Quick Take
The idea for Live Oak's own museum never quite caught on, but longtime locals Bill Simpkins and Reed Geisreiter have curated a look at the history of the unincorporated area between Santa Cruz and Capitola in "Live Oak: A Glimpse Into the Past," with a surfing exhibit coming in the fall.
More so than any others in Santa Cruz County, the residents of Live Oak often have to grapple with an identity crisis. Newcomers to the region are sometimes confused about exactly what constitutes this thing called “Live Oak.” Is it a town or isn’t it?
For the record, Live Oak is the name of the neighborhoods that exist in the unincorporated area between Santa Cruz’s Eastside city limits — 7th Avenue is a handy dividing line — and Capitola. It is, to use government jargon, a “census-designated place.” But what makes it different from other such unincorporated places like, say, Soquel or Aptos, is that Live Oak does not have a post office. All mail that comes to the area is addressed “Santa Cruz” (though Live Oak does have its own ZIP code that, mostly, corresponds to its geographical footprint: 95062).
None of these technicalities, however, means that the people of Live Oak do not have a sense of pride in place. Of course, they do.
Now, as if to underscore and enhance that sense of pride, here comes “Live Oak: A Glimpse Into the Past,” a new exhibit of historical photographs at the Simpkins Family Swim Center on 17th Avenue, in the heart of Live Oak. The collection of photos and supporting material at the Simpkins Center and the adjoining Live Oak Library Annex has a kind of did-you-know? sense of discovery to it, as designed by well-known and longtime locals Bill Simpkins and Reed Geisreiter.
The library annex was built with Live Oak’s portion of the Measure S county library funding bill passed in 2016. And it was during that period that Bill Simpkins started thinking: “Well, I thought, geez, Capitola has a museum, and Aptos has a museum. Why don’t we have one for Live Oak?”
The Live Oak museum idea failed to get off the ground, so Simpkins decided to hang photos at the swim center that bears his family’s name. The result is a collection of photos that roughly chronicle the years between 1880 and 1930 in Live Oak. The photos will be at the swim center through the summer, and in September, another exhibit, this one zeroed in on surfing, will be installed.
Simpkins said he wanted to choose photos that have some relevance to locals’ lives today. As an example, he mentioned calla lilies apparently growing in the wild around Schwan Lake. The random lilies growing in Live Oak, he said, are remnants from what was once a thriving lily industry in the area, centered on the Lilydale Bulb Co. The photos show the prominence of calla lilies as they grew in Live Oak.
Also on display are photos marking Live Oak’s history in aviation, as the site of a small airfield where trained pilots used to give people rides in the 1920s and ’30s, when air travel was still a relatively new innovation. One of the photos includes pilot Elinor Smith, one of the most prominent aviators of her time, who lived for a while in Santa Cruz.
“I’m not a curator,” said Simpkins, who, with his family, spearheaded the fundraising and construction of the swim center that bears his name. “I just picked photos that I liked. You know, people go to a museum and they might retain 10% of what they see. I wanted to give them something that was easy to remember.”
Those include not only photos of calla lily farms and biplanes, but also of Buckhart’s Candy and its famous windmill shop on East Cliff Drive near Twin Lakes State Beach. Buckhart’s closed more than 20 years ago, but the building still stands and is now fittingly the Windmill Cafe.
The exhibit is a gift for Live Oak trivia buffs as well — a photo of the street sign for Paul Minnie Avenue reminds us that there was no person named “Paul Minnie”; the phrase was a shorthand for the Twin Cities in Minnesota, where many early settlers of the area had come from. Also, the giant concrete “jacks” famous for reinforcing the jetty at the Santa Cruz Harbor are called “tetrapods,” and they were manufactured in Live Oak.
The exhibit is dedicated to local historian and author Norman Poitevin, well-known for leading history walks in the Live Oak area. Poitevin helped research the names of the Indigenous people buried in a mass grave in Old Holy Cross Cemetery in Live Oak dating to the time of the Spanish missions in California. Photos of the cemetery and the plaque bearing those names are also part of the exhibit.
Simpkins is also looking forward to September, when Eastside surfing culture will be the focus of a new exhibit at the swim center. “We’re going to have a whole map of the shoreline, from the harbor to Pleasure Point, and we’re going to point out all the surf spots. I’m working now on getting 13-year-olds to write about surfing 26th Avenue and 80-year-olds to write about their favorite surf spots. Again, the idea is that you come here, spend 20 minutes, half an hour and get a really good grasp of some special things that happened here.”
“Live Oak: A Glimpse Into the Past” is now on display at the Simpkins Family Swim Center on 17th Avenue in Live Oak. Hours are 6 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
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