ARTICLE
The 1960s — New Harbor, New College, and Chamber Support The 1960s were a changing and challenging time for America as the unwanted Vietnam War continued to escalate throughout the decade and into the 1970s. In 1963, Santa Cruz Harbor was completed. The Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce helped prepare the plan for the harbor, and secure funds from Congress. This Harbor was a long time coming, for shipping out of Santa Cruz was nonexistent and in 1946, Congress approved Santa Cruz to build a harbor. And finally in 1962, the building project began. Today the Harbor is home to O’Neill Sea Odyssey, the Sea Scouts, Save Our Shores and UCSC youth sailing programs. In 1965 The University of California Santa Cruz officially opened its doors. With the opening of the campus, new political and lifestyle trends entered Santa Cruz. The first batch of students were a group of only 652. Cost overruns did delay the construction of the first college, Cowell, so the students all lived in trailers. By 1967, Cowell, Stevenson, and Crown colleges were completed. The idea behind smaller colleges throughout the campus was to create close intimate contact between the students and their professors, while still having the feel of a larger institution. In the Spring of 1965 the US Army had sent 3,500 combat troops into Vietnam, hardly enough to make most students sit up and take notice, but then deployment grew to 175,000 by the end of that year and to 350,000 by mid-1966; in the next few years, that number would grow to over half a million. This huge build-up was accompanied by a massive bombing campaign that was graphically portrayed on television for everyone to see. By the end of the first academic year, the nicely dressed and well-mannered students had become long-haired, scruffy, militant, and strongly opposed to the Vietnam War. The possibility of being drafted, the fate of loved ones who were sent to Vietnam, and the seeming futility of the war became burning issues over the next few years. So did continuing concerns with civil rights, the environment, feminism, and the plight of low-paid farm laborers, leading some of the most politically committed students to work in César Chávez's long struggle to create the United Farm Workers through the use of strategic nonviolence and boycotts. The political unrest of the 60s spilled into the Santa Cruz community and that shift moved the politics from the middle to the left. That shift was a systematic change that defined the next 40 years of Santa Cruz. The Chamber continued to be the lead voice of Santa Cruz tourism, promoting visitors to come to Santa Cruz to experience the great beaches and environment. In 1966 the Chamber founded the Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), and opened a visitor’s Kiosk, located at the corner of Ocean Street and Dakota Avenue. The Kiosk’s purpose was to answer tourists’ questions who were visiting Santa Cruz. The CVB was a part of the Chamber until 1977. During the 1970s, environmental movements started to launch after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published in the 1960s as well as the huge oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969. The Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce became a lead business supporter for promoting and protecting the Monterey Bay and in 1977, the Chamber worked with City officials and developed a master environmental impact report for the city. Santa Cruz is also home to the non-profit environmental organization and long-time Chamber member, Ecology Action, which was founded by Cliff Humphrey on the Nation first Earth Day in 1970. By 1971, Ecology Action launched Santa Cruz’s first recycling center. As well as being a supporter for environmental stewardship in Santa Cruz County, the Chamber helped develop historical preservation ordinances in order to protect the city’s historic and architectural resources. In efforts to maintain support for local developing businesses, in 1975 the Chamber set up a local development corporation. This led to the Chamber helping fund facilities for small industries and free counseling services and classes for small businesses during the seventies. The 1964 General Plan anticipated major freeways running through the city and connecting to the beachfront areas, a major new University of California campus, a population of 100,000 by 1985 (it is now about 63,789 estimated by the California Dept. of Finance 2016), and major hotel development along the ocean front from the Municipal Wharf near the boardwalk to Lighthouse Field about a mile away. A major development for Lighthouse Field (to consist of a Hilton Hotel, convention center, shopping center, and housing project) was actively pursued into the early 1970s. The City’s leadership at that time was closely allied with the business leadership and welcomed not only the independent growth of Santa Cruz but its close integration, through a freeway (Highway 17) over the mountains to connect with the Santa Clara Valley (now Silicon Valley). The land value and proximity to the coast line is a benchmark for setting the market demand for the development in an alternate use. However, the political possibility of converting land was about to shift. The movement to slow growth and urban boundaries started with those opposed and won on the land use issue to stop the convention center project on West Cliff. When the Santa Cruz growth coalition put forth its plans to widen highways, build new access roads to the beach and boardwalk area, and expand the downtown, it faced an unexpected challenge from a faculty-staff-student coalition that joined with neighborhood activists and environmentalists to tip the political scales against growth. However, not all members of the university community supported the gradually coalescing opponents of the growth coalition. Most top administrators, many with close ties to the Chamber, opposed the new turn of events. They had neither desired nor anticipated the activism that emerged. Moreover, the university administration itself was viewed as part of the growth coalition by some faculty and many students because it had its own growth agenda, which would have a major impact on downtown infrastructure and the availability of housing. In 1978, the Chamber was engulfed in the debate to limit housing as well as a cap on growth in the county. Throughout much of the 1960s, the vision for Santa Cruz had been based on the desire for growth. The success of Measure J and Measure O in the late 1970s in the City of Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz County set the stage for all land use decisions in the region for the next 40 years. The debates on housing and transportation continues to dominate the political and policy agenda as Santa Cruz ebbs and flows with new residents, job creation and potential growth at the University and longtime residents who are opposed to growth of our region. In 1975 the first woman president, Judy Sadlier, was elected to lead the Chamber of Commerce. Throughout the 70’s and into the 80’s, the Chamber continued its involvement in the Miss California Pageant. Many changes arose in the event, such as television coverage, and a growing opposition from women’s groups who did not support the pageant. The Chamber helped respond to the changes as they came. By 1985, the Miss California Pageant moved down to San Diego, one of the reasons being the protests. Santa Cruz’s first gay pride celebration was in 1975, but due to complications and public controversy, the first actual parade was in 1976. Although the first few parades were subject to protestors, Santa Cruz was the first county in the Nation to adopt gay non-discrimination for its employees in 1975. The University of California Santa Cruz played a big factor in the many activist groups appearing in Santa Cruz. For instance, in 1970 the students were having many of their spring classes canceled or rescheduled to focus on Vietnam War issues. Students participated in burning draft cards in Quarry Plaza as well as other protests. It is clear these movements and shifts in politics have shaped Santa Cruz today and continue to shape it. The neighborhood and environmental activists received their biggest boost from an especially activist core of university faculty and students in a new and unique undergraduate department, Community Studies, created in 1969 to allow its majors to focus their attention on local communities. With its special emphasis on the social circumstances and cultures of low-income or marginalized people, it was a natural ally of any beleaguered neighborhood. It not only focused on the community level, but it also emphasized internships and field studies, forms of participant learning that had slowly gained acceptance within universities over the decades as a way to learn through practical experience and at the same time earn academic credit. It was the first fully funded program of its kind in an American university, and it had few imitators thereafter. The fact that Community Studies students, and not the faculty, chose their field sites made it possible for some of them to become active participants in the political activities taking place in Santa Cruz, despite protests about their presence from the downtown business community and elected officials — those protests were brushed aside, however reluctantly, by top university administrators. Although most students chose sites outside of Santa Cruz, including many in foreign countries, the program nonetheless provided tens of thousands of hours of organizing and staff support for the efforts of a wide range of activist and nonprofit groups in Santa Cruz, non-electoral and electoral, for the next two decades. Between 1969 and 1990, over 1,000 students did field studies in Santa Cruz County, mostly in nonprofit service organizations, but many in political and advocacy groups. Dozens of these students went on to become top leaders in activist groups throughout the country. Two became city managers in Northern California cities, another served as the mayor of San Jose from 1999 to 2006, and two became mayors of Santa Cruz. The 1960s and 1970s decades were the pivotal point in local political landscape in Santa Cruz County. During those two decades, the fundamentals of change were established that produced the ‘progressive movement’ that still influences local and county policy decisions. The early 1970s were a strange mix of both cultural changes with the influx of students attending Cabrillo College and UCSC, the mix of the new age movement where Santa Cruz was seen as a safe haven to enjoy an alternative lifestyle. As the 1970s were coming to an end, national politics were about to move in the opposite direction, influenced by a slowing economy and unrest in the Middle East. In the wake of a successful revolution by Islamic fundamentalists against the pro-American Shah of Iran, the United States became an object of virulent criticism and the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was a visible target. On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the embassy and detained more than 50 Americans as hostages. The Iranians held the American diplomats hostage for 444 days. The Iran hostage crisis undermined President Carter’s conduct of foreign policy. The crisis dominated the headlines and news broadcasts and made the Administration look weak and ineffectual. The decisive shift in policy and politics in Washington DC would be the mirror opposite played out in Santa Cruz County. Stay tuned to learn how that shift impacted this region in the 1980s.
The 1960s — New Harbor, New College, and Chamber Support
The 1960s were a changing and challenging time for America as the unwanted Vietnam War continued to escalate throughout the decade and into the 1970s.
In 1963, Santa Cruz Harbor was completed. The Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce helped prepare the plan for the harbor, and secure funds from Congress. This Harbor was a long time coming, for shipping out of Santa Cruz was nonexistent and in 1946, Congress approved Santa Cruz to build a harbor. And finally in 1962, the building project began. Today the Harbor is home to O’Neill Sea Odyssey, the Sea Scouts, Save Our Shores and UCSC youth sailing programs.
In 1965 The University of California Santa Cruz officially opened its doors. With the opening of the campus, new political and lifestyle trends entered Santa Cruz. The first batch of students were a group of only 652. Cost overruns did delay the construction of the first college, Cowell, so the students all lived in trailers. By 1967, Cowell, Stevenson, and Crown colleges were completed. The idea behind smaller colleges throughout the campus was to create close intimate contact between the students and their professors, while still having the feel of a larger institution.
In the Spring of 1965 the US Army had sent 3,500 combat troops into Vietnam, hardly enough to make most students sit up and take notice, but then deployment grew to 175,000 by the end of that year and to 350,000 by mid-1966; in the next few years, that number would grow to over half a million. This huge build-up was accompanied by a massive bombing campaign that was graphically portrayed on television for everyone to see. By the end of the first academic year, the nicely dressed and well-mannered students had become long-haired, scruffy, militant, and strongly opposed to the Vietnam War. The possibility of being drafted, the fate of loved ones who were sent to Vietnam, and the seeming futility of the war became burning issues over the next few years. So did continuing concerns with civil rights, the environment, feminism, and the plight of low-paid farm laborers, leading some of the most politically committed students to work in César Chávez's long struggle to create the United Farm Workers through the use of strategic nonviolence and boycotts.
The political unrest of the 60s spilled into the Santa Cruz community and that shift moved the politics from the middle to the left. That shift was a systematic change that defined the next 40 years of Santa Cruz.
The Chamber continued to be the lead voice of Santa Cruz tourism, promoting visitors to come to Santa Cruz to experience the great beaches and environment. In 1966 the Chamber founded the Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), and opened a visitor’s Kiosk, located at the corner of Ocean Street and Dakota Avenue. The Kiosk’s purpose was to answer tourists’ questions who were visiting Santa Cruz. The CVB was a part of the Chamber until 1977. During the 1970s, environmental movements started to launch after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published in the 1960s as well as the huge oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969. The Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce became a lead business supporter for promoting and protecting the Monterey Bay and in 1977, the Chamber worked with City officials and developed a master environmental impact report for the city. Santa Cruz is also home to the non-profit environmental organization and long-time Chamber member, Ecology Action, which was founded by Cliff Humphrey on the Nation first Earth Day in 1970. By 1971, Ecology Action launched Santa Cruz’s first recycling center. As well as being a supporter for environmental stewardship in Santa Cruz County, the Chamber helped develop historical preservation ordinances in order to protect the city’s historic and architectural resources. In efforts to maintain support for local developing businesses, in 1975 the Chamber set up a local development corporation. This led to the Chamber helping fund facilities for small industries and free counseling services and classes for small businesses during the seventies. The 1964 General Plan anticipated major freeways running through the city and connecting to the beachfront areas, a major new University of California campus, a population of 100,000 by 1985 (it is now about 63,789 estimated by the California Dept. of Finance 2016), and major hotel development along the ocean front from the Municipal Wharf near the boardwalk to Lighthouse Field about a mile away.
A major development for Lighthouse Field (to consist of a Hilton Hotel, convention center, shopping center, and housing project) was actively pursued into the early 1970s. The City’s leadership at that time was closely allied with the business leadership and welcomed not only the independent growth of Santa Cruz but its close integration, through a freeway (Highway 17) over the mountains to connect with the Santa Clara Valley (now Silicon Valley). The land value and proximity to the coast line is a benchmark for setting the market demand for the development in an alternate use. However, the political possibility of converting land was about to shift. The movement to slow growth and urban boundaries started with those opposed and won on the land use issue to stop the convention center project on West Cliff.
When the Santa Cruz growth coalition put forth its plans to widen highways, build new access roads to the beach and boardwalk area, and expand the downtown, it faced an unexpected challenge from a faculty-staff-student coalition that joined with neighborhood activists and environmentalists to tip the political scales against growth.
However, not all members of the university community supported the gradually coalescing opponents of the growth coalition. Most top administrators, many with close ties to the Chamber, opposed the new turn of events. They had neither desired nor anticipated the activism that emerged. Moreover, the university administration itself was viewed as part of the growth coalition by some faculty and many students because it had its own growth agenda, which would have a major impact on downtown infrastructure and the availability of housing.
In 1978, the Chamber was engulfed in the debate to limit housing as well as a cap on growth in the county. Throughout much of the 1960s, the vision for Santa Cruz had been based on the desire for growth. The success of Measure J and Measure O in the late 1970s in the City of Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz County set the stage for all land use decisions in the region for the next 40 years. The debates on housing and transportation continues to dominate the political and policy agenda as Santa Cruz ebbs and flows with new residents, job creation and potential growth at the University and longtime residents who are opposed to growth of our region.
In 1975 the first woman president, Judy Sadlier, was elected to lead the Chamber of Commerce. Throughout the 70’s and into the 80’s, the Chamber continued its involvement in the Miss California Pageant. Many changes arose in the event, such as television coverage, and a growing opposition from women’s groups who did not support the pageant. The Chamber helped respond to the changes as they came. By 1985, the Miss California Pageant moved down to San Diego, one of the reasons being the protests. Santa Cruz’s first gay pride celebration was in 1975, but due to complications and public controversy, the first actual parade was in 1976. Although the first few parades were subject to protestors, Santa Cruz was the first county in the Nation to adopt gay non-discrimination for its employees in 1975.
The University of California Santa Cruz played a big factor in the many activist groups appearing in Santa Cruz. For instance, in 1970 the students were having many of their spring classes canceled or rescheduled to focus on Vietnam War issues. Students participated in burning draft cards in Quarry Plaza as well as other protests. It is clear these movements and shifts in politics have shaped Santa Cruz today and continue to shape it.
The neighborhood and environmental activists received their biggest boost from an especially activist core of university faculty and students in a new and unique undergraduate department, Community Studies, created in 1969 to allow its majors to focus their attention on local communities. With its special emphasis on the social circumstances and cultures of low-income or marginalized people, it was a natural ally of any beleaguered neighborhood. It not only focused on the community level, but it also emphasized internships and field studies, forms of participant learning that had slowly gained acceptance within universities over the decades as a way to learn through practical experience and at the same time earn academic credit. It was the first fully funded program of its kind in an American university, and it had few imitators thereafter.
The fact that Community Studies students, and not the faculty, chose their field sites made it possible for some of them to become active participants in the political activities taking place in Santa Cruz, despite protests about their presence from the downtown business community and elected officials — those protests were brushed aside, however reluctantly, by top university administrators. Although most students chose sites outside of Santa Cruz, including many in foreign countries, the program nonetheless provided tens of thousands of hours of organizing and staff support for the efforts of a wide range of activist and nonprofit groups in Santa Cruz, non-electoral and electoral, for the next two decades. Between 1969 and 1990, over 1,000 students did field studies in Santa Cruz County, mostly in nonprofit service organizations, but many in political and advocacy groups. Dozens of these students went on to become top leaders in activist groups throughout the country. Two became city managers in Northern California cities, another served as the mayor of San Jose from 1999 to 2006, and two became mayors of Santa Cruz.
The 1960s and 1970s decades were the pivotal point in local political landscape in Santa Cruz County. During those two decades, the fundamentals of change were established that produced the ‘progressive movement’ that still influences local and county policy decisions. The early 1970s were a strange mix of both cultural changes with the influx of students attending Cabrillo College and UCSC, the mix of the new age movement where Santa Cruz was seen as a safe haven to enjoy an alternative lifestyle.
As the 1970s were coming to an end, national politics were about to move in the opposite direction, influenced by a slowing economy and unrest in the Middle East. In the wake of a successful revolution by Islamic fundamentalists against the pro-American Shah of Iran, the United States became an object of virulent criticism and the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was a visible target. On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the embassy and detained more than 50 Americans as hostages. The Iranians held the American diplomats hostage for 444 days. The Iran hostage crisis undermined President Carter’s conduct of foreign policy. The crisis dominated the headlines and news broadcasts and made the Administration look weak and ineffectual. The decisive shift in policy and politics in Washington DC would be the mirror opposite played out in Santa Cruz County. Stay tuned to learn how that shift impacted this region in the 1980s.