Blog: Names on the Signs in Santa Cruz: More 1850s Names

Although the business of the brand new County of Santa Cruz was getting underway in the early 1850s, there were still no incorporated towns or other government structure. The Villa de Branciforte had never become more than a street with a few houses. Roads were still so few that they didn’t need official names. As we have seen, however, it was during these years that many Names on the Signs first arrived in the area. Here are three more.

William Waddell was a Kentuckian who arrived in the county in 1851. In the succeeding years, Waddell built four sawmills in four different lumbering areas. The last of these was built, in 1861, way up near what eventually became the northern boundary of the County, on the creek that commemorates his name. At one time, there was a community along the creek named Waddell but it disappeared with the decline of the timber industry, as did so many other small timber-related settlements. Today we know Waddell Creek as a good place for wind-surfing, bird-watching and hiking.

Maine native Hiram Scott was another of those sailors who jumped ship in Monterey and ended up here. Scott arrived in 1846, ten or so years later than the three mentioned in an earlier post. He left for the gold mines in 1848 and apparently found some of the shiny stuff, for he came back to buy Rancho San Agustin from Joseph Majors in 1850.

Scott immediately began building a home for himself and his family, who followed him to California in 1853. The Scott House still stands, one of the oldest wood-frame structures in the county, in the city of Scotts Valley. The odd spelling of ‘Scotts’, without an apostrophe, continues to confuse visitors to our county.

Porter is a prominent mid-county name dating from those years.  Benjamin F. Porter, his brother Edward and several cousins arrived from Vermont in 1853-54. Ben Porter was a tanner by trade and built a tannery operation on the creek (near Cabrillo College) that bears his name. Brother “Ned” Porter opened the first mercantile store in Soquel village, just as the timber/lumber industry was taking off.

The main street of Soquel today is Porter Street, and the local library is named Porter Memorial. Descendants of the first Porters became prominent philanthropists, especially supportive of education. Because of that, there’s now a Porter College at UCSC.