Santa Cruz County History Digest

A new exhibit opening April 12 at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History tells the story of Filipino migration and labor in Watsonville and the greater Pajaro Valley from the 1930s to the present.

A celebration of Women’s History Month highlighting 15 Santa Cruz County women.

In a celebration of the old and the new the theme of the upcoming Santa Cruz County Fair September 11-14 will be "Pioneer Days and Modern Ways."

Members of the board gathered to put forward a resolution that takes responsibility for the history of discrimination against Black San Franciscans.

She toured the world wowing audiences, and she captured the public’s imagination for decades. No, not Taylor Swift; Ellen Beach Yaw, also known as Lark Ellen.

An extinct species of walrus was unearthed in Santa Cruz County, evoking a time when California was teeming with odd creatures that feel closer to fantasy than reality, researchers said.

James Dean’s last stop before he died in a car crash was at Blackwell’s Corner, a gas station in rural Kern County. His memory isn’t the draw it once was.

Lawmakers introduced a package of bills designed to tackle some forms of reparations. The measures may face budget constraints and opposition.

The California Legislative Black Caucus released a list of 14 bills as a first set of reparations for the descendants of African Americans who were enslaved.

Pea Soup Andersen’s, a Buellton, Calif., restaurant just shy of its 100th birthday, closed suddenly. The restaurant's other location, near Interstate 5 in Santa Nella, remains open.

With the fate of the twin-trunked redwood tree on Walnut Avenue to be decided by the Santa Cruz City Council, the appellant of the heritage tree's removal will hold a fundraiser Jan. 6 to help protect it.

Under new state laws, five cities will test cameras to catch speeding drivers and cruising bans will be lifted statewide. The first is supposed to improve road safety, but critics of the second say it will endanger the public.

State audits of the University of California and the California State University found both systems have failed to comply with decades-old state and federal laws mandating the return of Native ancestral remains and cultural artifacts. Only UCLA and Cal State Long Beach have returned a majority of their collections.

The Hoopa Valley Tribe announced it is acquiring about 10,000 acres of land in Northern California for $14.1 million. As part of this, the tribe will remove dams along the Klamath River and restore salmon runs.

Water fights have shaped California since its infancy as a state, when its abundance seemed limitless. Now, Californians are being forced to confront limitations, and the state that prides itself on creating the future is now reckoning with its past.

The Fort Independence Indian Community is getting the Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife at no cost in 2024. Native Americans had lived on this land for centuries before the hatchery’s construction.

Political wonks in California, Florida and maybe a few states in between, will be glued to their screens Thursday night to watch Gov. Gavin Newsom and Gov. Ron Desantis square off in a highly-anticipated Blue vs. Red State debate that’s been brewing since the summer.

Hundreds of people are expected at Alcatraz on Thanksgiving morning to commemorate Native Americans occupying the island from 1969-71. The event is known as the Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Gathering.

A statue of Miwok elder William J. Franklin has been installed on California State Capitol grounds. The monument replaces a statue of Father Junípero Serra, which protestors toppled in 2020.

Tribes like the Muwekma Ohlone have been asking UC Berkeley for decades to give back ancestral remains from burial sites around the Bay Area. The school is in the process of repatriating 4,400 remains and 25,000 tribal items.

Robert Irwin, an artist and MacArthur genius grant recipient, died in San Diego at 95 on Oct. 25. Michael Govan, who heads the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, offers a colorful retrospective on Irwin's work.

De Anza College is the latest Bay Area institution where students, faculty and community members are pushing for a name change to honor indigenous people who were harmed and pushed out by Spanish colonizers several centuries ago.

Camille Dixon, the announcer for Disney California Adventure, and her husband, Bill Rogers, the voice of Disneyland, are moving on from this work. They have been at the parks for more than 40 years combined.

Looking at a dearth of accessible textbooks reflecting the diversity of Chicano/Latino/Mexican American/Latinx lives, two local professors set out to write one.

The center has been helping families in Santa Cruz County since 1933 albeit originally as the YWCA.

Like a lot of Holocaust survivors, Gitta Ryle could not talk about her experiences for several decades after World War II ended.

Santa Cruz Skateboards is marking 50 years with skate sessions at three skateparks and a concert by Dinosaur Jr.

The pandemic impacted plans to celebrate, but the 2021 wines are being released now with a 40th anniversary ribbon.

California wildfires every year emit as much carbon as almost 2 million cars, posing a threat to efforts to battle climate change.

Linda Burman-Hall, an ethnomusicologist, musician and longtime UC Santa Cruz professor who brought the annual Baroque Festival to town, died suddenly while traveling in Malaysia. She was 78.

“Every town is interesting,” said John Hibble, co-executive director of the Aptos Chamber of Commerce, “but Aptos is the cream of the crop.”

In a new study published Aug. 17 in the journal Science, fossil records at La Brea Tar Pits indicate that the disappearance of California’s sabertooth cats, dire wolves and other large mammals nearly 13,000 years ago was linked to rising temperatures and fire activity spurred by people.