Santa Cruz Looff Carousel and Roller Coaster

The Giant Dipper is a historic wooden roller coaster located at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, an amusement park in Santa Cruz, California. The Giant Dipper, which replaced the Thompson's Scenic Railway, took 47 days to build and opened on May 17, 1924, at a cost of $50,000. With a height of 70 feet (21 m) and a speed of 55 miles per hour (89 km/h), it is one of the most popular wooden roller coasters in the world. As of 2012, over 60 million people have ridden the Giant Dipper since its opening. The ride has received several awards such as being named a National Historic Landmark, a Golden Age Coaster award, and a Coaster Landmark award.

The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is an oceanfront amusement park in Santa Cruz, California. Founded in 1907, it is California's oldest surviving amusement park and one of the few seaside parks on the West Coast of the United States.

Undertow is a steel spinning roller coaster at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, built by Maurer Söhne.

The San Lorenzo River (Spanish: Río de San Lorenzo) is a 29.3-mile-long (47.2 km) river in the U.S. state of California. The name San Lorenzo derives from the Spanish language for "Saint Lawrence" due to its reported sighting on that saint's feast day by Spanish explorers. Its headwaters originate in Castle Rock State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains and flow south by southeast through the San Lorenzo Valley before passing through Santa Cruz and emptying into Monterey Bay and the Pacific Ocean.

Casa del Rey Hotel (House of the King) was a resort hotel in Santa Cruz, California. During World War II the hotel was converted to the Naval Convalescent Hospital, Santa Cruz. The hotel was built in 1911 by Fred Swanton on Beach Street as a Santa Cruz Boardwalk development plan. The Resort Hotel had: a pool; gardens; and a grand pedestrian bridge to cross the street to visit the beach. The hotel was at about 500 Beach Street and Cliff Street. In addition to the hotel, there were built Cottage apartments. Later after the war the hotel became a senior citizen housing. In the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake there was serious damage to the hotel and was taken down. The site now is the parking lot across the street from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk amusement park.

The Golden Gate Villa is a Queen Anne style house built in 1891 in Santa Cruz, California. The house was designed by San Francisco architect Thomas J. Welsh for Major Frank McLaughlin, a mining engineer and California politician. Visitors to Golden Gate Villa included Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Edison. In the 1940s the house was operated as a restaurant, the Palais Monte Carlo. After passing through several owners, in 1963 the house was purchased by seafood magnate William W. Durney and his screenwriter wife Dorothy Kingsley, who sold it to the present owner. On July 24, 1975, the Golden Gate Villa was added to the United States National Register of Historic Places.

The Santa Cruz Wharf is a wharf in Santa Cruz, California, United States, known for fishing, boat tours, viewing sea lions, dining, nightlife and gift shops. The current wharf was built in 1914, the last of six built on the site, and is operated by the City of Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation Office. The wharf is situated between Main Beach (which is adjacent to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk) and Cowell's Beach, on the westside of the city of Santa Cruz. With a length of 2,745 feet (836.68 m), it is the longest pier on the West Coast of the United States.

Kaiser Permanente Arena is an indoor arena located in Santa Cruz, in the U.S. state of California. It has a seating capacity of 2,505 spectators. It hosts the Santa Cruz Warriors of the NBA G League. It was also the home of the Santa Cruz Derby Girls of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association in 2013 and 2014. The naming rights were bought by health care consortium Kaiser Permanente (KP) despite the company—a sponsor of the Warriors' owner, the NBA's Golden State Warriors—not having facilities in Santa Cruz at the time. KP has since opened medical facilities in Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley and Watsonville.

Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District (SCMTD), or simply Santa Cruz METRO, provides bus service throughout Santa Cruz County, California. In 2022, the system had a ridership of 3,097,100, or about 8,300 per weekday as of the third quarter of 2023. Santa Cruz METRO also operates the Highway 17 Express service for Amtrak Thruway between the city of Santa Cruz and San Jose Diridon station, in partnership with Amtrak California and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.

Branciforte Creek is a 5.8-mile (9.3 km) long watercourse in Santa Cruz County, California, United States. Branciforte Creek rises on the western slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains and discharges to the San Lorenzo River, which in turn empties into the Pacific Ocean. Within the State of California Branciforte Creek is classified within the Central Coast Basin. As of the year 2002, the State of California has designated Branciforte Creek as impaired with respect to turbidity and pathogens. The Branciforte watershed consists of 6,231 acres (25.22 km2), approximately 70 percent of which is covered with mixed evergreen forest, conifer forest and other undisturbed habitats.In 2001, a stream restoration project was funded by the State of California to remove barriers to anadromous fish migration in Branciforte Creek, with emphasis upon enhancing juvenile migration. Ongoing flood control maintenance is performed on certain lower reaches of Branciforte Creek.

The Hotel Metropole, built in 1908, was added to the National Register of Historical Places in 1979. It was demolished after being severely damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. It was built as a hotel to offer "forty-eight 'furnished rooms for transient and permanent guests' at fifty cents per day", and also offered space for "a millinery, the offices of C. W. Waldron, a partner of McPherson's, and the C.O.D. Grocery." It was later renamed as the Hotel Al Rose in 1935 and as the Hotel Drake in 1946, and was operated as a hotel until 1961. In 1976, the building housed Plaza Books / Paper Vision.It was deemed notable in 1978 as "a unique Santa Cruz example of turn-of-the-century commercial architecture in the late Italianate style in which pressed-metal ornamentation replaced the more costly and fancy Victorian plaster work it often copied. The four pediments atop the third-story windows, and the acanthus design cornices are particularly handsome. The building is an important part of the physical fabric of the Pacific Garden Mall and contributes to the historical continuity and sense of urbanity along the street. In addition to its inherent architectural value, the building also contributes significant scale to this portion of the street, which is much broader than the tight portion of Pacific Avenue at its northern end."

The Catalyst is a nightclub located at 1011 Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz, California. The club has hosted big-name artists such as The Beach Boys, Neil Young, Janis Joplin, Pearl Jam, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Phish, Iggy Pop, and Nirvana. The Catalyst moved to its current location in 1976. The main hall is 5,000 square feet (460 m2) and can hold 800 people.