Carolyn Swift: Flashbacks

Soquel set to celebrate village’s 150th anniversary

Local historian Sandy Lydon kicked off Soquel’s 150th anniversary celebration in the spring with a talk that puzzled over, among other things, what the Soquel community preferred to call itself. He liked "Soquelistas," over breezy "Soquelites" and tame Soquelians.

By any handle, the fans of old Soquel will be packing their potluck lunches Saturday for the annual Soquel Pioneer picnic at Pringle Grove. Here the sesquicentennial tribute will continue with a talk by one of the town’s own — 1973 Soquel High School graduate Geoffrey Dunn.

A regional historian, UCSC community studies lecturer, filmmaker and executive director of Community Television of Santa Cruz, Dunn likes to weaves stories that lure his audience toward new awareness as well as evoke memories of people, events and amusements.

Remembering is a traditional Pioneer Picnic sport that, when buttressed with a little research, adds a fresh perspective and depth to community history.

An account from 1940, for instance, has pinpointed the site of the first sawmill along Soquel Creek, constructed in 1845 by pioneers John Hames and John Daubenbiss. The two had been acquainted with rancho grantee Martina Castro and her husband, Michael Lodge, who allowed them to erect the mill. When done, the builders left the operation in charge of Martina’s brother, Guadalupe. When they returned in 1848, Hames and Daubenbiss found the mill had washed away, and a new one had been constructed by Adna Hecox at another site above the flood plain.

Position of the earlier mill was lost for decades until two locals who as boys had played on the timbers of the milldam recalled the site where they had been.

Alfred Bowman of Santa Cruz and Peter Curran of Soquel had lived in the same house near West Walnut at different times in the 1870s. They both had swum and fished at the old swimming hole and fooled around the mill timbers embedded in the creek banks. They figured the mill had stood across from the schoolyard, just below the bend in the stream, on a little flat to the east.

The site is in the vicinity of Little Tampico restaurant, along today’s southern extension of Main Street. On this stretch of the creek, where the buildings now are fairly new, the foundations of Soquel township had been set.

Local history is spiked with tall tales, legends and heroes. Past and present Soquelites all have their favorites. One debated — particularly among historians — is whether or not Soquel made a serious bid to become the state capital in 1868.

One view is that Soquel was industrious and booming in the late 1860s as an essential connection for traffic and goods to either be shipped by sea or transported to points at either end of the county. Town leaders were so cocksure of continu- ing growth and influence they decided to make an offer for the new state Capitol building.

Cheeky town leaders hoped the Legislature would accept its invitation to use the small meeting hall above Ned Porter’s store while Soquel’s new town hall was under construction.

The story is true enough. A short paragraph on Page 2 of the Sentinel printed Aug. 2, 1868, announces "The Soquelians, not wishing to be behind their neighbors in enterprise and generosity, hereby tender to the state of California, Porter’s Hall, to be used as a state capital (sic) for the present, and when it is completed, the new town hall, now in course of contemplation, contention and creation."

The declaration appeared in proximity of another short article discussing the similar desires of both Santa Cruz and San Jose. Was Soquel making a joke? Did its townspeople really believe that if they built a $3,000 band hall the Legislature would come? In 1868, the state was preparing to construct a $2.4 million granite Capitol in Sacramento — a city fattened by the Gold Rush, blessed with large, handsome brick buildings, rail and water transportation, and a population nearing 16,000 people.

On the other hand, Soquel Township — including the territory of Aptos halfway to Watsonville — was home to a total of about 200 households — mostly merchants, farmers, wood cutters, mill workers, tanners, teamsters and servants, with one doctor, a lawyer and an undertaker. Furthermore, Soquel’s intersections were cut by deep ruts on both sides, where wagons loaded with lumber were often wrecked and waiting for repairs.

While Sacramento in 1869 was eagerly awaiting the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad and a more powerful link to the world, Soquel was hoping the little Betsy Jane and the narrow gauge line of the Santa Cruz-Watsonville Railroad would one-day chug within spitting distance of the band hall.

In 1874, when a railroad made an approach near Soquel the depot was not in the town but was perched on the west side of the trestle near the ocean and a tiny new resort named Capitola.

Opened for the first time in June 1874, a Sentinel advertisement listed the site as "Hall’s Beach," a portion of Soquel Landing leased by Samuel A. Hall, Capitola’s founder and a ship’s carpenter who had completed a pleasure boat for tourists.

Hall thought of his oceanfront vacation spot as an offshoot of Soquel, never realizing that within 25 years, Capitola was going to be big enough to consider gobbling up its nearest neighbor. In 1905, when the resort became a terminus of the electric car line from Santa Cruz, and Soquel was no longer booming, the Santa Cruz Surf offered Soquelians hazy reassurance that "There is always something doing here worth mentioning in this future suburb of Capitola."

Until Highway 1 put the barrier of the road between the two settlements in 1949, however, Soquel and Capitola often did act as one community, sharing social events and holidays and supporting one another through floods, fires and the Great Depression. Soquel, however, bristled at the idea of a combined city to be named "Sotola." Instead, townspeople held on to self-reliant Soquel independence and their own legends.

On Saturday, the scuttlebutt will be traded once more as fiddler Dennis English plays music, and visitors pour over books of fading photographs and newspaper clippings. An incident Marilyn Nutter might be coaxed to talk about is the Halloween that an outhouse was picked up and left in the center of town and labeled "Pringle’s Privy." It was a joke aimed at her relative, Soquel Postmaster Lloyd Pringle.

As a youngster in the 1880s, Pringle had walked from his house in Santa Cruz to Soquel to fish in Soquel Creek. It was nothing in those days, he once said, to see 200-300 fish caught in a single day. Pringle and his wife, the former Anna Maddock of Soquel, eventually gave the oak-studded Pringle Grove for a community picnic grounds and the narration of fish tales large and small. For 64 years, on the last Saturday in July, the Pioneers have posted signs along North Main Street to help picnickers find their way. Lunch begins at 1 p.m. Participants — Soquelites, Soquelians and Soquelistas — have a week to dig out the historic photographs, spin yarns and revisit old adventures.

Carolyn Swift is a local historian who writes occasionally for the Sentinel.