Santa Cruz Surfing Museum
The Roots of Mainland Surfing
By: Kim Stoner (Santa Cruz Surfing Museum)
http://www.santacruzsurfingmuseum.org/
According to the “Social and Personal” column in the Thursday, June 25th 1885, issue of The Santa Cruz Daily Sentinel, it was a Hawaiian prince, David Kawananakoa, who first arrived in Santa Cruz: “Prince David, of Honolulu” the column reads, “is the guest of L. Swan.” A month later, in an article entitled “Beach Breezes, - Some Scenes a Surf Reporter Saw on Sunday”, the Monday, July 20th 1885, edition of The Santa Cruz Daily Surf newspaper reported the first documented account of surfing on the American mainland, at the San Lorenzo River Mouth in Santa Cruz, California: “The breakers at the mouth of the river were very fine and here…the young Hawaiian princes were in the water, enjoying it hugely, and giving interesting exhibitions of surf-board swimming as practiced in their native islands.”
While to the average reader, these anecdotes might seem nothing more than interesting tidbits of Santa Cruz history, they actually mark defining moments in the annals of American surfing. But they also lay to rest a long-standing debate within the California surfing community as to the original location of surfing on the West Coast of the United States. For years the town of Huntington Beach has vied with Santa Cruz for the title of “Surf City”, but local Santa Cruz publications during the late 19th and early 20th century record the origins of West Coast Surfing and situate them undeniably in the city of Santa Cruz.
In the late 1800’s, the offspring of Hawaiian royalty traveled to the U.S. mainland. As Santa Cruz historian Warren (Skip) Littlefield described in a 1981 article, their journey was, Sparked by the interest of Kalakaua 1, the only reigning monarch to visit Santa Cruz County (1881).” Queen Kapi’olani sent her three nephews, (Prince Kuhio) Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana’ole, (Prince Edward) Edward Abel Keli’iahonui, and (Prince David) David La’amea Kawananakoa to St. Matthews Hall Military Academy in San Mateo to further their education. The brothers stayed in Santa Cruz during the summer with a Mrs. Antoinette Marie Swan who was related to Hawaiian royalty. Swan had a house on the corner of Front and Cathcart Street, and according to Littlefield’s research, “She mothered them and fed them poi.” These Hawaiian princes brought with them the tradition of Polynesian wave riding. As Littlefield describes,“On weekends the princes could be found enjoying water sports at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River.”
In his article, Littlefield quotes Ernest Otto, a writer for The Santa Cruz Surf, and later The Santa Cruz Sentinel: “Prince David Kawananakoa and his brother, Prince Edward, amazed Santa Cruzan’s by riding giant surfboards off East Santa Cruz beach.” Otto goes on to describe the original surfboards: “The boards were solid redwood planks and milled locally by the Grover Lumber Co. They were over 100 pounds in weight and 15 feet in length.” As Otto explains, “Grover Lumber Co. had a planning mill on lower Pacific Ave. and Santa Cruz housewives could set their clocks by the noon whistle.” This finish mill was just a few blocks from the Swan home in which the Hawaiians stayed. The actual Grover Lumber mill, established by the Grover brothers in the late 1870’s, was located in the San Lorenzo Valley at a site called Reed’s Spur. By the end of the 1880’s, the redwood trees had all been cut, and they renamed the lumber camp settlement, Clear Creek in 1890. In 1892 a post office was established and Clear Creek became the town of Brookdale. The first surfboards were milled from first growth redwood trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and when the Princes finished school, they took the locally made boards back to Hawaii with them.
