Book Review: Decline of the Californios

'A social history of the Spanish-speaking Californians, 1846-1890'; By Leonard Pitt (1966), available at SCPL.

The names are familiar from California street signs: Castro, Vallejo, Berryessa, Bernal. Or, if you grew up in southern California as I did: Pico, Sepulveda, Dominguez, Olvera. These are the names of some of the families who, through huge land grants awarded by the Mexican government, owned much of California in 1846. Pitt's very readable book tracks the declining fortunes of these "Californio" families from the Mexican War into the gold rush, statehood and on through the development boom of the 1880s. There are no direct references to any persons or events in Santa Cruz County, but the larger background of California events during this time period helps to provide context for a better understanding of Santa Cruz history.

More early concrete sidewalks

The neighborhoods east of Ocean St. have some concrete sidewalks that, while not as old as the Washington St. area, are still pre-WWI. On Berkeley Way, I found a driveway with a contractor stamp dated 10-11-09. There are street name curb stampings at the corner of Berkeley and Branciforte Dr. More street name stampings found at Leonard St. and Dakota Ave. (a "tee" corner where curb ramps have not replaced the original corner curbs) .

Update: The Sidewalks of Washington Street

I found a few more examples of street name curb stampings; at the corner of Sycamore and Cedar streets (there's also a contractor stamp at that corner dated 1910), and at one corner of Cedar and Elm. Draft 2 of 'Sidewalks' contains the new info.

Lime Works tour

The flu and Wikipedia have kept me away from Santa Cruz history for most of the past month. Sadly, I missed the RA meeting on April 10. I did, however, make it up to UCSC on Sunday for a tour of the Cowell Lime Works Historic District, ably led by Frank Perry (there's a link to the non-profit Friends of the Cowell Lime Works Historic District in the sidebar to the left).

There's a tie-in between the tour and my interest in the bituminous rock mining industry. In addition to the lime operations, the Cowell ranch also contained a small bituminous rock mining quarry. One of the few surviving local examples of bituminous rock paving is at the Cooperage building in the Lime Works complex (thanks to Frank for pointing it out).

Update 2: Have you seen this house?

This house has become interesting enough to warrant its own blog. You can find it here: http://williamkerrhouse.blogspot.com/

Researchers Anonymous meeting 3/13

Attended the RA meeting last Sat. The round-table format, where each attendee has the opportunity to talk about his/her latest work, is always fascinating. Interest in local history is alive and well, and I look forward to the next meeting on April 10.

Some of the most productive time at RA is before and after the meeting, when members can talk one-on-one. A conversation with Frank and Jill Perry yielded several leads for my research on the bituminous rock industry. Now I just have to get out there and follow up.

Update: Have you seen this house?

This morning, I was re-reading the wonderful article Full Life, Empty Pockets, by Harriette Jessup Proctor, which appears in Issue Number Two of the Santa Cruz County History Journal. The following line caught my eye: "...Alexander's, an excellent Italian restaurant, in Billings' big Victorian near the highway." Bingo!

So it turns out the caption accompanying the photo in the SCPL collection is correct (sort-of). I'll attempt to track down the exact location and the identity of the original owner, but I'm guessing the Billings house stood where the Pasatiempo Inn is today. Of course, the area (part of Rancho la Carbonera) wasn't called Pasatiempo when the house was built, sometime before 1900. Marion Hollins invented that name in the 1920s. That was my mistake - when I read the photo caption, I assumed (and we all know what "assume" is an acronym for) that the house was claimed to be part of Hollins' Pasatiempo development.

Santa Cruz History Links - part 2

First, I have to apologize to everyone at Researchers Anonymous for leaving the MAH link off my first list. Second, I added a few other links that, while not pertaining strictly to Santa Cruz, are important sources of historical materials and people may not have heard of them yet. These include:
* Linkpendium - Genealogy and Family History
* Internet Archive
* Online Archive of California

Other sites I have used, but which I didn't add to the list because of their more general nature, and because they are already well known, include:
* Google Books
* the libraries at UC Berkeley, Stanford and San Jose State
* San Francisco Public Library
* Library of Congress

These are great times for lazy researchers like me. More and more historical material is being made available online. Let me know if you find any other especially good sites.

Santa Cruz Wiki: Historic Opportunity

Wikis are a great way for people to collaborate online and share their interests. Everyone knows about Wikipedia, where you can find (and contribute) information about almost anything. Santa Cruz Wiki (follow the link in the sidebar) wants to do the same for our local area; but it needs our help.

One of the major sections in Santa Cruz Wiki is Santa Cruz History. If you go there, you'll find a lot of empty headings. It's time for local history buffs to get involved and add some content under those headings. Santa Cruz Wiki could be a great new online meeting place for the local history community.

Santa Cruz History Links added

I pulled all of these from my browser bookmarks, and from the Researchers Anonymous memberlist. Let me know if you have others - thanks.