History takes a starring role at California’s oldest amusement park.

As the 100-year-old Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk continues to add new and modern attractions, there are also ongoing efforts to preserve the park and area’s history.

That commitment to historic preservation has earned the park state and national honors, including two landmark status designations. The entire Boardwalk and the Cocoanut Grove site was named a California Historic Landmark by the State Historical Resources Commission in 1989.

As California Historical Landmark #983, the Boardwalk joined over one thousand sites including the governor’s mansion, Hearst Castle, and the state capitol building.

In addition to its state historical status, in 1987 the U.S. National Park Service named the Boardwalk’s classic 1911 Looff Carousel and the 1924 Giant Dipper wooden roller coaster as National Historic Landmarks.

The popular Looff carousel celebrates 96 years of operation at the Boardwalk in 2007. It is one of less than a dozen Looff carousels surviving in the United States. European woodcarver Charles I.D. Looff built and delivered the carousel to Santa Cruz in August of 1911.

Looff’s son, Arthur, built the other National Historic Landmark at the Boardwalk in 1924. Writing in praise of the Giant Dipper’s 1987 nomination for National Historic Landmark status, historian James H. Charleton of the National Park Service noted that the wooden coaster is “the only one on the west coast that remains the centerpiece of an active amusement park.”

According to Charleton, sites given National Landmark status range from historic hotels to sports stadiums and civic centers. The list contains over two thousand such landmarks including archaeological, architectural, and historical sites.

The national designation places the park in the company of such landmarks as Jefferson’s Monticello and Mount Vernon.

Both the national and state awards are noted on large bronze plaques mounted near the Boardwalk’s centrally located Looff Carousel. Close by, a display features boards from the park’s old wooden boardwalk, which is now paved.

The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk has been owned and operated by the same private corporation, the Santa Cruz Seaside Company, since 1915.

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