Artist Vanessa Stafford of Santa Cruz braved the hot sunlight on Scotts Valley Drive this week to beautify the city where she grew up.
Stafford, who lived in Scotts Valley from ages 11 to 18, has turned her memories of the unique attractions that once drew tourists to the city into mural form, and she was commissioned by the Scotts Valley Arts Commission to paint it onto the electrical box on the corner of Disc Drive and Scotts Valley Drive.
One side of the box represents Santa’s Village.
“I used to live in Scotts Valley, and Santa’s Village was here then, and I got to know it well,” Stafford said. “My sister and brother worked there.”
The attraction that was Christmas all-year-’round, and Stafford remembers the “North Pole” — a pole of genuine ice — that stood in the middle of the park.
On another side of the box is a painting of The Lost World, the amusement park dedicated to dinosaurs and odd trees. A third side bears a painting of “The Barn,” a 1960s-era music venue that hosted the likes of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, Stafford said. She said her sister took her there at 16.
“It’s part of my history and part of Scotts Valley’s history,” Stafford said. “A lot of people remember the barn.”
The final side is a picture of Skypark when it was an airport. Stafford said her brother took her up in a plane that nearly crashed into the mountains when they got caught in an updraft.
She is painting a picture of Bean Creek on a second box at the corner of Bean Creek Road and Scotts Valley Drive.
