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About 40 community members gathered under the Dragon Gate in downtown Santa Cruz and walked to Evergreen Cemetary in Harvey West to honor their ancestors and the Chinese pioneers who once lived in the city in an ancient Chinese holiday known as Qingming, which is meant to mark the coming of spring and honor deceased relatives.
"Henry and Sarah Becker of 50 Van Ness Ave. on the Westside of Santa Cruz liked to brag about their American-born niece, Mildred Southmayd, who around 1920 married well-to-do Englishman Mr. Fowler," writes columnist Ross Eric Gibson. "He had been living in China when the first World War started and headed home to defend Britain."
"California's Anti-Chinese Workingmen's Party was founded in San Francisco in 1877, resulting in the national Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882," writes columnist Ross Eric Gibson. "Bigots did everything they could to make it hard for Chinese to make a living in America. Yet out of their meager wages, Chinese workers often sent back money to help their loved ones in China."
"After the Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor attack, the entire town had succeeded in a Dec. 8 blackout, with the exception of the downtown, and a mysterious red light reported in Seabright," writes Local History columnist Ross Eric Gibson. The Seabright light turned out to be the Kelly Hotel sign viewed from a distance and was unplugged as downtown managed at last to extinguish all its lights."
West Cliff, by its very name, implies erosion, more specifically, erosion from wave attack that has produced a sea cliff.