What’s in a Name?

The meaning of many place names is often self-explanatory. Los Gatos Creek is a creek near Los Gatos, Scotts Valley is a valley founded by Hiram Scott, and the Summit is at the crest of the mountain. Other names are much more generic (Highland), and some are even misleading (Hooker Gulch).

Do you know the origins of all of these historical names? Alma. Alma was a community located one mile south of Lexington that sprang up in the 1860s. The town had a luxury hotel called The Forest House, a stagecoach stop, several sawmills, a few saloons, and a store. The Alma School was built there by Louis Hebard, and the first postmaster was Lysander Collins, who ran the Forest House.

The postal inspector randomly assigned the name Alma to the town in 1873. It was formerly part of Lexington. The origin of the name is pure speculation. Some say it came from the Spanish word for soul, others claim the town was named after a local prostitute, and still others say the name was related to the New Almaden mine, since a branch road ran nearby.

Less than 100 remaining residents were relocated when the town of Alma was literally flooded over to create the Lexington Reservoir in 1952. The existing Alma Bridge was built in 1926. Nearby Alma College was a Jesuit seminary between 1934 and 1969.

Zayante. The name Zayante derives from the Ohlone people who lived south of Ben Lomond and north of Santa Cruz. Variations of the name were first recorded as early as 1791 in the Mission Santa Cruz baptismal records, where the spelling varied as Sayant and Sayanta. The settlement became a 2,658-acre Mexican land grant called Zayanta in 1833. During the colonial period, the name was attached to a post office (1916-1938), a school (1888-1915), and a train stop and tunnel along the Whitewash Alley. According to an 1860 land survey, Whitewash Alley ran along part of Loma Prieta Avenue near the Summit.

The area traversed lands then belonging to Wilcox, Hile, Deacon, Hall, Finney, and Carr. The Goldmann, Meyer, and McCrackin estates were also nearby. The nickname Whitewash Alley was used because there were white picket fences surrounding every property on both sides of the road.

Capitola. Capitola is now an incorporated city in Santa Cruz County located south of Soquel on the coast. The site was originally an Indian village which became a Castro family land grant known as Shoquel in 1833. In the 1850s, the wharf area was known as Soquel Landing. In 1869, Frederick Hihn purchased the land and built a campground and seaside resort there for those traveling between Santa Cruz and Watsonville. Hihn chose the name Camp Capitola. By the 1880s, Camp Capitola had grown into a 160-room hotel called Capitola by the Sea.

After Hihn died, Capitola was briefly owned by Allen Rispin, who hoped to expand the resort. Unfortunately, Rispin went bankrupt. Local residents worked to have the city incorporated in 1949. There is some controversy over why Hihn selected the name Capitola. One theory is that Soquel had attempted, but failed, to become the capital of California just one year prior to the establishment of the campground. They say Hihn added an “a” to the end of “Capitol” to create a catchphrase that sounded Spanish and still gave a nod to the area attempting to become the state capitol.

The other origin story for Capitola derives from the popular 1850s author Emma Southworth. Southworth penned two novels called The Hidden Hand and Capitola the Madcap, both of which featured a heroine named Capitola. The melodramatic books were very popular at the time. Today, the name Capitola is also attached to an airport, an avenue, a beach, two schools, a library, a South Pacific Coast Railroad (1880-1940).

For several decades after the trains stopped running, the tunnel was used as an Iron Mountain document-storage site. Zayante is still associated with the area, multiple roads, a creek, and a fault line. The Zayante Creek Market and Deli was built in the 1940s as a gas station. Now a market and deli, the establishment still serves the community from the same location today.

Hooker Gulch. No, this place is not named after ladies of the night. Hooker Gulch is a canyon that runs along Los Gatos Creek north from the Summit to just southeast of Aldercroft Heights. John Young McMillan ran a large sawmill operation on the property from the 1860s to the 1880s. McMillan employed a young industrious man named Billy Hooker to maintain and repair all of the mill’s skid roads. Hooker lived and worked on the property and became the namesake for Hooker Gulch. The name still appears on modern maps.

Laguna del Sargento. This small body of water is located on the present-day Mountain Charley Christmas Tree Farm on Mountain Charley Road at Riva Ridge Road, just south of the Summit and Highway 17. It was once part of Mountain Charley McKiernan’s ranch, which sat just northwest of the Soquel Augmentation land grant. Even earlier, this site was a frequent stop for the Ohlone and the Spanish who traveled between Santa Clara and Santa Cruz. Although unconfirmed, the name likely comes from Sargeant Pedro Amador who oversaw improvements to the road which passed by the lagoon.

museum, a post office, a river, and a wharf. Highland. Locals know that the area called Highland (previously Highland Center) is located to the east of San Jose-Soquel Road at the Summit. What you may not know is that Highland once referred to a different location about two miles west, a place now called Laurel. In 1877, the South Pacific Coast Railroad designated the site, rail station, and the tunnel as Highland, but by 1882 the settlement was renamed to Laurel, When pioneers established homesteads further up the ridge from Highland Center, they called their community Skyland. According to historian Stephen Payne, the two areas combined into the Highland-Skyland section of the Santa Cruz Sugarloaf. There is an exit off of Highway 17 in Scotts Valley called Sugarloaf Road.

Sugarloaf Vineyard was located nearby, off Vine Hill Road, in the 1870s. About 20 miles southeast of Sugarloaf Road sits Sugarloaf Mountain at an elevation of 1,268 feet. On some very early maps, this mountain is labeled as San Francisco Mountain but was evidently changed at some point to reflect the shape of the hill.

including its use as a geographical term for mountains. Note that when used as a generic description, the term used two words (sugar and loaf ) but when attached to an object, a single word is used, such as with Sugarloaf Patchen Pass. The small hamlet of Patchen sat near the current intersection of the Old Santa Cruz Highway and Mountain Charley Road. Jacob V. Fowler established a homestead of 240 acres there by the early 1870s. With the Wells Fargo stagecoach and livery stop just across the road, an official U.S. Post Office was opened at Patchen in 1872. It closed in 1929. By 1885, the settlement featured a store, a few hotels, and The name Patchen was officially assigned by a postal inspector in 1872—the same inspector who randomly named Alma.

How the name was selected is controversial. One account states that when the inspector arrived, a man was sitting by the side of the road sewing. When asked what he was doing, the man replied “patchin’.” The other theory is that the town was named after a famous racehorse from the time named George M. Patchen. Neither reason seems to be particularly convincing, leaving the source of the name as a true history mystery.

The naming of Patchen Pass is another story. In 1976, Los Gatos town council member, businessman, and Boy Scout leader Albert Smith was asked by a scout for the name of the pass at the intersection of Summit Road and Highway 17. Smith was taken aback when he realized that it had no name, and he promptly set about giving it one. At the next town council meeting he proposed the name Patchen Pass, since the intersection was near the historical approved and adopted the name in February, Unfortunately, the council hadn’t followed the standard approval method for naming places, which typically involved consulting with local historical societies, heritage commissions, and historians. When word got out, one prominent Los Gatos historian, William A. Wulf, openly objected to the name and instead proposed Cuesta de Los Gatos (wildcat ridge), a term originally coined by John C Fremont. Wulf was By January 1977, both the Santa Cruz County Historical Resources Committee and the Santa Clara County Historical Heritage Commission recommended the name “Patchen Pass” to the Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors. The supervisors approved the name in March 1977. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors approved the naming request the following month.

By December 1977, a road sign was posted at the Summit declaring the place as “Patchen Pass, Elevation 1808 ft., 551 m.” The problem was that CalTrans, the Department of Transportation, and the Los Gatos mayor all denied authorizing the sign.

It seems that someone had ordered it from a sign company in Berkeley, and that company declined to track down who it was. In The day after the sign was removed, there was a meeting between state senator Jerry Smith, Los Gatos mayor Albert Smith, William Wulf, members of the U.S.

Geological Survey, and CalTrans. After a 90-minute discussion, the group agreed to honor both names, Patchen and Cuesta de Los Gatos. Mayor Smith and William Wulf both officially submitted their name requests to the Domestic Geographic Names department of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names in Washington, D.C.

By October 1978, both Smith and Wulf received letters approving their requests. Both thought they had won the battle of the names until they each received a second letter. It turns out the Board of Geographic Names had punted and assigned both names to two different Summit features: Cuesta de Los Gatos was given to the ridge line and Patchen Pass was applied to the mountain Wulf was not happy and sent a long letter to the California Advisory Committee on Geographic Names asking them to withdraw the name Patchen. Despite Wulf ’s last- minute efforts, the committee declined to remove Patchen and fully approved both geographical names. The USGS released a new topographical map of the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1980 with both the ridgeline In spite of the long-drawn-out process to name the pass, local travelers rarely say Patchen Pass, instead preferring to simply call it “The Summit.” When we cross over the pass in either direction, we are just going