Halloween: A Look at How the San Lorenzo Valley Built Its Month-long Traditions

By Mary Andersen

Sometime in the late 1890s, the boys of Boulder Creek got a cow onto the roof of Firemen’s Hall.

Old Firemen’s Hall in 2001 (Santa Cruz Public Libraries)

We know this because in May 1968, the Boulder Creek Historical Society sat down in the Recreation Annex with three longtime residents — Tom Hunt, Karm West and Vince Locatelli — and asked them to talk about the old days. Hunt, who had arrived in town around 1896, remembered Halloween as a livelier proposition than the modern version. The kids would haul wagons up onto rooftops. They would drive out into the country, collect privies, and line them up in front of the bars and the churches. And once, he told the room, they put a cow on the roof of Firemen’s Hall.

Bill Neubauer printed the story in his Almost Forgotten column in the North County Journal in an article titled The Boys Spin Yarns.

Over the next century, nearly every Halloween tradition in the San Lorenzo Valley was launched by adults giving the valley’s children somewhere special to be on the night of the 31st. And one of the reasons is the terrain.

Many homes here are strung up steep redwood canyons along roads with no sidewalks, no streetlights, and often no shoulder. A house that looks close on a map might be a quarter mile of blind curve away in the dark. Trick-or-treating in the ordinary suburban sense — walk your block, count porch lights, home before the little ones melt down — has not often been available to many kids in this valley. So the valley kept inventing substitutes. A dance. A party at somebody’s house. A haunted mansion in a county park. A Main Street sidewalk on Highway 9.

The dance that bought a hose cart

The oldest of those festivities was also the valley’s oldest continuous Halloween event. It started with a fundraiser.

Ben Lomond volunteers organized themselves as a fire company in 1903, and the first thing they did was throw a masquerade ball. The department’s first benefit dance, in October 1903, brought in enough money to buy its first piece of equipment — a bright red hose cart with gold trim. The town’s women made sandwiches and cakes for the midnight buffet.

“Spooks, banshees and sundry witches.” Ben Lomond Fire volunteers and auxiliary members take a break from decorating for the department’s 67th annual Halloween masquerade, October 1970. From left: Al Reeves, fireman; Lucille Smith, president of the Ladies Auxiliary; Tim Liebenthal, fireman; and Dack Fisher, fire chief. (Santa Cruz Public Libraries)

An advertisement from 1983 (Santa Cruz Public Libraries)

The shape of it changed somewhat over time. For the 50th, in 1953, Betty Wixcey’s account in the Valley Press had the town hall decked in cornstalks and pumpkins and cutouts of cats, witches and ghosts, with a pair of dummies in old firemen’s clothes presiding from the stage. By 1968 it had moved to Park Hall — live orchestra, door prizes, supper at midnight, two dollars at the Ben Lomond Super Market — and the Valley Press noted, pointedly, that no minors would be admitted. The price climbed and the beneficiaries multiplied: six dollars at the 80th in 1983, ten at the 83rd in 1986, with fifty dollars cash for the best costume and the money going to rescue equipment, the Learn Not to Burn program and, every year, the children’s Christmas party.

An advertisement from 1986 (Santa Cruz Public Libraries)

Neubauer, writing in 1970, was calling it the oldest event of its kind in Santa Cruz County, and Lucille Smith, who ran the Ladies Auxiliary, wanted it understood that the masquerade was for grown-ups. Some of the people who compete for costume prizes scare even us, she said. She advised bringing your own dance partner, since you could never be entirely sure what you were dancing with.

Eighty-odd years of adults in costume, raising money so the children would have presents in December. Nobody is sure when the masquerade dances stopped. But the hose cart the first dance paid for is still on display at the Ben Lomond Fire Station, hanging in the engine bay.

A living room on Hubbard Gulch Road

The Ben Lomond dance was for grown-ups. The children got a separate event.

On October 17, 1952, the San Lorenzo Valley Sun ran a short item that Faye Ellis copied onto an index card now held in the Santa Cruz Public Library’s local history collection. The Ladies of the Highlanders of Ben Lomond had met to plan a Halloween party for the town’s children, kindergarten through sixth grade, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Rawson on Hubbard Gulch Road, October 31st, 7 to 9pm. There would be games and prizes.

Faye Ellis’s index card on the 1952 Ladies of the Highlanders party. Card text: “Ladies of the Highlanders of BL. Ladies of the Highlanders of BL met last week to plan a Halloween party for the BL children K–6th grade. Party to be held at the home of Mr + Mrs Lawrence Rawson on Hubbard Gulch Rd, Oct 31 from 7–9. There will be games + prizes. Oct 17, 1952 SLV Sun” (Santa Cruz Public Libraries)

“An alternative to trick-or-treating”

In October 1983 the County Parks Open Space and Cultural Services Department announced a haunted mansion at Highlands Park in Ben Lomond, two nights, 6 to 9pm, a dollar to get in — and described it as an alternative to trick-or-treating.

It was a big deal for a county park. The SLV Junior High drama classes, Mountain Community Theater, the Volunteer Bureau and the Community School all supplied people. Inside were ghosts, tour guides, a ghouls’ ball, Dracula, witches, a “live” picture gallery, a wax-figure sitting room and an operating room full of monsters, plus a graveyard outside. Officials warned it was too much for anyone under eight, so Liz Anderson and Terry Drueger ran free child care both evenings for the younger siblings.

A flyer advertising Fall Events in 1984 (Santa Cruz Public Libraries)

It came back in 1984, in the Cultural Committee’s fall calendar, on Halloween evening, 6 to 8pm, still a dollar. And by then the Ben Lomond Firemen’s Auxiliary had joined the sponsors. The same volunteers who had been throwing the masquerade since 1903 were now staffing the haunted house.

Halloween this year

Which brings us to the version most readers know today as the valley’s biggest Halloween event: Boulder Creek’s multi-block commercial strip on the night of the 31st from 5-7pm, where merchants hand out candy from their shop doorways and Highway 9 becomes the most crowded sidewalk in the county — the Trick-or-Treat Street. This year the 31st lands on a Saturday, which means no school night cutoff and a bigger crowd than usual.

The Boulder Creek Business Association and the downtown merchants run it now. The Valley Women’s Club has been putting volunteers in reflective vests to walk children across the highway since 1985, and the Boulder Creek Volunteer Fire Department opens their firehouse doors — which, 120 years on, is nice symmetry. The whole thing is a family affair, dogs included.

Felton merchants have adopted the same model, staying open on Halloween evening from 5-7pm.

Celebrations all month long

A month-long constellation of events has attached itself to those downtown celebrations, run almost entirely by the small districts and volunteer clubs that do most of the civic work up here.

Scarecrows will be on display in October in downtown Felton | Photo by Mary Andersen

Beginning October 1, downtown Felton shops display scarecrows handcrafted by merchants, nonprofits, school groups, scout groups, and community members. Each scarecrow will have a QR code attached where one and all can vote for their favorite creation. Voting ends Oct. 11, but scarecrows should be on display through the end of the month.

Downtown Boulder Creek hosts First Friday Spooktacular October 2 from 5-8pm. “Dress up, wander through town, grab some treats, visit our local shops and vendors, and show off your costume in the Spooktacular Costume Contest!”

In Felton, Roaring Camp Railroad’s big Halloween event is now Thomas and Percy’s Halloween Party with a Thomas the Tank Engine theme suited to the whole family. It’s a 25-minute train ride with costumes encouraged and activities at the camp. Weekends October 10-11, 17-18, 24-25.

Boulder Creek Recreation & Park District hosts the annual Haunted Walk of Terror at their Bear Creek Community Center facility at 15685 Forest Hill Drive. The show runs two weekends 8-9:30pm for ages 8 and over. October 16-17 and 23-24.

The Boulder Creek Library Friends have gotten in on the action, participating in First Friday and Halloween evening downtown. They host an annual Halloween Party at the Boulder Creek Library on Saturday, October 24, from 1-3pm with treats, crafts, games, and a photo booth. All ages welcome, in costume or not!

The Lompico Community Center throws its fundraiser party at Lompico Park on October 24 from 2-5pm: barbecue, raffle, cake walk, costume contests for kids, couples, adults, and families.

In the historic Boulder Creek IOOF Cemetery on Harmon Street, a family scavenger hunt begun around 2021 sends costumed kids looking for treats among the headstones while their parents learn where half the valley’s street names came from.

Boulder Creek Rec also runs a free party at the Middleton Avenue center on Halloween evening from 6-8pm, deliberately timed as the landing place at the end of the downtown route — crafts, music, bounce houses, dinner, a costume contest, and a kid-friendly haunted house built by Scout Troop 623.

Somewhere to go

Every event in this story started the same way: somebody looked at a valley full of blind curves and unlit shoulders, decided the kids should get a Halloween anyway, and went and organized one. The fire company hosted a dance. The Highlanders offered up a living room on Hubbard Gulch. County Parks created a haunted mansion, with free child care for the siblings who were too young for it. Merchants on Highway 9 use their entryways to take the place of a neighborhood.

Everybody pitches in. Merchants buy the candy. Volunteers stand in the roadway in reflective vests. Somebody’s Saturday goes into building a haunted house out of plywood for hundreds of kids. Worth a thought on the 31st. It’s the same energy that once got a cow onto the roof of Firemen’s Hall, just pointed somewhere more useful.

Downtown Boulder Creek Halloween | Photos by SLV Steve

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