An Introduction to the History of Soquel and Capitola

Although now geographically split by Highway 1, the town of Soquel and the City of Capitola share a common past, a history shaped in part by the natural watercourse that passes through and connects both settlements on its way from the mountains toward Monterey Bay.

After the Mission Santa Cruz was founded in 1791, the Spanish soon realized that rivers in this region were flood prone. Cattle from the mission and from the civilian settlement at Villa Branciforte could safely graze most of the year along the banks of Soquel Creek, but cattle and travelers needed to be wary when crossing in seasonal downpours.

Originally called the Rosario del Beato Serafin de Asculi, Soquel Creek was later given a title that sounded like Suquer, the leader of a nearby Uypi settlement. This territorial group was among the culturally diverse tribes known collectively as the Ohlone. Mission baptismal and burial registers of the early 1790s also record efforts to render into Spanish the residence of the Uypi. Variations include Sauquel, Shoquel, Osocali, Osocales, Osoquales, and Usacalis.

Mission registers provide useful information about the native inhabitants but rarely mention the stream itself. One of the earliest death records documented that in 1806, Marcelino Bravo (Brovo) lived at “el rio de Bravo o Shoquel.”

When a grant was charted along the banks of Soquel Creek, the boundaries covered today’s town of Soquel, a major portion of the City of Capitola, a section of Monterey Bay Heights, all of New Brighton Beach State Park, and a fragment of Cabrillo College. Title was awarded to Maria Martina Castro Lodge, a granddaughter of Joaquin Isidro (Ysidro) Castro, a member of the Anza party that marched from Sonora, Mexico, to Alta California, in 1776.

Martina was born at Villa Branciforte in 1807. She married Corporal Simon Cota, a soldier stationed at Monterey, in 1824. When Simon died six years later, in 1830, Martina became a widow with four children.

Michael Lodge, a 34-year-old native of Ireland who had come ashore from a whaling ship, soon courted her. A naturalized Mexican citizen and resident at Villa Branciforte, Lodge knew that marriage into a Spanish-speaking Californio family was a way to gain property. He and Martina wed in 1831. It was Lodge who urged his wife to apply to the Mexican government for a land grant. The Soquel Rancho was a tract of 1,668 acres, an expanse one-and-a-half miles wide and two miles long.

Even before the governor made the award in November 1833, the Lodges had found an ideal spot for their home some distance from the creek, near a series of small freshwater springs. Their hilltop adobe was modest in size, about 30 feet by 80 feet, and plastered with lime made of burned clamshells. For centuries, the Uypi Indians had burned coastlands to clear the ground and to promote seed production that would attract deer and other game. As a result, the Lodges enjoyed an unobstructed view and the cattle had ample pasture.

As babies were born to the family, rooms were added to the home. Livestock shelters and storage sheds were built nearby. Over the next decade, the rancho herds also needed more space. Martina complained to the governor that steers from the neighboring Aptos Rancho of her brother, Rafael Castro, were taking over the eastern portion of her grant. She petitioned the governor for more land.

The original size and legality of the Soquel Augmentation Rancho given to Martina in 1844 is unclear. A question remains whether or not Martina and Michael Lodge actually held title to the entire 32,702 acres of the tract, or if the sons-in-law altered the boundaries of the augmentation when they sought to acquire it later. It is known that the Lodges were initially given at least as much property as they requested, up the adjoining ridge known as “Palo de Yesca.”

Much of the new territory was hilly and forested, considered of little worth in a market based on cattle ranching. Michael Lodge, however, thought the timber at least significant enough to start a sawmill. Two foreigners, John Hames and John Daubenbiss, were hired to build the mill along Soquel Creek, marking the beginning of the village of Soquel. As other strangers arrived, they sought to gain not only the potentially valuable timberland, but also the region’s productive soil and treeless terraces with their vast potential for agriculture.

A sequence of historic events in 1848 quickly changed the balance of culture in California. Obsessed by the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, prospectors from places throughout the world raced by the thousands toward the mines. Joining in, Michael Lodge left his crops, cattle, and the mill, and rushed to Mokelumne Hill with his family. The Lodges opened a store, set up a freighting business, and apparently did well. But the joy of their gold country adventure soon died. The three youngest Lodges became the victims of a typhoid outbreak, and Michael sent his grieving wife home. She made it back to Soquel and waited, but she never saw her husband again. One source said Michael was dead of the fever. Others said he was robbed and killed on the road south. There were no further details.

Martina was helpless without Michael to interpret and give advice. Unable to read or write in either Spanish or English, she was even more vulnerable now that English-speaking foreigners were arriving in ever-increasing number, and many courted her daughters. Once California became a state, she faced further challenges; proof that she held legal title to her ranchos was demanded in court. Confused and panicky, she clasped what appeared to be her best hope. Martina agreed to another wedding proposal.

The marriage to French Canadian Louis Depeaux in October 1849 was a desperate act. Martina’s new husband, sixteen years younger than she, was a stranger to her. Yet she held onto a belief he would protect her.

She couldn’t have been more wrong. The English-speaking culture closed in. The husbands of Martina’s daughters united in 1850 to force a division of the grants. Depeaux sometimes helped the sons-in-law and at other times competed with them for the land.

Thomas Fallon, husband of Martina’s daughter, Carmel Lodge, was the prime backer of the effort to force partition of the ranchos.

A native of Ireland brought up in Canada, Fallon was an opportunist who appeared at the Mission Santa Cruz in 1845. He joined the “armed foreigners” who rode with Major John C. Fremont and his battalion of 1846. Later, he returned to Santa Cruz and worked as a saddletree maker for pioneer Elihu Anthony. When the Gold Rush began, Fallon was able to sell mining picks at a hefty profit and made enough money to buy a hotel and store near the mission plaza. Apparently, his chief ambition from the moment he married Carmel Lodge, however, was to obtain her future share of Martina’s land.

Martina was pressured into signing an article of agreement in 1850 that divided the property into nine equal parts, to be held in common by herself and eight surviving children. Fallon arranged for the document to be revised and sent it back to be signed again as a deed written in English. Concerned, Martina refused to put her mark on it. Depeaux later admitted that he signed the “X” himself.

Continuing to push Martina toward a formal division of the ranchos, the sons-in-law finally succeeded in 1852. Thomas and Carmel Fallon received a section of the Rancho Soquel, above the shipping point known as Soquel Landing. They also obtained land in the Soquel Augmentation, on a hillside they sold almost immediately to Joshua Parrish, a farmer and pioneer settler of the town of Soquel. The Fallons and their children moved on to Texas and New Orleans, returning several years later to San Jose, where Thomas served as city mayor. In the 1870s, Fallon once again acquired property from Castro family members in Soquel. He founded a resort that he first called “Camp San Jose,” and then “New Brighton.” Never thriving, the hotel often sat empty on the hill overlooking today’s Pot Belly Beach.

Martina held her share of the land grants until 1855, when Depeaux contrived the sale of the adobe home and the last one-ninth of her property. Defeated and now considered by some to be mentally unstable, Martina depended on her children and grandchildren for care in the last three decades of her life. Chief caregivers were her daughter, Maria Guadalupe Averon, and husband Josef; a son, Mike Lodge; and Mike’s daughters, Carrie Electra, Louisa, and Julia Lodge.

Martina died in 1890, at the age of 83. She spent her last years in a small cottage on the Averon orchard and died in her daughter’s home. It had been built in the 1870s nearer the creek but in 1884 was moved to the top of the hill on a site then considered a part of Soquel. Today the Averon house is surrounded by the Capitola Mansion Apartments, sitting tight against the bluff on the Capitola side of Highway 1. Hidden from view, the mansard-roofed dwelling is as seemingly invisible as the history it represents. Even silent and unseen, however, the house is a strong reminder of the past shared by the settlements on either side.

-- Carolyn Swift

For a more comprehensive account of the story of Martina Castro and her land grants, with sources and footnotes, see the article by Carolyn Swift, “Stones to the Four Winds: The Sorrow of Martina Castro Lodge,” Santa Cruz County History Journal, Issue Number Three, Special Bicentennial Edition, 1997, 123.