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The Plight of the Cross RoadsIn the 1950s, the Cross Roads Drive-In restaurant served as a rendezvous for teenagers in Santa Cruz, Calif., a seaside community at the northern tip of Monterey Bay about 75 miles south of San Francisco.
Located a couple of blocks from the Santa Cruz Beach, Boardwalk and Wharf at the foot of West Cliff Drive and adjacent to the Southern Pacific Railroad Depot, the Cross Roads also served as a summer hangout for teens visiting the Beach and Boardwalk from the San Francisco Bay Area, the San Joaquin Valley and other Central California coastal communities.
In March 2001, the City of Santa Cruz announced plans to demolish the building, which had housed a liquor store for more than 30 years, and replace it with a natural history museum as part of a new park development. (The SP Depot burned down some years ago.)
But Santa Cruz High School students of the 1950s from throughout the U.S. have written letters to City Hall and to the local Sentinel newspaper requesting that the former drive-in be preserved and its original unique facade restored and eventually made part of the museum complex.
If you would like to learn more about efforts to save the Cross Roads and the teenage cruisin'-the-drag, rock-'n-roll drive-in culture of the 1950s, check the succeeding pages. And please feel free to join the campaign to Save the Cross Roads.
Please Sign the Guestbook on the Last Page or at the Other Cross Roads site at: www.webspawner.com/users/crossroadsdrivein
ContentsThe pages that follow (links to them are at the top of this page) will include excerpts from some of the letters sent to City Hall and the Sentinel newspaper, reports on news stories about efforts to Save the Cross Roads, a history of the Cross Roads, anecdotes from Santa Cruz High students of the 1950s about their experiences at the drive-in, comments on the importance of drive-in restaurants in the teen society of that decade, and information on where to write to help keep this last vestige of 1950s' teen culture in Santa Cruz County from falling victim to the City Hall Wrecking Ball.
-- Len Klempnauer, May 22, 2002, Capitola, Calif.,
Santa Cruz High School Class of 1954,
Son of the Cross Roads founders
National Trust for Historic PreservationNationwide attention was focused on the Save the Cross Roads crusade on May 3, 2002, when the The National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C., spotlighted the plight of the drive-in. They made it the "Story of the Week in The Preservationist, their on-line magazine. The article was headlined, At a Crossroads: A California City Longs for Its Small-Town Past."
o On May 7, 2002, the Save the Cross Roads campaign was featured on KSBW-TV (Channel 8, Salinas, Calif.)
o On May 8, 2002, the Cross Roads campaign was the lead item in San Jose Mercury writer Leigh Weimers' column. Click on the News 3 link to read it.
o Also on May 8, 2002, the city planner who originally "discovered" that the liquor store started as a drive-in challenged findings of a city-hired consultant who ruled the building has no historical value. The planner wrote, "Flippant decisions by the City of Santa Cruz regarding historic resources within their jurisdiction is disheartening to see, because once an historic resource is lost, there is no recapturing it." You can read her comments by clicking on the News 3 link at the top of this page.
Where to WriteIf you would like to join the 1950s' students trying to Save the Cross Roads from extinction, write to the Santa Cruz City Council and the Santa Cruz Sentinel Editor and please send a copy to me:
City Council
Letters to the Editor
Len Klempnauer
Please include your name, mailing address and phone number (for the newspaper only), name of your school and year of your class, and any special memories and anecdotes about your drive-in experiences, wherever they occurred.
Link to More Detailed Cross Roads Web Site
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They Remember When
Len Klempnauer, son of the Cross Roads founders, of Capitola, Calif., Santa Cruz High Class of '54; and the following 1950s' carhops from Santa Cruz High:
-- Roxy (Payton) Newland, Watsonville, Class of '57;
-- Jackie (Vera) McDow, Aptos, Class of '58;
-- Nancy (Cummings) Jellison, Santa Cruz, Class of '54;
-- Daisy (Stehlick) Gandolfi, Santa Cruz, Class of '51.
They were interviewed by the Sentinel for a Jan. 16, 2002, story, Bringing back the Diner. Click on News 2 link above to read it.
[Dan Coyro Photo]
 Cross Roads in 1952
In 1952, the Cross Roads opened in the building pictured above.
After the drive-in went out of business as Danny's Drive-In in the mid-1960s, it housed a liquor store -- Lighthouse Liquors -- until March 2002.
In 2000, the City of Santa Cruz bought the site.
In May 2002, the building was rehabilitated and turned over to Santa Cruz's Homeless Garden Project to be used as a flower boutique by the Women's Organic Flower Enterprise.
On May 18, 2002, the Santa Cruz Sentinel published an article on the flower boutique headlined, "Blighted Store to Bloom into Flower Shop."
Demolition of the Cross Roads and construction of the natural history museum remain four to five years in the future, according to news reports.
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