GREAT CEASAR!

Author's Personal Collection

"Still for anyone sensitive to climatic influences, Santa Cruz would be trying; the air is generally laden with dampness, and there is a chill in it that one does not feel in San Diego, or even Santa Barbara ... One of the drives of interest is up to the grove of big trees. The road winds up a mountain grown with countless fir trees. At its base flows the San Lorenzo River quietly at first over a smooth sandy bed, but gradually, as we ascended, dashing noisily, like a true mountain stream, over the rocks. Glimpses between the trees of the clear water so far below us were beautiful, but, Great Ceasar! how narrow the road was, and sometimes we suddenly met a team – in one case a heavy wagon drawn by six oxen – and passed where I had thought there was hardly room for ourselves. The Santa Cruz trees are smaller than those at Mariposa and [Calaveras], but only small by comparison, and so accessible that many visit them, who do not see the others. They are all California ‘redwoods,’ and are veritable giants of the forest."

Source: “Land of the Big Trees – a Jaunt Across Lower California by Carriage – Santa Barbara to Santa Cruz With Glimpses of San Marcos Pass,” The Weekly Wisconsin [Milwaukee, Wisconsin], May 7, 1887.