About 12,000 years ago, the Santa Cruz area's earliest known inhabitants lived in small groups and followed migratory game. Some 4,000 years later, the Ohlones migrated from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, settling from Monterey to Marin County. They lived in semi-permanent villages, harvested foodstuffs such as acorns and seeds, hunted local game and fish and traded their clamshell beads for obsidian and other goods.

The first European explorers arrived in 1769, and in 1791, Father Fermin Lasuen established California's twelfth Spanish mission, Holy Cross (Santa Cruz) near the mouth of Santa Cruz Creek.

Six years later, Spanish Governor Borica established a civilian settlement, Villa de Branciforte just across the river from Santa Cruz Mission, a planned community in which each settler received land and an annual income.

While Santa Cruz never yielded the gold that drew settlers to other parts of California, the Santa Cruz Mountains' abundant natural resources spawned lumber companies, limestone quarries, dairy ranches, tanneries and some of the state's earliest wineries.

Businessman Fred Swanton built a waterfront casino here in 1904. When it burned down in 1906, he built a larger one that still stands on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

Since the University of California at Santa Cruz was established here in the 1960s, the city has become a center of alternative lifestyle and political innovation. Rebounding from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, twenty-first-century Santa Cruz is a haven of creativity for artists and computer programmers, weavers and writers.