1905 Fire Insurance Maps and Atlas of Santa Cruz, California: The Complete Sanborn Fire Insurance Atlas of Santa Cruz, California, with the Beach Casino, Beach Hill, Seabright, Twin Lakes and Capitola

Facsimile of the 1905 Sanborn fire-insurance atlas of Santa Cruz, California, reproduced in full color from the Library of Congress copy. It covers the whole city on Monterey Bay, from the stores and hotels of Pacific Avenue and the Casino, bath houses and Tent City on the beach, through Beach Hill, the lumber yards and the tannery on the San Lorenzo River, to the east side, Seabright and Twin Lakes, and out to the seaside resort of Capitola with its hotel and pavilion and the Loma Prieta lumber yard at Fairview Park.

The seventy-three numbered sheets work block by block from the stores, banks, hotels and halls along Pacific Avenue, Front Street, Cooper, Church, Locust and Soquel Avenue - the County Court House, the Public Library, the Fire Department Station, the I. O. O. F. Building, the Leonard Building, the F. A. Hihn Company Block, the Y. M. C. A. Block, Knight's Opera House, the Unique Theatre, the Armory of the Naval Militia, the Elks' club rooms, the Sentinel and Surf printing offices, and the Hotel St. George, Pacific Ocean House, Hagaman, Grand Central, Swiss, Toscano, Garibaldi Villa and Railroad Exchange hotels - through the Southern Pacific depot and round house, the Union Traction Company's barns and shops, the Santa Cruz Electric Light and Power Company's gas works, the City Electric Light and Sewer Pumping Station, the Santa Cruz Planing Mill and lumber yard, the Loma Prieta, Pacific Avenue, McAbee and Cash lumber yards, Sinkinson's mill, G. J. Klingler's planing mill, the Santa Cruz Foundry and Enterprise Iron Works, the Santa Cruz Carriage Works, the San Lorenzo Tannery and A. K. Kron Tanning Company, the Kunitz and Parsons and Hamilton soap and glue works, the Cascade Steam Laundry, the Big Trees and Vienna breweries, the Ben Lomond Wine Company's winery, Henry Cowell and Company's lime and cement warehouse and the Standard Oil Company, the Casino with its ball room, plunge, tub baths, aquarium and merry-go-round, Tent City, the Sea Beach, Furrer, St. James, Riverside and Ocean Villa hotels, out to Hotel Surf and Hotel del Mar at Twin Lakes, Hotel Capitola with its pavilion, skating rink, theatre and bath houses, the Capitola depot and the Loma Prieta Lumber Company's mill at Fairview Park, to the Santa Cruz High School, the Mission, Laurel, Branciforte and Grant public schools, Holy Cross Church and School, Calvary Episcopal, the Methodist Episcopal and Methodist Episcopal South, German Methodist, First Congregational, First Presbyterian, First Christian, Advent Christian and All Saints Unitarian churches, the Christian Church Tabernacle in the Garfield Avenue circles, the Baptist Tabernacle at Twin Lakes, and the residential streets of Beach Hill, the east side, Seabright, Twin Lakes and Capitola.

In 1905 the Sanborn Map Company of New York surveyed Santa Cruz for the fire-insurance trade, drawing the city at fifty feet to the inch. Every building is shown to scale and color-coded for construction (yellow for frame, pink for brick, blue for stone), with heights, uses, windows, party walls, hydrants, water mains and fire stations all marked. The index lists every street and every named business, church, school, hotel, mill and works with the sheet it appears on, and the key map places the colored sheet grid over the whole city.

This Exile Books edition is an unabridged facsimile republication of the atlas: the title sheet, the index, the key map with the fire and water report and all seventy-three numbered map sheets, 1 to 73, printed at 8.5 x 11 inches on premium color paper. Ideal for local historians, genealogists, architects, preservationists and anyone tracing a Santa Cruz address back to 1905.

The Sanborn Map Company of New York, founded by D. A. Sanborn in 1867 and by the 1900s headquartered at 11 Broadway, surveyed thousands of American cities for the fire-insurance trade. Its large-scale plans record every building's footprint, construction, height and use, and remain the most detailed record of the early twentieth-century American city.