"My mother Dana Potter, moved to Santa Cruz in 1948 to run a florist and nursery business on Ocean Street," writes columnist Ross Eric Gibson. "Her parents, Poppy and Hopie Potter, decided to join her, driving from Maryland to Santa Cruz in a 1949 Chevy, calling themselves the new '49ers. They bought a home on West Cliff Drive, a neighborhood with a small population and a large number of vacant summer cottages."
"After the Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor attack, the entire town had succeeded in a Dec. 8 blackout, with the exception of the downtown, and a mysterious red light reported in Seabright," writes Local History columnist Ross Eric Gibson. The Seabright light turned out to be the Kelly Hotel sign viewed from a distance and was unplugged as downtown managed at last to extinguish all its lights."
"The San Francisco devastation was a horror to witness, as 10,000 Jewish families saw their South of Market working-class neighborhood utterly destroyed, leaving survivors almost completely destitute," writes Ross Eric Gibson.
"As the high school population grew, it was decided in 1891 to divide the students between Santa Cruz and Watsonville, where the county's second high school opened," writes Ross Eric Gibson. "But when the total Mission Hill School population grew to over 1,000, it was decided Santa Cruz High School needed its own building."
"There was much excitement in 1903 when it was learned that President Theodore Roosevelt would tour Santa Cruz on May 8, greeting the public before seeing his first redwoods during a picnic at Big Trees Grove (now Henry Cowell state park)," writes Ross Eric Gibson. "The presidential visit was expected to be a boon to business, and a promoter's dream with the national press in town, showing off the attractions of Santa Cruz."