Lawn Way, Capitola, California

Lawn Way is signed street located in Capitola of Santa Cruz County, California. Despite being a signed street within Capitola the right-of-way of Lawn Way is accessible only to pedestrians and is lined with a grassy surface. Lawn Way is lined by signature colorfully painted cottages which have been part of Capitola since 1911. Lawn Way is an east/west street located between San Jose Avenue and Monterey Avenue to the immediate north of Capitola Beach.

The history of Lawn Way

What is now Capitola was known as Soquel Landing during the 1850s. Soquel Landing was located at a wharf which had been positioned at the mouth of Soquel Creek at Monterey Bay. During the 1860s the site of Soquel Landing was the site of an unsuccessful whaling station.

During 1869 Frederick Hihn the property owner of Soquel Landing reached an agreement with Samuel Hall to build a seaside resort. Hall's seaside resort initially opened as a series of seaside tents on July 4, 1874, as Camp Capitola. During the following decades the resort community of Capitola would begin to develop from Camp Capitola.

On July 29, 1911, Lawn Way and the Lawn Way Cottages were dedicated. Lawn Way is thought to be the location of the original tents which comprised the resort at Camp Capitola. Lawn Way was originally adorned with palm trees, olive trees and gas lanterns which were back dropped by uniquely colored cottages. The eastern end of Lawn Way served at the entrance to Frederick Hihn's Grand Hotel Capitola. When Capitola incorporated as a city on January 11, 1949, the first city hall was located at 104 Lawn Way.

The view below faces south from San Jose Avenue at the Lawn Way Street blade.

Facing east towards Monterey Avenue reveals a view of the Lawn Way Cottages and grassy surface of Lawn Way.

Comments

Did Caltrans just kill the G26 cutout US Route shields?

The US Route System was formally created by the American Association of State Highway Officials during November 1926. Through the history of the system the only state to which has elected to maintain cutout US Route shields has been California. The G26 series cutout US Route shields have become a favorite in the road enthusiast hobby and are generally considered to be much more visually pleasing than the standard Federal Highway Administration variant. However, the G26 shield series appears to have been killed off on January 18, 2026, when Caltrans updated their Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices. This blog will examine the history of the US Route shield specifications in California and what is happening with the 2026 changes. The blog cover photo is facing towards the terminus of California State Route 136 and at a G26-2 specification US Route 395 shield. In the background Mount Whitney can be seen in the Sierra Nevada range. ...

May 2023 Ontario Trip (Part 3 of 3)

Over the years, I have made plenty of trips to Ontario, crisscrossing the southern, central and eastern parts of the province. Living in Upstate New York, it's pretty easy to visit our neighbor to the north, or is that our neighbor to the west? Ottawa is one of my favorite cities to visit anywhere in the world, plus I've discovered the charm of Kingston, the waterfalls of Hamilton (which is on the same Niagara Escarpment that brings us Niagara Falls), the sheer beauty of the Bruce Peninsula, and more. But I hadn't explored much of Cottage Country. So I decided to change that, and what better time to go than over Memorial Day weekend, when the daylight is long and I have an extra day to explore. On the third and final day of my trip, I started in Huntsville and made my way through Muskoka District and Haliburton County, passing by many lakes along the way. I stopped in towns such as Dorset, Haliburton and Bancroft before making a beeline down to Belleville and then over th...

Ghost Town Tuesday; Nichols, FL

A couple years ago I spent a lot of spare time exploring phosphate mining ghost towns in the Bone Valley of Polk County, Florida. One ghost town in particular called Nichols on Polk County Route 676 west of Mulberry caught my eye due to a relative lack of documentation on ghosttowns.com. Nichols was created in 1905 during the early phosphate mining boom in the Bone Valley region. For the time Nichols was unusual since it had company housing in the Nichols Mine site and private residences outside the gate. Nichols is only about two miles west of Mulberry which probably made it a somewhat reasonable commute even by the wonky standards of the early 20th Century. Most of the Bone Valley region was relatively remote which made commuting or homesteading impractical which is why there are so many ghost towns in the area. The company housing section of Nichols was phased out and abandoned by 1950. The Nichols town site is largely abandoned and could "possibl...