Deborah Osterberg

Historic Tales of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park - Big Trees Grove was added to the 2022 Caroline Bancroft History Prize competition Honor Book List.

The competition, sponsored by the Western History and Genealogy Department of the Denver Public Library, is for books on Western American History, covering the area inclusive of the trans-Mississippi West from prehistoric times to the present. This includes all states west of the Mississippi River, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Canadian and Mexican borderlands.

To be a competition nominee, books had have footnotes or endnotes, a bibliography, and an index.

The Caroline Bancroft History Prize committee, composed of Denver Public Library employees, considered nominees who made "... a significant contribution to historical knowledge, that present thorough and original research, that bring a new perspective to some well-known question, and that are of high literary quality."

Author Biography:

While obtaining a degree in history and geography at California State University, Chico, she began working summers for the National Park Service at Yellowstone and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks. After further study in Cultural Resource Management at the University of California at Santa Barbara, she went onto a sixteen year career as an interpreter and museum professional working at national parks around the country (Minute Man National Historical Park, Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site, Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park, Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, and Mount Rainier National Park).

From 2005 to 2014 she worked at the National Archives at San Francisco. At the regional archives she processed archives of federal government resource and land agencies (U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service), developed and conducted public archives and genealogical workshops, and provided reference service for the California and Nevada records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

After returning to Santa Cruz County, starting in 2016 she volunteered at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park providing living history interpretation along the Redwood Loop Trail. After researching the history of the Victorian redwood resort, in 2020 the History Press published her book, Historic Tales of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park - Big Trees Grove. Since June 2021, she has served as the Curator of the Capitola Historical Museum.

Blog:

Big Trees Grove - bigtreesgrove.blogspot.com

Publications:

"Capitola - Signs of the Times," Capitola-Soquel Times, Volume 28, Number 4, April 2023, p. 217.

"Tempest Tossed: Capitola's Long Struggle with the Sea," Capitola-Soquel Times, Volume 28, Number 2, February 2023, p. 7.

"A Gathering of Earnest Women: YWCA Conferences in Capitola," Capitola-Soquel Times, Volume 27, Number 12, December 2022, p. 30.

"Carpets of Color: Vetterle & Reinelt's Begonia History," Capitola-Soquel Times, Volume 27, Number 9, September 2022, p. 11.

"A Gathering of Earnest Women: The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) Students' Conferences in Capitola 1900-1911," Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, Online History Journal of Santa Cruz County, August, 2022.

An Amusing Place: The Capitola Rink and Dance Pavilion," Capitola-Soquel Times, August 2022, pp. 25-26.

"What's in a Street Name?," The Official Capitola Summer Festivals Program & Adventure Guide, 2022, June 23, 2022, pp. 20 and 22.

"A Brief History of the Holmes Lime Company," New Mountain Echo, San Lorenzo Valley Historical Society, Volume 20, Number 1, Spring 2022, pp. 3-4.

"The First People of Capitola," Capitola-Soquel Times, Volume 27, Number 4, April 2022, pp. 11 and 14.

"The Capitola Ballroom: Ella, Louis, and Duke," Capitola-Soquel Times, Volume 27, Number 1, January 2022, p. 8.

"Capitola - Then & Now," The Official Capitola Fall Festivals 2021 Program and Guide, September 6, 2021, p. 22.

"Tripping the Light Fantastic," Words from the Woods, Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park Volunteer Newsletter, May-June 2021, pp. 10-11.

"Historic Tales of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park - Big Trees Grove," New Mountain Echo, San Lorenzo Valley Historical Society, Volume 19, No. 1, Winter 2021.

"The Sampler," Redwood Roots, Genealogical Society of Santa Cruz County, November-December 2020.

Poem - "Black Swifts" - Rail Trail Poetry Contest (2017), Coastal Rail Trail Project, Arts Program, City of Santa Cruz, Economic Development Office.

"I'll Come Back," Redwood Roots, Genealogical Society of Santa Cruz County, May-June 2017.

"The Redwood Novelty Business - A Santa Cruz Original," A Split History - Redwood Logging and Conservation in the Santa Cruz Mountains, edited by Lisa Robinson, The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History at the McPherson Center, Santa Cruz, 2014, pp. 165-169.

"100 Years of Resource Stewardship - Mount Rainier's Archives Project," (with Shader, Nancy and Alison Costanza) CRM Cultural Resource Management, Volume 22, Number 5, 1999, pp. 8-9.