For more than 2,000,000 visitors a year, Santa Cruz means FUN—fun in the indigo-dark water, fun on the fine white beach, fun ashore.
San Lorenzo Canyon, which begins a bare stone’s throw from Santa Cruz, is full of summer homes and resorts, including one famous inn where a mountain stream runs through the dining room.
This ancient span, moved from original site to DeLaveaga Park, in Santa Cruz, recalls times when horsepower was really horses.
Color beyond description decks bulb farms near Capitola each autumn, well justifies the name “Begonia Capital of the World.”
Up this canyon, too, is the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, better known as “The Santa Cruz Big Trees.” The park comprises nearly 20,000 acres, but the “Big Trees” are a compact group, which may be seen in an easy walk of about a mile.
Farther north is Big Basin Redwoods Park, the oldest and largest of the State Park system, with many virgin growth trees and an interesting “Nature Lodge” which shows, besides flora and fauna of the park, the methods used in early day redwood lumbering.
