Seabright, located atop towering sandstone cliffs and bordered by the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor and San Lorenzo Point, overlooks the famous Santa Cruz Boardwalk and a state beach where locals and lifeguards have performed many valiant acts of ocean rescue. Originally a Victorian-era campground, the neighborhood features special amenities, including a natural history museum, thanks to a long tradition of community activism. The creation of the Santa Cruz Harbor in the 1960s completed Seabright’s transition from a summer resort to a year-round neighborhood. The beach doubled in size due to the littoral drift of sand blocked by the harbor seawall, protecting the vulnerable cliffs from the assault of winter waves.

Randall Brown, a historian with an extensive background in water resources and land use, authored the compelling The San Lorenzo Valley Water District—A History. Traci Bliss, an award-winning emerita professor of education, is the fifth generation of the Bliss family to live in Santa Cruz. At age eight, she began bodysurfing at Seabright’s Pinnacle Rock. Brown and Bliss have compiled photographs from local and state libraries; museums; family collections; clubs; businesses; the University of California, Santa Cruz; the Santa Cruz Port District; and the Seabright Neighborhood Association.

Created in 1858, the Evergreen Cemetery provided a final resting place for a multitude of Santa Cruz’s adventurers, entrepreneurs and artists. The land was a gift from the Imus family, who’d narrowly escaped the fate of the Donner Party more than a decade earlier and had already buried two of their own. Alongside these pioneers, the community buried many other notables, including London Nelson, an emancipated slave turned farmer who left his land to the city schools, and journalist Belle Dormer, who covered a visit by President Benjamin Harrison and the women’s suffrage movement. Join Traci Bliss and Randall Brown as they bring to life the tragedies and triumphs of the diverse men and women interred at Evergreen Cemetery.