Watsonville, Calif.
By: Tom Bentley
From: Watsonville, CA
By: Tom Bentley
From: Watsonville, CA
Towns can be said to be alive or dead, but in the case of my town, it’s so alive you can eat it. Well, I’m talking about what’s in the fields and byways that crisscross the town proper: strawberries and apples and cut flowers and more. Watsonville, California is a town that still relies on what comes from the earth for its daily bread—and its desserts! Watsonville has been around a while, having been explored by Portola in the late 18th century, and becoming Spanish land-grant territory later. It incorporated in 1868, and you can still see its turn-of-the-century architecture in some downtown buildings and some of its nice Victorian homes.
It’s a small town of about 50,000 folks, about 70% of whom are Hispanic. If it’s a good Mexican meal you’re after, the salsa flows freely here; there are many quality restaurants serving the range of Mexican regional cuisine, including a lot of hole-in-the-wall joints that have savory delectables at delightfully inexpensive prices. Though the great Pacific flanks the area on the west, it has nothing of the surf-town feel of Santa Cruz, its neighbor to the north. Many of its productive agricultural fields lead close to the coastline, though there are some nice beachside state parks, such as Sunset Beach, for nice seaside walking and picnicking. The 1989 earthquake hit the area hard, with many buildings destroyed and downtown businesses abandoned. There has been a slow, steady recovery, although the town is still far from prosperous. New buildings like the expanded public library, agricultural workers museum and the new courthouse sit close to the old civic plaza, where old-timers sit in the sun and tell tales. The plaza is beautifully decorated with lights at Christmastime and is also a nice centerpiece for the annual 4th of July parade, with its bejeweled horses and lineup of antique tractors. There are plenty of parks, with soccer and baseball fields, and one, Ramsay Park, that hosts a nature center right on the edge of a series of paved trails through the local sloughs, which are great for bird watching and a respite—not that city life in Watsonville is something from which you’d really need a respite.
Watsonville is slowly moving away from its agricultural roots, but they are deep, and will continue to be the town’s mainstay. As for me, I’ve been here 10 years, and I could easily put another decade down—it’s a friendly place, and though a bit on the quiet side, not a bad town, not at all.
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