Local News

A long-standing fitness center—Toadal Fitness—has opened a new location at 25 Penny Lane in Watsonville. With other locations sprinkled around the county including downtown Santa Cruz, Live Oak, Westside Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley, the Watsonville location threw a soft opening Monday. “While the previous...

WATSONVILLE—A year’s worth of work came to fruition on Oct. 1 as the third and largest mosaic that is part of the ongoing Watsonville Brillante project was installed at the Civic Plaza Parking Garage. The piece, “Hermanita,” was designed by Juan Fuentes, a graduate of...

WATSONVILLE—Staff of Life grocery store has for a half-century been a backbone of healthy eating and living in Santa Cruz County, selling organic food and natural products long before those concepts hit the mainstream. Founders Richard Josephson and Gary Bascou launched the business as a...

Work continues on the new massive beer and restaurant supply warehouse just off of Highway 1 (between Riverside Drive and Green Valley Road) on the Manabe-Ow property in Watsonville. Approved by the Watsonville City Council in March, the 155,847-square-foot, two-story industrial warehouse is still in...

SANTA CRUZ—For the purposes of this article, Maya and Sebastian Laing’s story begins on Oct. 20, when a group of strangers paid a late-night visit to their grandmother’s house where they had been staying.  After trying unsuccessfully to convince the kids to come with them...

WATSONVILLE—A Watsonville man died early Friday morning in a solo-vehicle crash on Amesti Road. California Highway Patrol officer Sam Courtney said the 33-year-old victim was driving a blue 1998 Volkswagen Beetle eastbound on Amesti Road east of Cypress Lane, at an unknown speed at 12:28am....

WATSONVILLE—The Land Trust of Santa Cruz County recently announced that it secured a conservation easement for the 178-acre Tynan Ranch, located one-half mile from the current urban growth line of the City of Watsonville off of Lakeview Road. Tynan Ranch has been in production for...

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY—Daniel J. Story was a second-grader living in the Midwest when the Loma Prieta Earthquake struck California on Oct. 17, 1989. He recalls it flashing on the news, and his teacher being worried about people she knew in the area. But Story admits...

An early morning fire blazed through several dozen towering redwood trees and knocked out power around Corralitos Wednesday on Corralitos Road near Varni Road.

CAPITOLA—A new branch of Outdoor Supply Hardware (OSH) is slated for a Jan. 6 opening in the former Orchard Supply Hardware store on 41st Avenue. Ryan Odell, store manager at the Napa OSH branch, said the company will run a soft opening in the first...