A coastal walk hits the historical high spots
Surfing was introduced to the U.S. mainland in 1885, when three visiting Hawaiian princes paddled into the waves off Santa Cruz’s Main Beach. Santa Cruz is also the longtime home of Jack O’Neill, inventor of the wetsuit, and the site of O’Neill’s original surf shop.
Santa Cruz is rightfully proud of its surfing heritage, and has identified a number of significant sites with historical markers and public art.
A half dozen surf-history destinations are located along a half-mile stretch ofWest Cliff Drive — a scenic walk anchored at one end by a fine little museum, and at the other by a beachfront lounge dedicated to wetsuit pioneer Jack O’Neill.
The Santa Cruz Surfing Museum occupies the ground floor of the Mark Abbott Memorial Lighthouse. This tiny, charming museum offers a wealth of classic surfboards, wetsuits and local surfing photographs arranged by decade, from the 1920s to the present. Among other revelations, you may discover that the 1970s were the decade with the worst hairstyles for men, hands down.
Step outside the museum door to view a bronze plaque honoring the Hawaiian princes who were the first to surf the California coastline, in 1885.
The three boys, scions of the Hawaiian royal family, were enrolled in a military school in San Mateo when they came to Santa Cruz for vacation. The three paddled out near the mouth of the San Lorenzo River on 15-footlong redwood boards, introducing a sport that is now inextricably embedded in local culture. The bronze plaque was commissioned and donated to the city of Santa Cruz by the Hawaiian royal family in 2009.
Head toward the MunicipalWharf, and check out the cluster of memorials at the top of the stairway at the surf break known as Indicators. These heartfelt, unofficial remembrances honor members of the surfing community, some of whom died while surfing the nearby waters. Look for a slatted wooden sign outlining the four commandments of surfing: The first surfer on the wave has right of way, paddle around the wave and not through it, hang on to your board, and help other surfers.
A few steps farther along theWest Cliff Drive multiuse pathway is the Surfer Statue, a heroic bronze figure of a longboard-toting youth, officially titled “To Honor Surfing.” The statue stands with its back to the ocean in an alcove dotted with memorial plaques. The plaques honor the statue’s donors as well as founding members of the
Santa Cruz Surfing Club, circa 1936, who inspired the monument. The statue, installed in 1992, is a neighborhood favorite frequently (and illegally) embellished for the holidays with a pumpkin head, Santa hat or holiday lights.
Near the base of the Surfer Statue is a bronze memorial dedicating Santa Cruz as a World Surfing Reserve. The honor, bestowed in 2012 by the Save the Waves Coalition, recognizes 7 miles of surfer- and wildlife-friendly coastline, stretching from Pleasure Point at the south end to Natural Bridges State Park at the north. The designation made Santa Cruz the fourth World Surfing Reserve, part of an exclusive group also including Malibu Beach near Los Angeles, Manly Beach in Australia, and Ericeira in Portugal.
Precisely 0.7 mile from the Abbot Lighthouse, the Dream Inn hotel overlooks Cowell Beach and the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf. Cowell Beach is known as a safe spot for novice surfers, and in the 1930s was home to the clubhouse and board shack of the Santa Cruz Surfing Club.
Surfing experienced a lull during and after World War II, when many of the young surfers were shipped overseas to fight. But in 1959, Jack O’Neill brought his family to Santa Cruz and opened the first O’Neill Surf Shop in a former real estate office next to Cowell Beach. O’Neill is credited with inventing the first neoprene “surfing suit,” and went on to found the international wetsuit and sportswear company that bears his name.
The wetsuit revolutionized surfing by making it possible to linger in the frigid Pacific surf without risking hypothermia, opening the sport to a wider range of athletes and coldwater surf breaks.
In the early 1960s, the Cowell Beach area was known as Boys’ Town for the crowds of youths that made Jack’s shop their clubhouse and the beach their playground.
O’Neill’s original surf shack was uprooted and moved to a private property in Scotts Valley when the Dream Inn was built. O’Neill himself, now in his 80s, still lives in a beachfront home in Pleasure Point, an unincorporated community between Santa Cruz and Capitola.
A couple of years ago, O’Neill Inc. partnered with the Dream Inn and the city of Santa Cruz to create a public mural and historical markers celebrating the significance of the surf shop site. The mural’s largerthan-life images, show photographs from the shop’s Boys’ Town era, examples of the first generation of O’Neill wetsuits, and iconic photographs of Jack O’Neill wearing his signature black eye-patch. The images are reproduced on sheets of porcelain-coated steel expected to endure for decades.
The O’Neill Surf Shop mural and historical plaque were unveiled this year, along with the new Jack O’Neill Lounge, just steps away in the Dream Inn’s Aquarius restaurant. The lounge displays surf artifacts, including a vintage O’Neill wetsuit and surfboard, and numerous framed photographs from the O’Neill family collection.
After a refreshing seaside walk, it’s nice to settle into one of the lounge’s wicker chairs and order up a Legend martini, Jack’s favorite cocktail, from a list of O’Neill-themed drinks. The view of Cowell Beach from the lounge is incomparable, and as Jack is fond of saying, “It’s always summer on the inside.”