Nine miles north of Santa Cruz, the coastal terrace narrows to such a point that the mountains of the Coast Range nearly fall into the Pacific Ocean. Here there is little room for agricultural fields, yet bold dairy farmers and ranchers saw no obstacle to practicing their trades.
Rancho Arroyo de la Laguna had been pastureland since Mexican times. At some point in the early 1860s, William Elder & Company, a San Francisco dairy business, acquired most of the rancho from James and Squire Williams and soon operated a small dairy alongside Yellow Bank Creek. T. H. Hatch & Company took over the business in May 1866 and continued to run the North Coast dairy among its other operations. Hatch employed several overseers through the years, with William Chalmers in charge of the dairy throughout the 1870s and W. R. Shaw superintendent around 1880. Two Swiss dairy farmers, Jeremiah S. Respini and James Fillipini, likely had worked at Yellow Bank Dairy for several years when, in April 1882, they purchased Shaw’s interest in the company. Over the next decade, Respini gradually acquired the rest of the property.
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Men milking cows probably at Yellow Bank Dairy on the Coast Road south of Davenport, ca 1910. [Courtesy University of California, Santa Cruz – colorized using MyHeritage] |
Yellow Bank is a unique name in Santa Cruz County, obviously descriptive in nature but with an uncertain origin. The earliest recorded mention of the name appears in the Santa Cruz Sentinel in September 1873, where it is claimed that the name comes from the sulfurous nature of the creek that turns the banks a bright yellow. A year later, a different Sentinel article asserted that “it is derived from the fact that the earth in the vicinity is of a deep golden cast from the iron pyrites, and that the buildings [of the dairy] are painted yellow.” Modern sources attribute the name to rust iron bands of sedimentary injection deposits in the mudstone cliffs or more generally the yellowish hue of oxidized iron in the cliffs. In addition to the dark yellowish bands, the cliffs and hillsides also show blackish-blue bands indicative of oil-rich sand injections, the largest such outcropping in the world. The State Minerologist asserted in 1900 that some of these bands had been “blown up by heat” creating the yellow color, hence the source of the name. The presence of these bands prompted an ultimately unsuccessful oil speculation frenzy on the property in 1901.
As with all of the dairies along the North Coast, Respini and his predecessors focused on producing cheese and butter, two products that could endure the long journey to market. The property was notable for its two tall milking barns that were built by F. A. Miller in 1874. Construction of these reportedly required Miller to build a small sawmill on nearby Liddell Creek and a planing mill near the construction site. These barns were 160 by 36 feet each in size and were designed to feed and house around 200 dairy cows. A creamery nearby was modern in design, with plumbing installed to help maintain sanitation and a ten-horse engine used to separate the cream from the milk. By 1900, the facility included extensive hay fields and storage facilities, a blacksmith and tool shop, a horse barn, a bunkhouse for up to twenty men, a flower garden, and a ten-room ranch house for the superintendent and his family. Because the dairy was situated directly beside the Coast Road, it also had telephone service. Around 1891, Respini had partnered with his neighbors F. A. Moretti and the Moretti Brothers to manage their properties jointly. Together, they had at any given time 170 milking cows, with 600 more cows grazing in one of fifteen separate fields across a 4,400-acre property.
In April 1901, Respini formally combined his property with those of the Morettis to form a new business, the Coast Dairy and Land Company. This quickly grew to encompass five dairies south of Davenport Landing with a total population of 800 cattle. The dairy products were sold primarily in San Francisco but also throughout the Monterey Bay and Bay Area. In Santa Cruz, the company took over the Hugo Hihn flatiron building at Pacific Avenue and Front Street and turned it into the Seaside Creamery, where butter was churned fresh every day after an early morning delivery of cream and milk. The store also served ice cream and sold buttermilk and varieties of cheese. For fifteen years, the company thrived under Respini’s and Moretti’s leadership. Indeed, most of the modern town of Davenport as well as the Santa Cruz Portland Cement Company’s plant were built atop Coast Dairies land. In 1912, the company sold a section to Santa Cruz to provide water for the city (it still provides approximately 20% of its drinking water). Throughout this time, the dairying complex at Yellow Bank served as the heart of the operation, with around a dozen buildings associated with the business along the Coast Road.
The arrival of the Ocean Shore Railway in early 1906 changed everything for Coast Dairies. For the first time, the company’s extensive farms would be on a mainline route to San Francisco. The railroad, however, first had to overcome a major obstacle in its path: Respini Creek and its tidal lagoon. As it did with several other inlets, the railroad constructed a traditional trestle across the lagoon and then, as part of its arrangement with the adjacent Coast Line Railroad, the trestle was filled in and widened to support three sets of rails. A drainage tunnel was built through the adjacent hillside to allow the lagoon to drain. Construction on the bridge over Yellow Bank Beach ran from late December 1905 to early February 1906, and it was in the process of being filled around the time that the Francisco Earthquake struck on April 18. A result of the construction was the rerouting of the Coast Road. The road had previously followed along the top of the cliff before darting inland around the head of the lagoon in a horseshoe bend known as the Yellow Bank Curve, a dangerously sharp turn in the time of the automobile. The railroads’ construction forced the entire road to shift to the east of the tracks, lessening—though not eliminating—the deadly curve.
The earliest timetables for the Ocean Shore Railway do not mention Yellow Bank as a station, though all employee timetables for the first several years have been lost. The Santa Cruz Evening News first names it as a flag stop in December 1907 alongside four others between Santa Cruz and Davenport. However, unlike most of the other flag stops, Yellow Bank did not feature a passenger shelter or siding, though there was likely a freight platform beside the mainline. This meant that dairy and agricultural products had to be loaded directly onto passing trains. In addition to freight traffic for the dairy, the station also likely catered to beachgoers wishing to dip their toes in the waters at Yellow Bank Beach. This beach no longer goes by that name—beachgoers in the 1950s discovered that a rock at the beach resembled a dark wildcat. Thus, the locale was rechristened Panther Beach. Since the beach sat directly below the tracks, it became one of the more popular picnic and surf swimming spots along the line.
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An artichoke field on the Coast Road near Yellow Bank, ca 1930. [Courtesy UC Santa Cruz – colorized using MyHeritage] |
By the time the First World War broke out in 1914, Respini had already died and the other Swissmen of Coast Dairies were in trouble. Switzerland forbade its citizens from fighting in a war and the United States was considering conscription. As a result, in 1915, Luigi Moretti, his brother-in-law G. Marotti, and his nephew S. Respini returned to Switzerland. They never permanently returned, though the Moretti family remained the primary owners of Coast Dairies. Daily management of the dairy fell to Leonard T. Winterhalder and Frank Bowell, whose families managed the property until 1924. At the same time, the property was changing. In March 1914, the Coast Road was shifted east of the main dairy complex, reducing the severity and grade of the Yellow Bank Curve, though not entirely eliminating the danger. In 1919, part of the Coast Dairies property was repurposed for planting artichokes and other vegetables, a trial that would change the fortunes of the company in the long term.
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Aerial photograph of Yellow Bank dairy shortly after the demolition of the Ocean Shore Railroad line, 1928. [Courtesy UC Santa Cruz] |
In October 1920, the Ocean Shore Railroad ceased operations. It seems likely that the San Vicente Lumber Company, which continued to operate the line for another three years, offered its services to the Coast Dairy and Land Company during this time. Southern Pacific, in contrast, had never established a stop at Yellow Bank and there is no evidence that it ever catered to the dairy there until after San Vicente ended its operation in 1923. In November 1924, Yellow Bank appears for the first time in a Southern Pacific employee timetable as a flag-stop. This suggests that the dairy at least entertained the idea of shipping via Southern Pacific after Ocean Shore Railroad had been abandoned. Yet likely higher freight fees and less frequent service made this option unappealing. In response, the dairy company shifted to shipping out goods via truck and Southern Pacific abandoned its station sometime in the mid-1930s. Despite these setbacks, the company continued to thrive throughout the 1920s, possibly buoyed by bootlegging and black-market smuggling along the remote North Coast. At the same time, the company continued to expand its shift to agriculture by leasing a large section of the property to the Grossi family for artichoke growing.
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Crews working to demolish the two large barns at Yellow Bank Dairy, February 1955. [Courtesy UC Santa Cruz – colorized using MyHeritage] |
The Great Depression led to more pronounced changes for Coast Dairies. Stricter health code laws passed in the 1920s and 1930s made it much more difficult to produce dairy products on the difficult-to-access North Coast. Federal regulations mandated that dairy cattle be tested for tuberculosis, while state laws increased the frequency and standards of sanitary inspections. These made it increasingly difficult to turn a profit. Meanwhile, the company was still owned by the original Swiss families who remained in Switzerland, making leadership distant and abstract. In December 1934, stockholders in the company revolted and ejected Luigi Moretti from leadership, though he retained ownership of the firm. Management was taken over by John R. Wilson of the Anglo–California National Bank of San Francisco, with Fred Pfyffer appointed secretary and general manager.
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Portrait of Fred Pfyffer, published in the Santa Cruz Evening News, May 31, 1935. |
Pfyffer had first arrived in Davenport in 1928 and was soon employed by Coast Dairies. In June 1931, he incorporated Davenport Artichoke Growers’ and Shippers’ Association and began collectivizing most of the artichoke and brussels sprout operators leasing land from Coast Dairies to assist them in packing and shipping their vegetables across the United States. At the same time, he oversaw the conversion of most of Coast Dairies’ land from dairying to agriculture and beef cattle raising. The last corporate dairying operation ended in 1940, which also marked Pfyffer’s removal to a new facility in Santa Cruz on Mission Street, where he built a larger plant beside the Southern Pacific tracks. The last vestige of the old dairy ended in February 1955 when the two old barns at Yellow Bank were demolished leaving only concrete foundation blocks.
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Advertisement for Davenport Artichoke Growers and Shippers Association, published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel September 17, 1939. |
Coast Dairies was dissolved in 1996 and its property was purchased by Bryan Sweeney of the Nevada and Pacific Coast Land Company. However, Sweeney did not realize the difficulties he would face in trying to turn a profit from this property. His plan to subdivide the land into 139 parcels went public in 1997, and soon several conservation organizations joined together to purchase the entire property. The transaction was concluded in October 1998 and the 400 acres west of State Route 1 were transferred to the state in 2006 to create Coast Dairies State Park, a unique seaside park that runs uninterrupted from Red White and Blue Beach to Davenport Beach. The Bureau of Land Management acquired the remainder of the property in 2014, most of which has since become the Cotoni–Coast Dairies unit of the California Coastal National Monument.
Geo-Coordinates & Access Rights:
36.9928, -122.1685
8.9 miles north of Santa Cruz from both the Ocean Shore and Santa Cruz Union depots
The site of Yellow Bank Dairy is to the east of State Route 1 at Panther Beach. A long parking area is directly to the south on the west side of the highway. The dairy property itself is leased by the Federal Bureau of Land Management—no trespassing is allowed. Likewise, the surviving Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line grade is owned by the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission and trespassing is not allowed. However, Panther Beach itself is publicly accessible as part of Coast Dairies State Park. The site of the former railroad station at the southern end of the fill across Yellow Bank Creek, which may explain the raised parking area there.
Citations & Credits:
- Barboza, Tony Barboza. “Stretch of Northern California coast to be permanently protected.” Los Angeles Times. April 14, 2012.
- Bender, Henry E., Jr. “Ocean Shore Railroad”. 2017.
- Comelli, Ivano Franco. La Nostra Costa (Our Coast): A Family’s Journey to and From the North Coast of Santa Cruz, California (1923–1983). Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006.
- Environmental Science Associates, for The Trust for Public Land, "Coast Dairies Long-Term Resource Protection and Use Plan: Existing Conditions Report for the Coast Dairies Property." 2001.
- Griggs, Gary. "Our Ocean Backyard: Yellow Bank Beach," Santa Cruz Sentinel. September 11, 2018.
- Majors, Thomas Earl. “The Majors Family and Santa Cruz County Dairying: An Interview Conducted by Elizabeth Spedding Calciano”. Santa Cruz, CA: University of California, 1965.
- Neely, Christopher. “Parking battle leaves Santa Cruz County’s lone national monument gated from the public.” Lookout Santa Cruz. May 30, 2023.
- Ocean Shore Railroad Company. “Plans of the Oceanshore RR Co.” 1912.
- Orlando, Alverda, Sally Iverson, and Ed Dickie. Images of America: Davenport. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2020.
- Piccione, Gavin. "Panther Beach, an Extraordinary Geologic Feature in Santa Cruz." Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. April 3, 2025.
- Santa Cruz Sentinel, Santa Cruz Evening News, and Santa Cruz Surf, various articles, 1866–1960.
- Southern Pacific Railroad Company, Coast Division Employee Timetable No. 121 (November 1, 1924).
- Southern Pacific Railroad Company, Coast Division Employee Timetable No. 143 (February 16, 1936).