Seacliff State Beach is a state beach park on

Monterey Bay Monterey Bay is a bay of the Pacific Ocean located on the coast of the U.S. state of California, south of the San Francisco Bay Area and its major city at the south of the bay, San Jose. San Francisco itself is further north along the coast, by ...

, in the town of Aptos,

Santa Cruz County, California Santa Cruz County (), officially the County of Santa Cruz, is a county on the Pacific coast of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 270,861. The county seat is Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz County comprises the San ...

. It is located off Highway 1 on State Park Drive, about 5 miles (8 km) south of Santa Cruz, . The beach is most known for the

concrete ship Concrete ships are built of steel and ferrocement (reinforced concrete) instead of more traditional materials, such as steel or wood. The advantage of ferrocement construction is that materials are cheap and readily available, while the disadvantag ...

SS ''Palo Alto'' lying in the water. North of Seacliff State Beach is New Brighton State Beach.

History

The beach was originally home to the Ohlone people. Spanish missionaries established the

Mission Santa Cruz Mission Santa Cruz (''La Misión de la Exaltación de la Santa Cruz'', which translates as the Mission of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross), was the twelfth of twenty-one Spanish missions in California (today's U.S. state), established by the Fr ...

about eight miles west of here. In 1821, when

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

gained independence from

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the area was divided up into land grants. The area of the beach was a part of the

Rancho Aptos Rancho Aptos was a Mexican land grant in present day Santa Cruz County, California given in 1833 by Governor José Figueroa to Rafael Castro. The grant on the Monterey Bay was immediately downcoast of his sister, Martina Castro's Rancho Soque ...

grant to Rafael Castro in 1833. Castro worked with

Claus Spreckels Adolph Claus J. Spreckels (July 9, 1828 – December 26, 1908) (his last name has also been misspelled as Spreckles) was a major industrialist in Hawai'i during the kingdom, republican and territorial periods of the islands' history. He also i ...

to establish the Castro-Spreckels wharf. The beach soon became a successful shipping port. The logging industry also thrived here with the local

coast redwood ''Sequoia sempervirens'' ()''Sunset Western Garden Book,'' 1995:606–607 is the sole living species of the genus '' Sequoia'' in the cypress family Cupressaceae (formerly treated in Taxodiaceae). Common names include coast redwood, coastal ...

trees. The port facilitated major trade with the Kingdom of Hawaii. In 1838, King Kamehameha III requested that Mexican

vaqueros The ''vaquero'' (; pt, vaqueiro, , ) is a horse-mounted livestock herder of a tradition that has its roots in the Iberian Peninsula and extensively developed in Mexico from a methodology brought to Latin America from Spain. The vaquero became t ...

from California travel to Hawaii to teach Hawaiians how to manage herds of wild cattle. Seacliff became a popular place to recruit vaqueros, who were known as

paniolo A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the '' vaquer ...

s by the Hawaiians. In the 1850s,

Thomas Fallon Thomas Fallon (1825–1885) an Irish-born Californian politician, best known for serving as 10th Mayor of San Jose. Fallon remains a controversial figure in San Jose's history, owing to his role in the American Conquest of California. Biogra ...

acquired part of the beach and turned it into a resort. He named this new resort "New Brighton", in honor of his favorite seaside resort in England. In the 1920s, after Claus Spreckels' death, sections of the beach were developed into the Seacliff Park and the Rio Del Mar Country Club. In 1930, the first California state grant for preserving land was granted for the beach and, in 1931, it became a state beach.

SS ''Palo Alto''

The beach's most notable feature is the

SS ''Palo Alto'' lying at the end of a

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. The ship was hauled to Seacliff Beach in 1929 and sunk and turned into an amusement center, complete with a dance floor, cafe, pool, and carnival booths. The Cal-Nevada Company constructed a dance floor on the main deck, a cafe in the superstructure of the ship, a 4-foot heated swimming pool and a series of carnival type concessions on the aft-deck. The Cal-Nevada Company went bankrupt after only two seasons and the ship was stripped. This left the pier and the ship used only for fishing. It is now permanently closed to the public. In the 2016-2017 storm season, a section of the ship overturned, and the pier damaged.

Animal and plant life

The beach is home to many types of birds and marine life, including mussels, ocean worms, sea stars, sea anemones, barnacles, rock crabs, harbor seals, anglers, flounder, mackerel, halibut, lingcod, perch, cabezon, jacksmelt, steelhead, anchovy, bocaccio (tomcod), kingfish, dark seabirds, sea lions, dolphins, harbor seals, sea otters and whales. The Palo Alto serves as a main place for marine life.

Recreation

Seacliff includes RV facilities, picnic tables, and fire pits. It is also a popular place for surfing and fishing.

External links

Seacliff State Beach
Official website

References