1866 Santa Cruz map
The 1866 "Map of Santa Cruz" was commissioned by the town corporation's first Board of Trustees. Its original three members were Storer Field, Amasa Pray, and George Stevens. The surveying and map making job went to Solomon W. Foreman, a local civil engineer, and Thomas W. Wright, the County Surveyor.
The map is actually two maps, designated "A" and "B". Map B is drawn at a larger scale, and covers the entire town. UCSC Special Collections has the original map B, hand-drawn on linen. A digitized copy is viewable/downloadable (as of 2029-03-01) from Digital Collections.
Map A is smaller scale, and includes only the core downtown area. It includes parcel boundaries and owner names for parcels too small to display on Map B (more info below). MAH Archives has a blueprint copy of both maps from 1944. Details from those blueprint sheets are used on many pages in this wiki.
Along with creation of the maps, many streets shown on the map were given official names for the first time. The name of Willow Street was changed to Pacific Avenue, and Main Street was changed to Front Street. A Sentinel article ("The Official Survey of Santa Cruz", Santa Cruz Sentinel, Jun 23, 1866, 2:4) described the changes, adding that "Locust street, Cooper street and Church street, are unchanged in location or name."
Many other streets got official names for the first time, including:
- River ("the street passing the foundry, around the bluff towards the paper mill",
- Potrero ("the road leading past the entrance to the cemetery through the Potrero") - the northern half is now Evergreen Street,
- High ("the Limekiln road"),
- Water ("the San Jose road"),
- Mission ("the Coast road, from the Lower Plaza to Four Corners"),
- Union, Green, Cross (no previous names given)
- Rincon (the street at the base of the hill south of school lot").
The enlargement of the downtown core named "Map A" allowed the smaller parcels in the core area to be labeled with either property owner names or numbers correlated to a list. The Sentinel article included that list, divided into the map's 13 "blocks". For a complete list, see the "Persons on 1866 map" category. Boundary descriptions of the thirteen blocks were also published, as follows:
- BLOCK NO. 1. Bounded north by Mission Orchard; west by Upper Plaza; south by Mission street; east by River street.
- BLOCK NO. 2. Bounded north by High street (Lime-Kiln road); east by Upper Plaza; south by Mission and King streets; west by "Tres Ojos" Rancho.
- BLOCK NO. 3. Bounded north and westerly by Mission street; south bv Locust street; east by Rincon street [most of Rincon is now Chestnut], subdivided by Union, Green, Cross and Spring Streets [Note: this is not today's Spring Street. The earlier block-long street paralleled Green between Rincon and Cross - it disappeared when the cut was made for the Mission Hill railroad tunnel.]
- BLOCK NO. 4. Bounded east by Pacific Avenue (formerly Willow street); north by Mission street; north westerly by Rincon street); south by Locust street.
- BLOCK NO. 5. Bounded south by Cooper street; east by Front street (formerly Main street); west by Pacific Avenue (a triangular lot).
- BLOCK NO. 6. Bounded south by Water street (San Jose Road); north bv Imus' lands; west by River street (Powder Mill Road). Owned by Elihu Anthony, residence.
- BLOCK NO. 7. Bounded east by the San Lorenzo river; north by Water street; west by Front street; southwesterly by Cooper street.
- BLOCK NO. 8. Bounded south by Bridge street [now Soquel Ave.]; east by Cooper street; north by Front street.
- BLOCK NO. 9. Bounded west by Pacific Avenue; south by Bridge street; east by Front street; north by Cooper street.
- BLOCK NO. 10. Bounded east bv Pacific Avenue; north by Locust street; west by Rincon street; south by Lincoln street.
- BLOCK NO. 11. Bounded east by Rincon street; north by Locust street; west by Mission street; south by Lincoln street.
- BLOCK NO. 12. Bounded on the east by Pacific Avenue; north by Lincoln street; south by Laurel street.
- BLOCK NO. 13. Bounded west by Pacific Avenue; south and east by San Lorenzo river; north by Bridge street.
On the north and west, the town boundaries were constrained by the borders of Rancho Refugio (west) and Rancho Cañada del Rincón en el Rio San Lorenzo (west and north). Instead of following Moore Creek as the original rancho boundary did, however, the town incorporation line is a straight north-south line that left sections of the meandering creek on either side. This boundary adjustment probably happened before 1866. The detail at right, from the County GISWeb website, shows the area around today's Moore Creek above and below Antonelli Pond. The north-south red line is the approximate 1866 boundary. GIS mapping has error tolerances in most locations of about 20 feet plus/minus, and it looks like the actual line was at the fairly-long light gray parcel boundary running through part of Natural Bridges State Beach (the gray line can be seen to the west of and parallel to the red line).
On the east, the town boundary was set at the north-south section line that crosses today's Ocean Street and aligns closely with the first few blocks of Market Street (from Water Street to Washburn Avenue). Either that section line was, at that time, where privately-owned parcel boundaries lined up north-to-south, or else the map boundary cuts through parcels. Except on that one section of Market Street, today's parcel boundaries don't lie along the section line. The eastern town boundary was also near the poorly-defined western boundary of the Villa de Branciforte, which was never formally mapped. The area was annexed into the city in 1905.