Local News

About a dozen people march March 29 in downtown Santa Cruz to garner awareness and support for homeless people. Put on by Food Not Bombs and the Homeless Union, their message to the people along Pacific Avenue was to stop the sweeps of homeless...

Dozens of artworks from all grades within the Pajaro Valley Unified School District are now on display at the Watsonville Civic Plaza Building.  From portraits to abstracts and still lifes, the 2026 Annual Art Exhibition fans out through both floors of the Watsonville Public Library,...

Watsonville High School senior Acuzena Sandoval had her pick of colleges — from several UC campuses to the Ivy League. She chose Stanford. The decision capped years of academic work rooted in a clear goal: using science and engineering to address the environmental challenges she has...

One hundred years of wedding dresses from local women, spanning each decade between 1890 to 1990, are now on display at the Pajaro Valley Historical Association’s Bockius-Orr house in Watsonville.  PVHA board member Virginia Avila, office administrator Jodi Frensley and a cast of volunteers teamed...

New Leaf Energy, the company proposing a battery energy storage system (BESS) facility for Minto Road in Watsonville, has submitted a pre-application to the California Energy Commission seeking approval for the project. The move was a possibility county officials have long feared since the project...

A 4.6-magnitude earthquake centered in Boulder Creek rattled the Central Coast at 1:41am Thursday morning, with tremors felt as far north as Santa Rosa, northwest to Sacramento and Fresno and south to Salinas, according to the United States Geological Survey. No damage or injuries were...

Adam Scow stood on the edge of a strawberry farm behind Pajaro Middle School Monday morning as he held a map showing similar fields adjacent to nine schools throughout the Pajaro Valley. Scow heads up the nonprofit group Campaign for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture (CORA)....

Watsonville’s newest water infrastructure project is a giant storage tank—a behemoth that stands 35 feet tall, holds 2 million gallons and is expected to help the city maintain its supply during droughts and disasters, when demand is at its peak. A group of city officials...

Santa Cruz County was one of more than 3,000 locations across the U.S. where thousands of people staged rallies opposing President Donald Trump. It was the third such event held in the past 10 months. Below are images our reporters gathered in Santa Cruz...