Santa Cruz in 1906

Notes by Peter Nurkse

Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress

This photograph of Santa Cruz in the last week of June, 1906, was taken by George Lawrence, an early aerial photographer. Mr. Lawrence began taking pictures from balloons. After falling out of one balloon over two hundred feet into the Chicago stockyards, bouncing off wires on the way down, and a second similar mishap over Minneapolis, he developed a method of keeping his feet on the ground--hauling his cameras up above with a train of kites.

George Lawrence was partial to big negatives and big cameras. He built one camera that weighed close to a ton (1400 lbs), which produced a negative eight feet long, still to this day the largest camera ever built, and also the largest negative as well. For aerial photography, he developed a lightweight version, only about 50 lbs in weight, which he lifted up with a string of as many as seventeen kites pulling together on a pair of steel wires. His aerial cameras had a curved film plane, and took a negative four feet wide, the largest negative ever used in aerial photography.

Although George was based in the Midwest, when he heard of the 1906 earthquake he recognized a business opportunity. He brought all his equipment out to California, and took a series of aerial pictures of the ruins of San Francisco. One of those pictures is included in Beaumont Newhall's book, Airborne Camera . Then he took time to travel around the area, and made more panoramic views of San Jose, Salinas, and Pacific Grove, as well as this picture of Santa Cruz.

You can see that in 1906 ocean front property wasn't yet prime real estate. Most people chose to live near each other and near services and other supplies, closer to downtown. It is sobering to think that the people who lived in the landscape in this picture probably took what we see here as pretty stable and settled, the way things were. Yet less than a century later, much has changed. What we take for granted today may also look very different in another century.

Here are some comments on buildings and places in the photo, numbered on the key. Most of the information on the two wharves and the pier in the picture comes from an article by Ross Eric Gibson in the July 19, 1994 issue of the San Jose Mercury News .

1. Epworth-by-the-Sea: large house built 1887, once owned by Bishop Warren, a Methodist Bishop. Small cottage right behind in back, with a chimney, has also survived.
2. 421 Lighthouse Ave.: under construction in this picture, flat top, no roof yet. Next house up the street, also under construction in the picture, is gone now.
3. 507 and 511 Lighthouse Ave.: pair of twin houses still there today.
4. 523 Lighthouse Ave.: longer corner house, front of house obscured in photo by a tree no longer there. Vacant lot between 511 and 523 Lighthouse Ave. is still a vacant lot today.
5. 603 Laguna St.: one story high in the photograph, but now two stories with a ground floor added beneath.
6. Neary's Lagoon: very much a lagoon, in its wild state then
7. High school site: a level terrace, where Santa Cruz High is located now.
8. High St.: line of trees marks gradual ascent of High St., toward the Cowell Ranch to the left.
9. Highland Ave.: steep diagonal slash traces Highland Ave., following the route of the present pedestrian path. Modern Highland Ave. zigzags up this hill with a switchback.
10. Judge Logan's house: Judge Logan developed the loganberry here. The house was torn down in the 1940's.
11. San Lorenzo Valley: you can see the canyon of the San Lorenzo River.
12. Pasatiempo: broad hill pretty easy to identify, site of golf course today.
13. The 1877 Lynch House, at 174 West Cliff Dr., built by Sedgwick J. Lynch, an early Santa Cruz builder, called the "finest residence in Santa Cruz" in 1877.
14. Railroad yard: for over a century this was a working railroad yard. Now a city park, Depot Park.
15. West Cliff railroad overpass: was a working bridge in 1906, recently rebuilt after the 1989 earthquake and now working again.
16. Cowell Wharf: this was the first wharf in Santa Cruz, built by Elihu Anthony in 1849. At the time of this picture it was owned by the Henry Cowell Limeworks, but it collapsed in a storm a year later, in 1907. The pier is an extension of Bay St., so they didn't have to haul lumber, cement, and other heavy cargo through downtown.
17. Sea Beach Hotel: great location, but it burned down to the ground a few years later, on June 12th, 1912. A century ago fires were constantly changing neighborhoods, and the downtown area too experienced major fires.
18. Cowell Beach: exactly where it is today, no surprise here.
19. Railroad Wharf: just to the west of the present Municipal Wharf (which was itself built in 1914, eight years after this picture). David Gharkey built the original wharf here in 1856, which became the Railroad Wharf after the South Pacific Coast Railroad bought it in 1875. The railroad tracks ran all the way out to the end of this wharf, which was torn down in 1922.
20. Boardwalk casino site: there's a picture in a historical exhibit, on the second floor of the present Casino, of the preceding building in flames on June 22, 1906. But within a week, a new wooden floor had been placed on top of the piers of the old Casino. And on June 30, the Boardwalk began erecting a tent over that floor as a temporary structure for the summer (per Bonnie Minford, Boardwalk archivist). It seems this picture was probably taken in the last week of June, between June 22 and June 30, since only a wooden floor is visible, not a building or tent. And perhaps George Lawrence was motivated to come over to Santa Cruz by the news of the Casino fire, just as the San Francisco earthquake and fire brought him out from Chicago.
21. (See photo below) Pleasure Pier: this pier at the Boardwalk was built in 1904 with a pipeline carrying seawater to the indoor pool in the plunge building. First called the Electric Pier, because it was lighted at night, it was demolished in 1965, when the plunge was converted to a miniature golf course.
22. Pacific Ave.: only the lower end of the street is visible in this picture, but you can see how the buildings line both sides of the street further up.
23. Chinatown: the Old Chinatown was between Pacific Ave. and the river, on the near side of this bridge.
24. Holy Cross Church: a puzzle, doesn't seem to appear in the photo. Perhaps it fell into the space between two frames, the separate frames don't match exactly.
25. Branciforte Ave. neighborhood: there were only three pueblos, or towns, in colonial California, and one of the three was Branciforte, right here. Oldest home still in use in Santa Cruz is an adobe building at north end of Branciforte Ave. The residents of Branciforte were apparently mostly ex-convicts, who used Branciforte Ave. as a horse racing track, to the scandal of the missionaries across the river. Perhaps that's why their settlement never quite rivaled San Jose or Los Angeles, the other two pueblos.
26. (See photo below) Loma Prieta: very distinctive outline of this mountain was clear in 1906, it was flattened at the top only for the radio and microwave towers there today. Bare clear cut hills are everywhere in the picture, the result of the first wave of logging in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
27. (See photo below) San Lorenzo River railroad bridge: probably the same bridge as now
28. (See photo below) Seacliff Beach: a very narrow strip of beach in 1906, and neighborhood inland quite undeveloped.
29. (See photo below) Yacht harbor: just a lagoon back then.
30. (See photo below) Eaton Ave. bridge: there was a bridge at this location, but not as high as the modern bridge.
31. (See photo below) Capitola: you can't see the town in the picture, it's hidden behind the cliff on this side.

The original copy of this panoramic photograph is in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. It can be downloaded from the Panoramic Photographs section of the Library of Congress website. Do a search there for "santa cruz lawrence" and then click the picture for download options.

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