The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located in Monterey Bay, on the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the main campus lies on 2,001 acres (810 ha) of rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. As of Fall 2024, its ten residential colleges enroll some 17,940 undergraduate and 1,998 graduate students. Satellite facilities in other Santa Cruz locations include the Coastal Science Campus and the Westside Research Park and the Silicon Valley Center in Santa Clara, along with administrative control of the Lick Observatory near San Jose in the Diablo Range and the Keck Observatory near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
The Giant Dipper is a historic wooden roller coaster located at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, an amusement park in Santa Cruz, California. The Giant Dipper, which replaced the Thompson's Scenic Railway, took 47 days to build and opened on May 17, 1924, at a cost of $50,000. With a height of 70 feet (21 m) and a speed of 55 miles per hour (89 km/h), it is one of the most popular wooden roller coasters in the world. As of 2025, over 68 million people have ridden the Giant Dipper since its opening. The ride has received several awards such as being named a National Historic Landmark, a Golden Age Coaster award, and a Coaster Landmark award.
Antonelli Pond is a century old, man-made pond on the west side of the city of Santa Cruz, California that now has ecological and cultural significance. The pond and surrounding riparian habitat are foraging and/or breeding grounds for many species including raptors, egrets, great blue heron, deer, raccoon, coyote, and several rodent species, including woodrats. Additionally, the pond has many paths for walking and spots for fishing that are enjoyed daily by local community residents.
The Arboretum & Botanic Garden at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is located on the campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz, in the United States. The garden is set over some 115 acres and includes over 300 rare plant species.
Rachel Carson College is a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Named in honor of conservationist Rachel Carson, it is on the west side of campus, north of Oakes College and southeast of Porter College. The current provost of the college is Professor Sue Carter, also a faculty member of UCSC's Physics Department. The theme of its freshman core course is Environment and Society.
College Nine is a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The university's first new college in nearly 30 years, College Nine was founded in 2000 although the dorms were not finished until 2002. It is located on the north side of campus, east of Science Hill and west of Crown College. The college theme is International and Global Perspectives. All freshmen students are required to take a core course on this particular theme.
John R. Lewis College, formerly known as College Ten, is one of the ten residential colleges at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It is on the north side of campus, west of College Nine and north of the Cowell Student Health Center. The theme of its freshman core course is Social Justice and Community.
The first of the ten residential colleges of the University of California, Santa Cruz, established in 1965, Cowell College (Samuel Henry Cowell College) sits on the edge of a redwood forest with a remarkable view of Monterey Bay. The college is named for Henry Cowell and the Cowell family, who donated the land that UCSC is built upon, previously known as the Cowell Ranch.
Crown College is one of the residential colleges that makes up the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States.
DeLaveaga Disc Golf Course, commonly known as "DeLa", is a world-renowned 29-hole disc golf course in the hills of DeLaveaga Park above Santa Cruz, California. It was established in 1984. It boasts one of the original long disc golf courses, with some holes measuring more than 500 feet in length. The 27th hole, known as "Top of the World," is one of the most famous holes in disc golf; the tee box is situated nearly 600 feet from the pin—and 100 feet above it. DeLaveaga placed #10 on Release Point's 2019 list of World's Best Disc Golf Courses.
Georgiana Bruce Kirby Preparatory School, commonly referred to as Kirby School, is a co-educational, non-sectarian, independent school located in Santa Cruz, California. The school educates students in grades 6–12.
The Golden Gate Villa is a Queen Anne style house built in 1891 in Santa Cruz, California. The house was designed by San Francisco architect Thomas J. Welsh for Major Frank McLaughlin, a mining engineer and California politician. Visitors to Golden Gate Villa included Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Edison. In the 1940s the house was operated as a restaurant, the Palais Monte Carlo. After passing through several owners, in 1963 the house was purchased by seafood magnate William W. Durney and his screenwriter wife Dorothy Kingsley, who sold it to the present owner. On July 24, 1975, the Golden Gate Villa was added to the United States National Register of Historic Places.
Harbor High School is a high school located in Santa Cruz, California, with roughly 950 members of its student body. The mascot, Petey the Pirate, sports the school colors of green and gold.
The A. J. Hinds House, also known simply as the Hinds House, is a historic building in Santa Cruz, California. It was built in 1888–1889 for Alfred Joseph Hinds and his wife Sarah, in a Victorian style it is the largest surviving Stick-Eastlake house in Santa Cruz County. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places since August 25, 1983, under the name "A. J. Hinds House". Today the Hinds House is a historical inn with rooms rented out to guests visiting.
The Baskin School of Engineering, known simply as Baskin Engineering, is the school of engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It consists of six departments: Applied Mathematics, Biomolecular Engineering, Computational Media, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Statistics.
Kaiser Permanente Arena is an indoor arena located in Santa Cruz, in the U.S. state of California. It has a seating capacity of 2,505 spectators. It hosts the Santa Cruz Warriors of the NBA G League. It was also the home of the Santa Cruz Derby Girls of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association in 2013 and 2014. The naming rights were bought by health care consortium Kaiser Permanente (KP) despite the company—a sponsor of the Warriors' owner, the NBA's Golden State Warriors—not having facilities in Santa Cruz at the time. KP has since opened medical facilities in Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley and Watsonville.
Kresge College is one of the residential colleges that make up the University of California, Santa Cruz. Founded in 1971 and named after Sebastian Kresge, Kresge college is located on the western edge of the UCSC campus. Kresge is the sixth of ten colleges at UCSC, and originally one of the most experimental. The first provost of Kresge, Bob Edgar, had been strongly influenced by his experience in T-groups run by NTL Institute. He asked a T-group facilitator, psychologist Michael Kahn, to help him start the college. When they arrived at UCSC, they taught a course, Creating Kresge College, in which they and the students in it designed the college. Kresge was a participatory democracy, and students had extraordinary power in the early years. The college was run by two committees: Community Affairs and Academic Affairs. Any faculty member, student or staff member who wanted to be on these committees could be on them. Students' votes counted as much as the faculty or staff. These committees determined the budgets and hiring. They were also run by consensus. Distinguished early faculty members included Gregory Bateson, former husband of Margaret Mead and author of Steps to an Ecology of Mind; Phil Slater, author of The Pursuit of Loneliness; John Grinder, co-founder of Neuro-linguistic programming and co-author of The Structure of Magic; and William Everson, one of the Beat poets.
Lighthouse Field State Beach is a protected beach in the state park system of California, United States. It is located in the city of Santa Cruz at the north end of Monterey Bay. The beach overlooks the Steamer Lane surfing hotspot. It also contains the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum, housed in a 1967 lighthouse. The 38-acre (15 ha) site was established in 1978.
The McHenry Library is the arts, humanities, and social sciences library of the University of California, Santa Cruz. It was named after the founding chancellor of the university, Dean E. McHenry. The building, designed by architect John Carl Warnecke, was completed in 1968 and features a minimalist design intended to blend into its forest surroundings, with floor-to-ceiling glass set in coarse, granite-like concrete and exposed vertical columns suggestive of tree trunks. The building is designed around a four-story atrium surrounded entirely by glass walls. Over the last ten years the library has undergone seismic retrofit and renovations, amounting in $100 million in improvements. In fall of 2011 it fully reopened with a new café, increased study space, and special exhibit room exclusively for the Grateful Dead archives. The Global Village Café, which is located in the new wing of the library and offers smoothies, sandwiches, salads, and a full coffee bar.
Merrill College is a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The theme of the college, and the name of its freshman core course, is "cultural identities and global consciousness."
The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH) is a nonprofit educational institution and museum founded in 1996 and located in Santa Cruz, California, at the downtown McPherson Center. Its mission is to ignite shared experiences and unexpected connections, using art and history to build a stronger, more connected community.
Oakes College is a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It is on the southwestern corner of the campus, south of Rachel Carson College and east of the Family Student Housing complex.
Benjamin F. Porter College, known colloquially as Porter College, is a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It is located on the lower west side of the university, south of Kresge College and north of Rachel Carson College. The college was founded in 1969 as College Five and formally dedicated on November 21, 1981. On that day the college was given the motto Ars Longa, Vita Brevis (Art endures, Life is short), and a series of college symbols, including a faculty mace and a college bell, were inaugurated.
Santa Cruz High School is a comprehensive public school in Santa Cruz, California which originally opened in 1897 and now serves an enrollment of about 1,040 students in grades nine through twelve. It is part of the Santa Cruz City School District. The school's mascot is a cardinal.
Santa Cruz Looff Carousel and Roller Coaster On The Beach Boardwalk is a National Historic Landmark composed of two parts, a Looff carousel and the Giant Dipper wooden roller coaster, at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, California, United States. They are among the oldest surviving beachfront amusement park attractions on the west coast of the United States. They were listed as a pair as a National Historic Landmark in 1987.
The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, also known affectionately by locals as "the Whale Museum", is one of the earliest museums in the state of California. Founded from the Laura Hecox collection in 1905, the museum's collections grew extensively throughout the years, acquiring many Native American and archaeological artifacts, as well as natural history specimens. Currently, the museum is housed in a Carnegie Library, named after the Carnegie philanthropic foundation that funded the construction of the library in 1915.
The Santa Cruz Surfing Museum is a museum which was established in May 1986 to document the history of surfing. With collections dating back to the earliest years of surfing on mainland United States, the museum houses a historical account of surfing in Santa Cruz, California.
The Coastal Science Campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz consists of five main institutions: UC Santa Cruz's Long Marine Laboratory, UC Santa Cruz's Coastal Biology Building, the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center, the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, and the California Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center.
The Home of Peace Cemetery (also called Beit Shalom) is a Jewish cemetery in Santa Cruz, California. Consecrated in 1877 by the Hebrew Benevolent Society, it is located on Meder Street – named after Moses Meder, a Mormon businessman who gifted the land to the Society – on the west side of Santa Cruz, near the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The Santa Cruz Wharf is a pier in Santa Cruz, California, United States, known for fishing, boat tours, viewing sea lions, dining, nightlife and gift shops. The current wharf was built in 1914, the most recent of six built on the site, and is operated by the City of Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation Office. The wharf is situated between Main Beach (which is adjacent to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk) and Cowell's Beach, on the westside of the city of Santa Cruz. With a length of 2,745 feet (836.68 m) before the 2024 storm damage, it was the longest pier on the West Coast of the United States.
Adlai E. Stevenson College, known colloquially as Stevenson College, is a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Currently, the college is host to the Linguistics Department, as well as many humanities faculty.
Santa Cruz (Spanish for 'Holy Cross') is the largest city in and the county seat of Santa Cruz County, California. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 62,956. Situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz is a popular tourist destination, owing to its beaches, surf culture, and historic landmarks.
The Santa Cruz Yacht Club (SCYC) is a yacht club founded in 1928 and is the oldest, and currently the only, yacht club in Santa Cruz, California.
Undertow is a steel spinning roller coaster at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, built by Mauer AG (Steel construction and roller coaster manufacturer) [1]
The Catalyst is a nightclub located at 1011 Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz, California. The club has hosted big-name artists such as Neil Young, Pearl Jam, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Emmylou Harris, Phish, Iggy Pop, and Nirvana. The Catalyst was also where local bands could achieve popularity. Some of the local band in the 1970s were Snail, Oganookie, and Jango.
Neary Lagoon is a small lagoon located in the Lower Westside neighborhood of Santa Cruz, California. The lagoon is protected within Neary Lagoon Park, which serves as both a municipal park and wildlife refuge for migratory birds. The Santa Cruz Water Treatment Plant abuts the southwestern edge of the lagoon.
Evergreen Cemetery is a public cemetery located on Evergreen Street in Santa Cruz, California and was established in the 1850s. Since 2008, the Evergreen Cemetery is under the management of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH).