Names on the Signs in Santa Cruz: Mills and Tanneries

During the 1850s, Santa Cruz began to lose its sleepy old-California look and acquire more of the characteristics of an American town. Although Santa Cruz was not incorporated as a city until 1866, Santa Cruz County came into being right after statehood in 1850 (remember that it was at first named Branciforte County). During the five-plus boom years of the Gold Rush, new buildings sprang up all over today’s downtown area. Several businesses related to metal and woodworking opened on Elihu Anthony’s riverside property.

The lower town’s first hotels and stables (the parking garages of their day) were nearby. Better-constructed residences also began to appear. William Blackburn’s house, built in about 1854, is probably the oldest surviving wood-frame structure in town.

Up the hill in today’s near Westside, early industrial operations took advantage of the year-round running water in creeks fed by the Tres Ojos de Agua.  These three springs had previously been tapped to provide water for Mission Santa Cruz and its operations. The padres built an in-ground stone-lined aqueduct from the springs across the terrace to the Mission premises.

A service road built next to the aqueduct became today’s High Street. Nothing remains today of that original water system, but you can see the remains of a similar (more elaborate) system at Mission Santa Barbara. The new businesses, including two (or maybe three) grist mills and a tannery, were built along the creeks themselves instead of using water from the aqueduct.

The Tres Ojos de Agua were included in one of the last and smallest Mexican land grants in California. The grantee was Nicolas Dodero, an Italian-born sailor who left his ship in Yerba Buena (San Francisco) and moved “over the hill” from San Jose sometime after the 1844 grant. Some sources credit Dodero with building a grist mill, but they may be confusing it with the Majors mill. It’s hard to find Dodero’s name on any signs today. A dead-end, unpaved Westside alley is named Dodero Street, but there’s no street sign. One of the small Tres Ojos creeks is named Dodero Creek, but only on the city’s creek management maps.

Former frontiersman Joseph Majors (see earlier post) had already come down from Rancho San Agustin to build a new mill on upper Santa Cruz (now Laurel, once Majors) Creek, near today’s Laurel/Escalona junction. (mea culpa here: in a previous post I had Majors’ Mill located at the old Mission mill site, farther downstream. That mill was operated by Eli Moore - more on him later).

On the hill above the mill, Majors built his Santa Cruz home. Today’s Majors Street runs along one side of Westlake, which was created by damming the spring and is the source of Laurel Creek. The spring-fed creeks have mostly been channelized and/or undergrounded these days, but you can see a “wild” bit of Laurel Creek from the deck at Emily’s Bakery on Mission Street, or at the Babbling Brook Inn. In the Babbling Brook garden is a replica wooden waterwheel similar to some that may have been used in the area.

A third early Westside entrepreneur was Richard C. Kirby, an Englishman who built his first tannery up in “Squabble Hollow”, whose later residents apparently found inner peace and renamed the area Happy Valley. In 1854, he moved his operation to the former location of the old Mission tannery, near the eastern end of today’s Escalona Drive. The site was supplied with water by a flume coming down the hill from the nearby aqueduct. Today’s Kirby Street is in the general area. These days, Kirby’s wife is better known than he is. The former Georgiana Bruce married Kirby in 1852 and went on to become, along with her friend Eliza Farnham, a leading local social reformer. The Georgiana Bruce Kirby Preparatory School is named in her honor.

Kirby’s Westside operation opened just two years before another tannery in town. The Grove Tannery, operated by William Warren and James Duncan, opened in 1856. Although initially much smaller than Kirby’s, the tannery survived several floods and ownership changes to become Salz Leathers, which survived until 2001. Several of the old tannery buildings have been restored and incorporated into the Tannery Arts Center. In a future post, we'll find some other grist/flour mills and tanneries that were built around the county during this period.

Santa Cruz, especially the near Westside, is rich in streets and other features named for residents who arrived here during the 1850s. In most cases, the streets are at least in the general area where those folks lived or worked. For that reason, we can expect to be revisiting the area soon to find the names on the signs.