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Santa Cruz Supervisor and current Board Chair Zach Friend announced Friday that he will not seek a fourth term on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors.  Friend was first elected in 2012, and was overwhelmingly re-elected in 2016 and 2020. His current term ends...

The Western Flyer is a 77-foot wooden boat made famous by expeditions of author John Steinbeck and his biologist friend Ed Ricketts. The purse seiner has now found a new home in the Monterey Bay. Built in Tacoma, Wash., in 1937 to fish for sardines in...

Local photographer and documentarian Kirti Bassendine will present her latest exhibition, “Contemporary Indigenous Voices of California's South Coast Range,” from Aug. 17-27 at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. The project showcases photography and short films of elders and culture-bearers from tribal nations,...

Sometime during the late-night hours Sunday, as hours-long rainfall pounded the Central Coast, water gushed through a telecommunications conduit leading into KSQD radio station, flooding the studio floors and sending the few staffers that were working scrambling to get sensitive electronic equipment off the...

Aptos resident Laura Dover-Smith was walking on a trail in Watsonville’s sloughs on her lunch break one sunny Wednesday, an activity she tries to do daily. She says the walk affords her views of wildlife, but also gives her a peaceful respite from the bustling...

Editor's note: This is part two of photojournalist Tarmo Hannula's recent trip to Sacramento. After exploring Grizzly Island Wildlife Area on the morning of the second day of our road trip to Sacramento recently, my wife, Sarah, and I steered toward a string of small...

Former Watsonville Fire Capt. Ron Rackley serves up homemade chili to Linda Hicks at the opening day barbecue lunch where huge crowds are filing through the 2024 fair. Dozens of fair food options will be offered through Sunday, with the stand kettlecorn, corn dogs,...

A crew from American Pavement Systems applies a slurry seal to the pedestrian/bike trail on the Salsipuedes Creek levee. Rusty Barker, civil engineer of Santa Cruz County Public Works, said the work started Monday and wrapped up Wednesday and included a new slurry seal...

PVUSD students to screen original films Students in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District will showcase their own film creations Tuesday at the Henry J. Mello Center during the district’s fourth annual Oscars Night. Put on by the Watsonville Film Festival and the Latino Film Institute’s...

Several thousand people showed up for the reopening ceremony of the Capitola Wharf on Wednesday, celebrating its survival after it was cleaved in two by heavy storms. The wharf, founded in 1857, now boasts new lighting, side rails, benches, permanently mounted viewing scopes,  several art...