying at a hotel in Salinas). Clark (Santa Cruz County Place Names) mentions that Trescony lived in Monterey as early as 1841, but I hadn't followed up on that tease until today.

While looking for something else, I found a short bio of Trescony on the Monterey County Historical Society site. Turns out he had quite an extensive career in the Monterey-Salinas-Salinas Valley area, including ownership of Rancho San Lucas, and later other ranchos in the same area - the upper end of the Salinas Valley. Today, there's a turnoff from Hwy 101 to the small town of San Lucas. The Sentinel mentioned that, in 1891, Trescony donated land for a cemetery in San Lucas, where he was buried the next year.

It appears that Alberto Trescony's small farm/estate on the Westside (which was still rural in those days) was perhaps originally intended at least partially as a semi-retirement move. The drawing shown above of the Trescony place (from Elliott's 1879 Santa Cruz County Illustrations) shows what looks like an enclosed orchard, so it's fitting that some of the estate is now a community garden at Trescony Park.

Either by design or because of changed circumstances, much of Trescony's Santa Cruz land was soon subdivided. Sentinel real estate transaction notices of the 1880s and 90s contain numerous references to "Trescony's Addition" or "Trescony Building Lots".

Note: this post has been added to a page titled The Italians.

Important dates in the early history of the City of Santa Cruz

Update 3/5: links added to additional information for each date

(This post is a copy of a list composed in response to a solicitation by Santa Cruz Mayor Cynthia Mathews. Collected lists are presumably to be used in preparations for celebration of the City of Santa Cruz sesquicentennial.)  

Detail from 1853 U.S. Coast Survey map

Although I’m perhaps biased toward the earlier history of our area, it does seem undeniable that most of the defining characteristics of the city of Santa Cruz were determined long before city incorporation.

1769 – On October 17, the Portola expedition crossed the river that Franciscan missionary priest Juan Crespi named for “San Lorenzo” (Saint Lawrence). The next day, the party forded the river and, “500 steps” farther on, came to a tributary stream, which was given the name “Arroyo de Santa Cruz” (Creek of the Holy Cross). The expedition’s trail became the main road from Watsonville, and the ford is now the Soquel Avenue bridge.

1791 – On September 26, Mission Santa Cruz was dedicated, transferring the name from the creek.

1794 – On May 10, the relocated mission was rededicated at its new location up on the bluff, where it remained – out of danger from river flooding.

1797 – On July 24, eight settlers arrived from Guadalajara (via Monterey) to found the Villa de Branciforte, a secular pueblo settlement across the river from the mission. In the next year, six retired soldiers came with their families and more followed in following years. Mission and pueblo together formed the basis of today’s City of Santa Cruz.

1824 – On October 4, the first Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States was ratified. The laws of newly-independent Mexico allowed, for the first time, private property ownership in California.

1833 – On August 17, the Mexican Congress passed “An Act for the Secularization of the Missions of California”. The act took away most of the vast land holdings of the twenty-one California missions, transferring it to private ownership. The “rancho” system grew from that privatization, still the basis of land ownership mapping in much of California, including most of Santa Cruz County. Disposition of much of the remaining Santa Cruz mission land was put in the hands of a civilian alcalde (a sort of strong mayor), who was authorized to sell or grant “town lots” to the earliest Santa Cruz settlers. Most of today’s downtown Santa Cruz, originally part of the mission farm and pasture lands, passed to private ownership between 1833 and 1850. 

1848 – Two events in that year radically changed everything forever in Santa Cruz (as in all of California). On January 24, gold was discovered at Sutter’s mill. The resulting “gold rush” increased the non-native population of northern California tenfold within ten years.

On February 2, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War and ceding California to the United States.

1850 – On September 9, as part of the “Compromise of 1850”, California was admitted to the union as a “free” (no slavery) state.

1851 - On April 5, the name “County of Santa Cruz” was adopted, replacing the original name - “County of Branciforte” - within two months of its approval by the state legislature.

1866 – On March 31, the state legislature approved An Act to Incorporate the Town of Santa Cruz. The town corporation was run by an elected, three member Board of Trustees.   

1874 – The first wide-span bridge over the San Lorenzo River into Santa Cruz was completed at the location of today’s Soquel Avenue bridge. Earlier bridges were built at the Water Street ford with piles and short spans (a construction method similar to the Municipal Wharf) and couldn’t survive many winter floods. This first and only covered bridge inside the city limits remained in service until 1922.

1876 – On March 11, the state legislature approved An Act to Reincorporate the City of Santa Cruz, by which Santa Cruz became a charter city. The first publicly-owned City Hall was built on Front Street, where the Museum of Art and History stands now. 

On May 13, the first railroad connection to locations outside the county was completed, and the first narrow-gauge steam locomotive of the Santa Cruz Railroad crossed the San Lorenzo River into Santa Cruz. Today’s trestle and tracks remain in the same locations, at the river mouth and along today’s Beach Street in front of the Beach Boardwalk.

1885 – On June 3, after months of public meetings, the city council approved issuance of $80,000 worth of bonds for the purpose of buying a municipal water system. Although legal challenges held up the process for several years, this was the beginning of the Santa Cruz Municipal Water District.

1905 – On January 17, a special election decided that East Santa Cruz (aka Branciforte) would be annexed to the City of Santa Cruz. Results were announced in the Morning Sentinel of February 7.