![]() ![]() Many of these wooden and adobe structures are still being used and remain a valuable historic resource.Īfter Caire’s death, a long court battle over island management ensued among his heirs, and in 1925 the courts partitioned SCI. Extensively vineyards grew in the central valley, and thousands of sheep ranged throughout the island.Ĭaire also constructed ranch facilities at Prisoners’ Harbor, the island’s principal port, as well as eight outposts scattered along the central valley and at each end. Wool and wine production, however, remained the principal venture of the Santa Cruz Island Company. Also introduced by the mid 1880’s was a variety of exotic vegetation that has since naturalized, including fennel and Italian stone pine some of California’s oldest and tallest eucalyptus trees grow in a large grove near the reserve field station. To pollinate the vineyards and produce honey, Caire kept European bees, which were reportedly on the island when he arrived. Over the next four decades, a small, self-contained community blossomed in the central valley, eventually including several ranch buildings, a blacksmith shop, a chapel, and a winery. By 1880, the company’s major stockholder, Justinian Caire, had become its sole owner. Ten San Francisco businessmen purchased the island in 1869, forming the Santa Cruz Island Company. Some of the buildings from the early 1860s still stand, including one at Christy Ranch. Historical records show that by 1853, a large herd of sheep, along with pigs and horses, resided on SCI. According to the terms of the grant, the island’s boundary extends to the constantly shifting water’s edge the other Channel Islands, along with the rest of coastal California, are owned to the mean high-tide line. Andre Castillero became the first private owner of Santa Cruz Island in 1839 when he received it as a Mexican land grant, the validity of which was upheld 25 years later in a landmark U.S. Eight years later, Spanish rule in California gave way to Mexican rule. By the early 1800s, the island’s native population had been devastated by measles and other introduced epidemics the last survivors were taken to mainland missions by 1814. Historians credit the Pérez party with naming the island Santa Cruz, or Holy Cross,” after a group of Chumash returned a walking staff ornamented with an iron cross that a Catholic priest had lost onshore. More than two hundred years passed before Juan Pérez, leading the sea component of Gaspar de Portolá’s California expeditions, claimed SCI for the King of Spain in 1769. Cabrillo entered the Santa Barbara Channel in 1542, fifty years after the landing of Columbus. The log of Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo contains the first-known written account of Santa Cruz Island. You can find the research catalog to these records at this link. The records have been added to the California State OAC (On-Line Archive of California) system. The UCSB Library, Special Collection Archive, houses all of the Santa Cruz Island NRS historical records. ![]()
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