Santa Cruz, California. City and Business guide.

Welcome to Santa Cruz, California.

Santa Cruz is the county seat of Santa Cruz County, California, United States. As of the 2000 census Santa Cruz had a total population of 54,593. It is located on the northern edge of the Monterey Bay, about 72 mi (115 km) south of San Francisco.

Pacific & Cathcart in Downtown Santa Cruz.
Santa Cruz is well-known for watersports such as sailing, diving, paddling and surfing. It is the home of O'Neill Wetsuits and Santa Cruz Surfboards, as well as Santa Cruz Skateboards and Santa Cruz Bicycles. After Huntington Beach, CA trademarked the Surf City USA name, Santa Cruz politicians tried to stop the Mark from being registered by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office because of a controversy 10 years earlier over the nickname "Surf City".

The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is California's oldest amusement park and a designated State Historic Landmark. Home to two National Historic Landmarks, a 1911 Looff Carousel and 1924 Giant Dipper roller coaster, the Boardwalk has been owned and operated by the Santa Cruz Seaside Company since 1915.

Santa Cruz is the site of the first surfing in California in 1885, when three Hawaiian princes surfed on locally milled redwood boards at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River. Santa Cruz has 11 world-class surf breaks, including the point breaks over rock bottoms near Steamer's Lane and Pleasure Point, which create some of the best surfing waves in the world. Home to the Lighthouse Surfing Museum at Steamer Lane, which continues to be staffed by docents such as Harry Mayo and others from the Santa Cruz Surfing Club who have surfed Santa Cruz waves since the 1930s, Santa Cruz hosts several surf contests drawing international participants each year, including the O'Neill Cold Water Classic, the International Longboard Association contest, and many others.

The Santa Cruz Wharf is a wharf in Santa Cruz, California. The current wharf was built in 1914, the last of six built on the site. The wharf is known for fishing, viewing marine mammals and other recreation.

Shakespeare Santa Cruz holds an annual summer festival at UC Santa Cruz. The festival typically performs two Shakespeare plays and one other play every summer, many of which are performed in a unique outdoor space among the redwoods.

The principal industries of Santa Cruz are agriculture, tourism, education (UCSC) and high technology. Santa Cruz is a center of the organic agriculture movement, and many specialty products. Tourist attractions include the classic Santa Cruz Boardwalk on the beach, the redwood forests, and unspoiled Monterey Bay, which is protected as a marine sanctuary.

Natural Bridges State Beach is a protected area in Santa Cruz, California, featuring a natural bridge across a section of the beach. It is also well known as a hotspot to see monarch butterfly migrations. It was formerly known as Moore's Beach, after Charles Moore, who discovered a strange creature at the site.

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