Seacliff, California

Seacliff State Beach is a state beach park on Monterey Bay, in the town of Aptos, Santa Cruz County, California. It is located off Highway 1 on State Park Drive, about 5 miles (8 km) south of Santa Cruz. The beach is most known for the concrete ship SS Palo Alto lying in the water. North of Seacliff State Beach is New Brighton State Beach.

SS Palo Alto was a concrete ship built as a tanker at the end of World War I. Completed too late to see war service, she was mothballed until 1929, when she was intentionally grounded off Seacliff State Beach in the Monterey Bay, becoming part of a pleasure pier entertainment complex. Palo Alto was damaged by the sea, leading her to be stripped and used only as a fishing pier. Subsequent decades have seen her be further broken by the sea, but large sections of her wreck remain somewhat intact.

Aptos (Ohlone for "The People") is an unincorporated town in Santa Cruz County, California. The town is made up of several small villages, which together form Aptos: Aptos Hills-Larkin Valley, Aptos Village, Cabrillo, Seacliff, Rio del Mar, and Seascape. Together, they have a combined population of 24,402.

Cabrillo College is a public community college in Aptos, California. It is named after the conquistador Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo and opened in 1959. Cabrillo College has an enrollment of about 9,700 students per term.

Aptos Creek is a southward flowing 9.5 miles (15.3 km) creek that begins on Santa Rosalia Mountain on the southwestern slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains in Santa Cruz County, California and enters Monterey Bay, at Seacliff State Beach in Aptos, California.

New Brighton State Beach is a 95 acres (38 ha) beach park on Monterey Bay in Santa Cruz County, California, consisting of a beach and campgrounds. The park is located east of Santa Cruz in Capitola, on Park Avenue off of Highway 1. The park is adjacent to Seacliff State Beach, which is known for its fishing pier and sunk concrete freighter, The Palo Alto. The beach overlooks Soquel Cove and Monterey Bay.

Rancho Soquel was a 1,668-acre (6.75 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Santa Cruz County, California given in 1833 by Governor José Figueroa to María Martina Castro y Amador. In 1844, Martina Castro was granted by Governor José Figueroa a further 32,702-acre (132.34 km2) grant known as the Soquel Augmentation. The Rancho Soquel grant along Monterey Bay includes present-day Soquel and Capitola. Rancho Aptos of her brother Rafael Castro formed the south boundary of the grant. The much-larger Soquel Augmentation grant lay inland from both of these, and comprised mainly mountain watershed land.

Soquel (; Ohlone: Sokel) is an unincorporated town and census-designated place (CDP) in Santa Cruz County, California, located on the northern coast of Monterey Bay. The population was 9,980 at the 2020 census.

The Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist was a historic chapel in Capitola, California from 1889 to 2009.

The Los Gatos Creek runs 24 miles (39 km) in California through Santa Clara Valley Water District's Guadalupe Watershed from the Santa Cruz Mountains northward through the Santa Clara Valley until its confluence with the Guadalupe River in downtown San Jose. The Guadalupe River then continues onward into San Francisco Bay. The creek begins in the Santa Cruz mountains near the Santa Clara/Santa Cruz County border, just south of the peak Loma Prieta. It then flows northwesterly to Lake Elsman, a reservoir owned by the San Jose Water Company, then on to Holy City and Chemeketa Park, then northward into the Lexington Reservoir. The creek then flows through the Los Gatos Canyon and through the town of Los Gatos and Vasona Reservoir, then northeasterly through Campbell and San Jose where it meets the Guadalupe River.

Rancho Aptos was a 6,686-acre (27.06 km2) Mexican land grant in present day Santa Cruz County, California given in 1833 by Governor José Figueroa to Rafael Castro. The grant on the Monterey Bay was immediately downcoast of his sister, Martina Castro's Rancho Soquel, and upcoast of his father, José Joaquín Castro's Rancho San Andrés. Rancho Aptos stretched from the area just to the west of Aptos Creek to parts of Nisene Marks and Day Valley in the north, and Rio del Mar to the east, including present day Aptos.

The Hihn Building, at 201 Monterey Ave. in Capitola, California, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. It is built of local redwood and is vaguely Classical in style. It was deemed significant as "an excellent example of the style of architecture which was used by the Portuguese when they settled small farming and fishing villages and towns along the California coastline in the latter part of the 19th Century." It is Capitola's oldest commercial structure and is believed to have been built in 1883. It was part of an effort by Frederick A. Hihn to develop a camping resort named Camp Capitola.It was photographed by John Muir in 1972.