Ross Eric Gibson

“After the Civil War, the beachfront was becoming a tourist attraction with resort boarding houses forming a modest tourist economy,” writes columnist Ross Eric Gibson. “At the same time, downtown Santa Cruz rebuilt after…

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... The 1932 Californians, members from left: Frank Leanasio, Dick Lane, Marion Little, John

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... The 1894 Cope Rowhouse as it looked in the early 1970s, a lost cause turned into a successful restoration. (Ross Eric Gibson collection)

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Harvey E. West, 1894 to 1979, made a search for meaning. (Courtesy West family)

On March 26, 1917, a train pulled under the Spanish Arches over Beach Street, pulling two special pullman sleepers and a baggage car. It carried the most celebrated troop of juvenile players in the world, founded by the Franklin Brothers,…

One morning in 1875, the Pescadero Stage Coach was waiting in front of Wm. Anthony's Tinwares Shop at the foot of Mission Hill Grade. Billy Bias, the whip, was wiping the dust off the upholstered seats in the coach when a man with his young son emerge

Capitola is about to get a female surfer sculpture, so here is a history of Santa Cruz County women surfers.Santa Cruz is the first mainland surfing culture known outside of Hawaii. In 1885, three royal Hawaiian princes named David,…

President Theodore Roosevelt scheduled a visit to Santa Cruz for May 8, 1903, and townsfolk now saw the waterfront's barnlike architecture and weed-choked vacant lots and decided some quick improvements were needed. They

On May 13, 1789, California's Spanish Governor Pedro Fages, sent a letter marked “Confidential” to Comandante Jose Arguello at the San Francisco presidio. Fages cautioned that a vessel named “Columbia”, under protection of the U.S. President George Washington, was moving

Austin D. Houghton, and later his son-in-law Lee Dill Esty, and his partner C.J. Ryland, had interesting architectural careers that led to Santa Cruz. Austin D. Houghton was born in 1865 and grew up on a farm in Fort Fairfield, Maine, with brothers Emmons, George