Stephen Payne
The Loma Prieta Museum is thrilled to announce that local author and historian Stephen Payne has published a second printing of his historical book A Howling Wilderness: The Summit Road Area of the Santa Cruz Mountains 1850-1906. The 2024 version will include new back cover artwork and a few corrections to the text. The last edition of this book was released 46 years ago in 1978. Topics that A Howling Wilderness covers include local mountain history from 1850 to 1906 as related to transportation, culture, pioneering families, logging, farming, education, religion, journalism, and nearby communities, some of which are now ghost towns.
Lowell Webb
The Santa Cruz Mountains have lost a man who contributed his life to serving the community. Lowell Edgar Webb left us on January 28th 2025, at 88 years old in Santa Cruz, California ,the same city as his birth in 1936, to Kenneth and Mary Webb. The family businesses, Webb’s Farm Supplies and Webb’s Organic Farm, have been serving and providing nourishment to the community for more than 100 years. Many in the area, even across the country, have purchased or had outdoor power equipment serviced by Lowell and his crew. He was still taking care of his customers into the last months of his life. Lowell’s family plan to continue to serve the community in this spirit.
The Loma Prieta Museum fondly remembers Bill Radonich and all of his outstanding contributions to the Santa Cruz Mountain community. “Bill” Radonich, affectionately known as “Buzzard” or “The Old Buzzard” passed away on January 27th, 2025 in Santa Clara, CA. He was 96 years old. Born in San Jose, CA, Buzzard was the son of Billy and Katy Radonich. He grew up on the family farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. At 10 years old, he was already helping around the farm, driving the tractor with the spray rig while his brothers sprayed. At 14 he drove the entire student body of Burrell School to Santa Cruz on the family’s truck. At 16 he would deliver and unload 6 tons of apples in San Francisco after school. Buzzard was the valedictorian of his Burrell School 8th grade class of 3, a fact he often repeated to his grandchildren with pride. In high school, he was an All-American shortstop in baseball, started at both running back and linebacker in football, and was rumored to be an air-raid warden.
Transcontinental Airway System
in the Santa Cruz Mountains
By Lou Rapp
On a 20-acre section of Adolphus Rapp’s ranch there was a 53 foot tall beacon light tower with a two foot lens on top that rotated and lit up the mountains all around Skyland Ridge. The beacon was five million candle power and rotated six times a minute. The light beam was high enough to be above the coastal fog most of the time. It was low enough to be below the clouds and light up the mountain range under Mt. Umunhum. The beacon was on the highest point on Skyland Ridge, and it turned on automatically every night. My sister Agnes told me that when she finished picking prunes for the day next to the beacon, just as it started to get dark, the light would turn on. The beacon made an eerie squealing sound as it rotated. The hike down the hill from the 20 acre section of the Skyland ranch to the house felt very spooky. Even when I heard the beacon squeaking way down by the barn at night, it sounded spooky in the dark.
Santa Cruz Mountain Tunnels
By Debra Staab
February 12, 1877 started out like any other work day for the Chinese diggers. Armed with picks, shovels, and a few sticks of dynamite, the gang of about 30 “coolies” lit their pine torches dipped in pitch to see their way. They entered the dark gaping hole that led 2,000 feet into the hill with a goal to meet a counterpart gang digging from the other side of the mountain. The work was brutal, but together they would punch all the way through 6,115 feet of earth and rock to form a tunnel large enough to fit a full-sized steam locomotive. A heavy swing with a pick suddenly broke open a seam of natural gas which quickly filled the cavern. In a flash the entire chamber was ignited by the burning torches. The resulting blast was so intense that it blew men straight out the tunnel hole, flipped a ten-ton compressor fifty feet away, and destroyed the Wright’s Blacksmith Shop which sat some 200 feet from the tunnel entrance. Only the foreman made it out alive.
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