The 1904 Neptune Casino was an elaborate Aladdin’s Palace, with restaurant, penny arcade, auditorium, and bandstand. (Ross Eric Gibson Collection)

There was much excitement in 1903 when it was learned that President Theodore Roosevelt would tour Santa Cruz on May 8, greeting the public before seeing his first redwoods during a picnic at Big Trees Grove (now Henry Cowell state park). The presidential visit was expected to be a boon to business, and a promoter’s dream with the national press in town, showing off the attractions of Santa Cruz. The first-class, 170-room Sea Beach Hotel was the most beautiful structure on the waterfront, with its lush gardens and local varieties of pelargoniums.

Then reality set in. Santa Cruz didn’t have sufficient rooming accommodations for the sizable crowds expected. A few years before, a travel photographer had set up to take pictures of the bathhouses on the Santa Cruz waterfront, then decided not to, because he couldn’t find an angle that made them look good.  Town fathers, blinded by their local pride, started to see the town through others’ eyes. The waterfront was a magnificent natural setting, with breathtaking views of the mountains and sea. But by contrast, the utilitarian structures seemed a blight on the landscape. Looking around town, much of the early architecture was bland and unattractive, and the numerous vacant lots were filled with weeds and rubbish, and a prominent lot facing the waterfront had become an industrial junkyard. Even Big Trees Grove had white-washed shacks that disrupted the natural setting.

Now town fathers feared the national press would focus a negative spotlight on the town. Mayor David C. Clark called a meeting to find out what they could do, with businessmen, unions and local citizens pitching in. First, they registered every available hotel room, vacation cottage, boarding house and private home willing to host guest rooms, yet it wasn’t sufficient. Trolley President Fred Swanton erected a temporary “tent city” at Dolphin Ballpark, across Beach Street from the three main saltwater bathhouses. In addition, the Miller-Leibbrandt Plunge rented all their upstairs rooms as the “Hotel de Plunge,” while making numerous other improvements.  There was a call to plant all vacant lots with flowers.  Dull-looking buildings would be made attractive with bunting, flags and banners. The streets and depot would be decorated with redwood greenery.

While the majority of improvements and labor were volunteer or privately funded, Fred Swanton established an entertainment fund for the purchase and distribution of whatever was needed for the event. He called it the “New Santa Cruz” Fund, serving as much for entertainment as for the beautification of the town. The committee was composed of California’s former Lt. Gov. Wm. T. Jeter, H.E. Irish, baths-owner R.S. Miller, T.W. Kelly, and Swanton as chairman.  When President Roosevelt arrived, the transformation was highly complimented in the press and brought a sense of local pride.

Improvements

But if this was what the town could do pulling together quickly for an event, the community didn’t want to relinquish the momentum toward progress. Swanton said he would solicit additional donations to fund a series of concerts, carnivals, fireworks and tourist events daily throughout the summer at the Main Beach and downtown. Without taking a cent, Swanton staged 80 consecutive events from June 12 to Sept. 1, 1903, documenting expenditures to only serve public activities. After the last event, city leaders proclaimed this the most successful tourist season ever, and in thanks, they paraded Swanton through crowded streets in a royal-looking barouche carriage pulled by horses with red plumbs.  At the armory, Swanton was presented a diamond ring and diamond stud on behalf of the people of Santa Cruz, to much applause. Then a ball was held until midnight.

Swanton was busy with plans to extend his trolley line down to Capitola, yet the term “New Santa Cruz” so sparked the public imagination, that the Sentinel was full of public suggestions for a permanent tent city, a large convention hotel, a place to host the annual Venetian Water Carnivals, a year-round tourist economy, and so forth. Swanton had development options for the Hall Ranch near Natural Bridges (owned by his father-in-law), and Spreckels’ land in Aptos. But instead, he felt he could couple the beautification of the Santa Cruz waterfront with creating a train and trolley destination here. He purchased the Miller-Leibbrandt property on the beach, Dolphin Park north of Beach Street, and Southern Pacific promised to deed over its beach lands, then help sponsor and promote Swanton’s venture.

Swanton headquartered his New Santa Cruz Movement in the downtown offices of architect Edward Van Cleeck, at 176 Pacific Ave., thus having someone with an artistic eye to present inspiring concepts of the new waterfront.  Swanton dubbed his waterfront development the “Santa Cruz Beach, Cottage, & Tent City Corporation.”

As with the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, Swanton chose to couple his tent city with the nearby Sea Beach Hotel on Beach Hill. The Miller-Leibbrandt Baths would be the centerpiece on the beachfront, with the old Dolphin Baths updated, and in place of the Neptune baths, he would build an Aladdin’s Pleasure Palace, facing an exotic bandstand.  At the river mouth lagoon, Swanton proposed a boating pavilion on the river island, suitable for the water carnivals, and he located some amusement rides in a park setting at the riverbend. If some feared a carny atmosphere would attract rough necks, he could use Van Cleeck’s image to demonstrate Swanton’s inspiration was the cultural grandeur of World’s Fair pavilions. The term casino in those days was meant as “house of games,” made non-gambling by offering prizes instead of cash.

Construction

Swanton’s Neptune Casino was to be erected on the site of Bertha Leibbrandt’s “Neptune Bathhouse.”  Bertha resented being sold out and losing this prime site. She unsuccessfully sought an injunction against the new project, claiming Tent City contractors were obstructing her business traffic. When the city ordered her building moved, she moved it, not inland, but onto the beach, and her workers were discovered one midnight, trying to install a permanent foundation. At last, she moved her building to the east corner of Cliff and Beach streets, where she would lose her ocean view.

The railroad’s unsightly waterfront oil tanks were demolished, and the old Neptune swimming pool was turned into underground oil tanks. Swanton planned to outline his buildings in electric lights, illuminate the boating pond with strings of lights over the river, with sequence lighting on the Pleasure Pier. In fact, his projected lighting scheme was so elaborate, it would have overwhelmed the local power plant serving the whole town.  But it was Swanton who had introduced electricity to Santa Cruz in 1889, then built the Big Creek Hydroelectric Dam in 1896. So his solution was to build the Beach Company its own Beach Street power plant, selling his surplus energy to the city’s plant. In March 1904, a winter gale destroyed one of the bathing structures and blew the framework for the Casino’s second story down, but repairs were quickly made, and the Casino was completed.

Before opening day, it was learned Swanton had been receiving anonymous threatening letters from several who regarded his pleasureland immoral, or a nuisance. But on opening day June 11, 1904, the public found Swanton’s boardwalk avoided the sideshow crudery with cultural overtones. People dressed up in their Sunday best to visit the beach attractions. The “Wonderscope” show used optical illusions (like a flowing water effect, or billowing train smoke) to animate colorized slides of Santa Cruz County attractions. Another magic lantern show depicted the Life of Christ, just in case someone wanted to impose Sunday-closing “Blue Laws.” Bandstand concerts interspersed classical music with popular songs.

The “Neptune Casino” was described as different styles by different observers. One felt it resembled St. Marks Cathedral in Venice, as a tie-in to the Venetian Water Carnivals. Another said it was a Victorianized version of the Spanish Alhambra. A third felt it was Arabian Knights style, like Aladdin’s palace in old Baghdad. A costume ball entitled “A Night in Baghdad” reinforced this interpretation. The Casino was topped with a chessboard of 30 onion domes, the center one providing a panoramic view, with an exotic bandstand centered between two wings of projecting porches. Inside the Casino was a penny arcade, with a soda fountain, and a five-chair barber shop. The dining room wing seated 500 at 100 tables, with food prepared under the direction of a chef from San Francisco’s Palace Hotel. Restaurant service also extended to the “Roof Garden” dining porches. The Casino’s auditorium had a capacity of 4,000, plus a theater that held 2,500.
An aquarium sat between the Casino and Plunge. The old Dolphin Baths building became “Hanly’s Institute of Hydrotherapy and Massage,” and the headquarters for the lifeguards. Other attractions were a glass blower, men’s fine clothing store, a wheel of fortune, palm reader, box ball alley (skee ball), shooting gallery, and roller skating rink (in what became the Fun House building). Popular foods were ice cream cornucopias (cones) that wouldn’t stain your dress gloves, fairy floss (cotton candy) and waffles. The 400-foot Pleasure Pier had a photo studio at its entrance, sequence lighting moving toward the sea, and two boats a day to Monterey and back.  A “captive balloon” on the beach had a firepit to keep it filled with hot air. Harold van Gorder recalled the balloon inflated to 65 feet in diameter and rose to 3,000 feet on a good day. A performer would parachute back to the beach.

The New Santa Cruz Movement became a popular term of progress, immortalized in the “New Santa Cruz March & Two-Step” dance, and businesses like the “New Santa Cruz Electric Supply Co.,” “New Santa Cruz Flour & Feed Store,” “New Santa Cruz Shoeing Forge,” the “New Santa Cruz Market” in the YMCA Building, and in 1920, the “New Santa Cruz Theatre” movie house and convention hall at Pacific and Walnut streets, now known as the Old Theater Building.

Had it not been for Teddy Roosevelt’s visit, Santa Cruzans may not have looked for ways to beautify the waterfront. Fred Swanton became the inveterate Santa Cruz booster, building the first version of the boardwalk in 1904, an institution that would grow into what industry magazine “Amusement Today” consistently called the Best Seaside Amusement Park, until it was named a Golden Ticket Legend in 2019 for being “Best of the Best.”