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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (22 results)

  • Book
Santa Cruz History (1966)
Wagner was born in Santa Cruz and became an apprentice blacksmith at the age of 17. By 24 he was the owner of his own shop. He discussed all the aspects of blacksmithing and horseshoeing and also gave an excellent account of the skills possessed by the jerk-line teamsters and six-in-hand drivers. In the middle portion of the book, Mr. Wagner described his boyhood years on his father's diversified farm situated at the edge of Santa Cruz--the crops raised, the foods prepared at home, the game and fowl acquired by hunting, and the family's account book at the town grocery store. He also discussed his schooling and the various ethnic groups that were living in Santa Cruz during his youth. The final third of the interview focused on Santa Cruz in the years around the turn of the 20th century. Popular forms of entertainment were mentioned, as were early travel conditions, gunfights, medical and hospital care, and city and county government. The book concluded with a tour through the portion of the Henry Cowell Ranch that is now the University of California, Santa Cruz. Wagner reminisced about the ranch as he knew it in his youth.
  • 11 supplemental audio files
Cover page: Fred Wagner: Blacksmithing and Life in the Santa Cruz Area, 1890-1930
  • Book
Lick Observatory (1971)

Kenneth Campbell was a noted research engineer from Ridgewood, New Jersey. His father, William Wallace Campbell, was Director of the Lick Observatory from 1901 to 1930. This oral history includes descriptions of living conditions on Mount Hamilton at the turn of the century-- the Mt. Hamilton School, water supply, plumbing, food supplies, mail and banking, health care, nine-hole golf course, hunting and fishing, baseball, hiking, funerals and church attendance, and early automobiles. Campbell also discusses early Lick telescopes, eclipse expeditions around the world, and sketches of early Lick astronomers as Campbell remembered them from his youth.

  • 1 supplemental audio file
Cover page: Kenneth Campbell: Life on Mount Hamilton, 1899-1913
  • Book
Santa Cruz History (1967)
Mr. Blaisdell was a lifelong Santa Cruz resident who worked as a postal carrier from 1904 until 1949. His discussion of changes in the postal service during these years included delightful vignettes of the town of Santa Cruz. He also discussed the Cowell family and ranch, the California Powder Works, and described in detail everyday life in Santa Cruz at the turn of the 20th century.
  • 4 supplemental audio files
Cover page: Frank Blaisdell: Santa Cruz in the Early 1900s
  • Book
Institutional History of UCSC (2020)

This set of interviews with Elizabeth Spedding Calciano make up the rare project that is not just a life history, but an oral history of and about oral history itself. While Calciano has thrived in multiple professions and jobs, including a forty-plus year career as a lawyer, this volume focuses on her years as the founding head of the Regional History Project at UC Santa Cruz from 1963 to 1974. this volume is both a life narrative and a meta oral history, telling the story and perspective of someone who arrived to UC Santa Cruz and the oral history field at emergent historical moments.

    Cover page: Elizabeth Spedding Calciano: Founding Director of the Regional History Project, UCSC Library
    • Book
    Lick Observatory (1969)

    Dr. Shane was a noted astronomer and former Director of the Lick Observatory. This interview was designed as a supplement to one conducted by the American Institute of Physics in 1967, hence only a small portion of this volume deals directly with Dr. Shane's work or his administrative career. Instead it concentrates primarily on Dr. Shane's knowledge of the early years of the Lick Observatory.

    At the time Dr. Shane first went to Lick Observatory as a student in 1914, many of the astronomers were men who had been with the Observatory since its very early years. Dr. Shane was asked to comment upon the various men who have been Directors of the Observatory and to discuss the progress of the Observatory under each man. The final portion of the manuscript deals with various items that Dr. Shane felt should have been included in the AIP interview, specifically comments on the establishment of the Statistics department at UC Berkeley, his experience working with the University's Academic Senate, and a discussion of some of the astronomy advisory committees on which he has served both in the United States and abroad.

    • 1 supplemental audio file
    Cover page: Charles Donald Shane: The Lick Observatory
    • Book
    Lick Observatory (1969)
    Dr. Shane was an astronomer, historian, and wife of the former Director of the Lick Observatory. Her association with the Lick Observatory began in 1919, when she moved up to Mount Hamilton for a year's postgraduate work, work which eventually resulted in her Ph.D. thesis. The first section of her manuscript is concerned with the workings of the Observatory in the 1919 period-- the apparatus, the astronomers, the duties of the graduate assistants-- as well as the more mundane subjects such as food, lodging, water supply, and health care. Since Dr. Shane had for years been the Observatory's unofficial historian-in-residence, she and the interviewer took an all-day trip to Mount Hamilton. The resulting eighty pages of manuscript, which form the middle portion of the volume, focus on the history of the Mount Hamilton road and development of the various telescopes. Dr. Shane also comments on a number of astronomers and observatories throughout the world. In the final portion of the volume, Dr. Shane describes the administrative and technical problems her husband, Dr. Donald Shane, faced as Director of the Observatory from 1945-1958, as well as amusing anecdotes of everyday life on the mountain.
    • 9 supplemental audio files
    Cover page: Mary Lea Heger Shane: The Lick Observatory
    • Book
    Santa Cruz History (1964)
    Roy Boekenoogen collected a remarkable archive of Santa Cruz memorabilia, which ranged from sea shells to antique cameras, from bottles to butter churns. Interviewer Elizabeth Calciano described his house as a "fantasy-land for antique hunters, for historians, and for the merely curious." Many of his historical photographs were acquired by the University Library in the 1960s. In this oral history interview Boekenoogen discussed his collections and Santa Cruz history in the early to mid-twentieth century.
      Cover page: A Tour Through the House of Roy Boekenoogen
      • Book
      Santa Cruz History (1965)
      Lodge was the granddaughter of Martina Castro Lodge, holder of the largest Mexican land grant in Santa Cruz County and descendant of Isidro Castro who came to California as a soldier with the de Anza Party in 1776. Lodge related a number of stories about her grandmother handed down in the family; she also described incidents in the life of her father, Michael Lodge II, who lived from 1838-1931. Some of her comments about her own childhood provided details of family life in the 1880s and '90s.
      • 1 supplemental audio file
      Cover page: The Martina Castro Lodge Family
      • Book
      Santa Cruz History (1967)
      Dong was the last of the Chinese cooks at the Cowell ranch cookhouse. He discussed the daily schedule of the ranch cook, the way he got his supplies, and the foods he most commonly prepared. He also explained the floor plan and the equipment of the old cookhouse.
      • 1 supplemental audio file
      Cover page: John Dong: the Cowell Ranch Cookhouse
      • Book
      Santa Cruz History (1964)
      Mr. Stoodley moved to California in 1902 and shortly thereafter began what proved to be a fifty-five year career with the Loma Prieta Lumber Company, first as a clerk, later as bookkeeper, and finally as secretary of the company. For a number of years he also owned his own retail lumberyard. Mr. Stoodley's long and varied lumbering experience is evident in the transcript of this oral history. He talked about logging, bucking, sawing, and wholesaling. He describes the old-style ox-teams and their successors, the powerful donkey engines; he gave a detailed account of the making of "split stuff" (hand-split items such as pickets, posts, and shakes) and also discussed mule packing, narrow-gauge railroads, the old Loma Prieta Village, and the effects of the 1906 earthquake on Santa Cruz County. The latter part of the manuscript was devoted to Santa Cruz life in the early twentieth century. Stoodley described the ethnic composition of the county, monetary practices, the coming of gas and electricity, the trolley system, early highways, entertainment, newspapers, the library and education.
      • 1 supplemental audio file
      Cover page: Albretto Stoodley: The Loma Prieta Lumber Company and Santa Cruz in the Early Twentieth Century
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