Tag: clear creek

At the beginning of August 1897, Judge Logan tackled the task of converting 400 acres of former forest into a resort community.  It was decided to begin development of “Clear Creek” by concentrating on two tracts.  Cottage lots would be laid out between the county highway and the river.  The old skid roads leading to the railyard known as Reed’s or Bloom’s Switch would become streets.  The first job was to clear away the underbrush that had occupied the landscape.  The Mountain Echo applauded the idea of “leaving all tree growths, making a beautiful park of it.”  The founding families would build beside the creek, on either side of the main road.

Josephine Turcot had been escorted to her coronation as Water Carnival Queen by a suite of handmaidens.  On her journey to Palo Alto to enroll in Stanford, the following September, her retinue consisted of only one lady—her Aunt Catherine.  Upon her return to Santa Cruz, Mrs. Logan plunged into a new project--helping to host the Grand Council of the Catholic Ladies’ Aid Society.

What we call Brookdale was the last stand of the redwood forest that once stretched along the San Lorenzo between Felton and Boulder Creek.  When the Santa Cruz County Lumber War broke out in 1893, the 400-acre tract on both sides of Clear Creek was owned by Grover and Company, one of the principal combatants.