at Santa Cruz, California celebrated its silver anniversary. An article which was originally published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel also appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.
The Surfing Museum has displays of old longboards made from nearby redwood trees. There are pictures of surfers from the area arranged by decades and booklets promoting movies about surfing.
The museum is open Thursday through Monday from Noon to 4PM.
SANTA CRUZ -- When Ted Nicholson hitchhiked from his San Bruno naval post to Santa Cruz in 1944, he wasn't sure what to expect.
In addition to great surf, what the Southern California native found when he paddled out was a group of rag-tag wave riders that became lifelong buddies. Harry Mayo, Doug Thorne and the other kings of Cowell's welcomed him as part of their now legendary Santa Cruz Surfing Club.
"They just took me in," the 88-year-old Nicholson recalled Friday as he stood in the breezy sunshine next to Thorne for the 25th anniversary celebration of the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum.
"If you were a surfer, you were a brother," said Thorne.
The 82-year-old Thorne, a native Santa Cruzan who started surfing in the sixth grade, had to it give up for health reasons, but Nicholson, who lives in Watsonville, still hits the waves from time to time. Complete with priceless photos and memorabilia, the museum nestled inside the Mark Abbott Memorial Lighthouse since in May 1986 is really their own personal repository, a living tribute to a shared experience.
"This establishes the permanency of surfing and endorses the significance of surfing and the culture of surfing," Thorne said.
The tiny, one-room museum chronicles the 125-year history of Santa Cruz's famed past time -- from the time it was introduced by three Hawaiian princes riding redwood planks at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River in 1885 to the Fiberglas boards of today.
The Santa Cruz Surfing Club Preservation Society saved the museum from closure in 2008 after a round of severe cuts to the city's Parks and Recreation Department.
"It's a symbol of our heritage and the fact that we can work together to create community and provide opportunities for the next generation," said Mayor Ryan Coonerty, who proclaimed Friday Santa Cruz Surfing Museum Day.
Kim Stoner, a founding member of the preservation society, recalled the effort to create the museum with the city's help. It took a while to get organized -- "If there is surf, nothing gets done," he said -- but when it was finished, it became the world's first surfing museum.
Stoner couldn't resist noting that Huntington Beach, which has long rivaled Santa Cruz for the title of Surf City, didn't open its surfing museum until 1990. Once funded by the city, the Santa Cruz site is now operated totally on donations to the preservation society.
Member Dan Young, who helped establish the museum, said $25,000 is required every year to keep the site running. He said there have been a number of large donations -- from Jack O'Neill and other local luminaries -- over the years, but said fundraising is still "hand to mouth." Young said the preservation society's 32 members will focus on recruiting a younger demographic to keep the momentum going. The old guard has protected the site from tough times and there is still a lot of history to come.
"We're piecing it together," Young said. "We never allowed it to close."