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When in Santa Cruz Beach, Head for Santa Cruz Boardwalk |
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You may be wondering: what is the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and why is it so important to Santa Cruz Beach, California? The Santa Cruz Boardwalk is simply the oldest existing amusement park in the state, having been introduced in 1907. This means the Santa Cruz Boardwalk has been around for precisely 100 years how many amusement parks can claim to have been operating for an entire century? Off the top of your head, not many, right? It is also one of the only two oceanfront parks found along the US West Coast, with the other being the Santa Monica Pier. The Santa Cruz Boardwalk is presently a family-owned enterprise operated by the Santa Cruz Seaside Company. Other amusement parks such as Playland of Ocean Beach in San Francisco, and The Pike in Long Beach have all been shut down, but despite its age the Santa Cruz Boardwalk just keeps going and going.
What can be found in the Santa Cruz Boardwalk? For starters, it has a structure at the western fringes of the park which is called The Casino where you may enjoy an afternoon of indoor miniature golf, video arcade games, and even laser tag. The Casino also is also home to the Cocoanut Grove which doubles as a conference center and banquet room. Interestingly, despite its name, The Casino is not a gambling (or gaming) center.
The boardwalk proper lies east of The Casino to give you access to the vast sandy beach. You can ride on an authentic wooden roller coaster dubbed the Giant Dipper, one of the most popular wooden roller coasters of the world which towers over the eastern part of the boardwalk. It has been operating since 1924. This wooden roller coaster has made it to the United States National Register of Historic Places, while the Santa Cruz Boardwalk park has also been named a California State Historic Landmark.
One thing that makes the Santa Cruz Boardwalk stand out among other amusement parks is that it has managed to retain vestiges of its turn-of-the-century roots even up to now. Snack concessions and carnival games remain as old-fashioned as they were 100 years ago, helping to remind visitors of seaside parks along the US East Coast like Brooklyn, New York's Coney Island. Which is only fitting, because when the park was founded in 1904 by Fred Swanton (a business leader of Santa Cruz, California), he wished the amusement park to be the West Coast's answer to Coney Island. Despite its beginnings in 1904, the amusement park traces its founding year to 1907, the year when The Casino was rebuilt after a devastating fire, and when a pier and the original Boardwalk were constructed.
Even though the Santa Cruz Boardwalk intends to remain true to tradition, it has also adopted some efforts at modernization (such as extensive renovation back in the 1980s) that should help the Santa Cruz Boardwalk amusement park stay alive well into the new millennium.
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