Hames, Moran, Corcoran, Hihn, Rodriguez, Castro, Spreckels, Johans, Neary,Portola, Swanton, and Porter, just to name a few. These are some of the names that brought cattle, sweet potatoes, logging, apple farming, tanning, lime kilns, dairy farms, fishing or tourism to Santa Cruz County.
You can see a beautiful remnant of the lime industry here in Santa Cruz at Fall Creek Park in Felton. The plaster and mortar industry depended heavily on Santa Cruz lime kilns which barged the lime blocks up to San Francisco 75 miles away. The history of the lime industry is fascinating and now the old kilns are covered with moss and ferns and are lovely to see and imagine the workers and the hot fires that transformed the lime.
Sugar Beet farming began in Rio Del Mar
Claus Spreckels was another influential founder. In 1872 he purchased 1,500 acres of what is now Rio Del Mar, Seascape and parts of Aptos by Cathedral Dr. He paid about $81,000. He started with one dollar .
Claus was impacted by the turmoil of Europe growing up in Germany in the early 1930's and so left for the US. He arrived in America with a $1.00 and could speak no English. He found work in a grocery store for $4.00 a month! Yes, $4.00 a month. And he was allowed to sleep in the store. After 4 years he understood the grocery business and opened his own store. Not content with that success, he took the arduous journey to San Francisco and opened another grocery and a brewery! He sold the store for $50,000 and the brewery for $75,000 and found his way into the sugar business.
Would you work for $4.00 a month?
He experimented with the land he bought in Rio Del Mar and grew sugar beets. He built a refinery for the beets at what is now the Capitola Fire Station. The beets were shipped from Soquel Landing, which is now the Capitola Wharf.
Adolf Speckels accused of murdering co founder of the
San Francisco Chronicle
Claus fathered 13 children but only 5 reached adulthood. They married into the Mangels, Corcoran and Grosse families and built some beautiful homes in the area.
Find out why Claus' son Adolf, was acquitted of a charge of murdering the co founder of the San Francisco Chronicle with whom he was angry!
More to come on
The original Spanish Land Grants offered to only a few powerful families .
There were 16 Ranchos covering the Coast to the mountains.
When the Mexican government began giving the large Ranchos away, they were sold only to a few powerful families with long time ties. Later, the families, over time, sold off or leased pieces of the grants to developer luminaries and visionary farmers or men of industry.
Rancho Agua Puerca y las Trancas, or Dirty Water Rancho was the most northly including Swanton and Davenport.
Rancho Refugio connected the Western limits of the city of Santa Cruz to Davenport.
Rancho Canada del Rincon en el Rio San Lorenzo lay north of present day Santa Cruz along the San Lorenzo River.
Rancho Tres Ojos de Agua, or Three Springs, covered most of today's High Street in Santa Cruz.
Rancho Arroyo del Rodeo covered what is now Live Oak and Soquel.
The Castro Family owned Rancho Soquel, Rancho Aptos and Rancho San Andreas
which covered the coast from Watsonville to Rio Del Mar and Soquel.
