Santa Cruz County History - Making a Living

Dedication
by Barry Brown

This walking tour booklet is dedicated to the men, women, and children who lived, worked, and sometimes died here at the California Powder Works during its 50-year history.

Think of them as you stroll through the redwoods, along the San Lorenzo and across the covered bridge. Think of the area as it was in their time, as described by the Santa Cruz Sentinel in 1875:

"...immediately in front is the magnificent scenery of the San Lorenzo River, with its varied improvements of flume, two railroads and three graded wagon roads stretching ribbon-like along the hillside to the west of the works, where the hum of busy labor, crack of the teamster's whip and shriek of the locomotive send their mingled voices in echoes and re-echoes far away into the deep forest, to be lost where the plumy pines whisper in the evening breeze to the piping of mountain quail or chirping squirrel."

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>>Return to Home Page of The California Powder Works

dynamite, powder works, San Lorenzo River

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