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Surfing Comes Home to Boulder Creek
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Surfing Comes Home to Boulder Creek
Tracing the Sport's Mainland Roots to the San Lorenzo Valley
By Sarah Weston
Santa Cruz and Huntington Beach may forever argue which city really deserves the title of Surf City USA, but meanwhile Boulder Creek is staking a modest claim of its own. On Oct. 24 the San Lorenzo Valley Museum opened a new exhibit entitled "Big Trees to Surfboards – the Redwood Connection," which details how the Hawaiian sport of surfing first found its way to the mainland, and how the very first boards used came from timber grown right here in the Valley.
The first question that springs to mind is why have the exhibit in Boulder Creek rather than at the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum? Why not at the beach, rather than a museum that typically displays on railroads, logging and pioneer families?
Early Surfing from the 1880s
"Since the Surfing Museum is so small, and it's already full, we wanted to do an exhibit and try to tie the redwoods in with the Hawaiian princes," said Kim Stoner, one of three members of the Santa Cruz Surfing Club Preservation Society who were the driving force behind the exhibit.
The princes that Stoner was referring to were three nephews of Hawaiian Queen Kapi'olani who in the early 1880s had been sent to St. Matthews Hall Military Academy in San Mateo to acquire a mainland education.
According to Stoner, who has researched the subject extensively, the three young men came to Santa Cruz on summer weekends to stay with Antoinette Swan, a woman related to Hawaiian royalty who had served as chambermaid to the queen.
Swan lived at the corner of Front and Cathcart streets in downtown Santa Cruz, on a lot that bordered the San Lorenzo River.
Stoner imagined these three experienced surfers (surfing was known as "The Sport of Hawaiian Kings") gazing upon the perfect V-break waves at the mouth of the river "and saying, 'Wow, what can we use to make a surfboard?'"
The REALLY Long Boards
A surfboard at the time was no small thing; they stood over 15 feet tall and weighed more than 100 pounds. The logical source to get such a piece of timber was the Grover Planing Mill just a few blocks from the Swan house. That lumber came by railroad from an up-valley site originally called Reed's Spur, then Clear Creek, and finally Brookdale, right behind where Brookdale Lodge is now located.
Santa Cruz Swimmers First to See the Surfboards from Brookdale Redwood
Stoner says the three young men would have shaped the boards themselves, as was the custom in their native islands.
Whether or not this was the first date they tested their new boards, a newspaper entry from July 20, 1885 records "… the young Hawaiian princes were in the water [amidst 30-40 swimmers], enjoying it hugely, and giving interesting exhibitions of surf-board swimming as practiced in their native islands."
This is the first documented account of surfing on the mainland.
Stoner and fellow veteran surfers Tom Hickenbottom, author of the recently published Surfing in Santa Cruz, and Matt Micuda, a local graphic artist who lives in a historic house in Boulder Creek, had for several years kicked around the idea of making this incident into a formal exhibit.
Micuda approached Lynda Phillips, executive director of the SLV Museum. But they faced a tight deadline; the first meeting was on Sept. 28, and Phillips wanted the opening to be an indoor-outdoor event.
With Halloween, the end of daylight savings, and questionable weather coming, the only possible date was Oct. 24.
Fortunately, Phillips recalled that a Felton resident named Mark Shunney had offered to volunteer his services.
Shunney is an artist who had owned a storefront gallery in New York, and was anxious to curate an exhibit in his adopted community.
Exhibit Makes Big News
The result is a remarkably professional exhibit which is drawing attention from as far away as the Los Angeles Times.
It includes reproductions of period newspaper articles and a blank redwood slab such as the princes would have used, milled especially for the exhibit.
A modern redwood board and a half-century-old, 12-foot board recently found under a Mount Hermon house are also included.
Likewise, photos of the princes, and a collection of vintage shaping tools are on hand.
The opening event also featured Hawaiian acoustical music, Hickenbottom signing his book, and a $20,000 brass plaque donated by heirs to two of the princes. The plaque will eventually be installed at the Surfing Museum.
The exhibit will run for six months at the SLV Museum, 12547 Highway 9, phone 831-338-8382.
Phillips said it had already drawn an unusual amount of attention, perhaps because of its unusual title. But Stoner thinks the museum and surfing make a perfect match.
"It works out perfectly with the museum, because it's an old church made out of old first-growth redwood, which sort of ties everything together," he said. "We wouldn't have had the exhibit at any other place."
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