Help Save The Cross Roads Drive-In

The Cross Roads BBQ Drive-In, Santa Cruz, Calif., in 1952

Introduction (Scroll Down for Site Contents and Links to Other Pages)

In the 1950s, the Cross Roads Drive-In restaurant served as a popular year-round 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 Santa Clara Valley, the San Joaquin Valley, the Sacramento Valley and other central and northern California communities.
In March 2001, the City of Santa Cruz announced plans to demolish the building, which had housed a liquor store since the demise of the drive-in business in the mid-1960s, and replace it with a natural history museum as part of a major new park development that also encompasses the railroad property, since owned by Union Pacific. (The depot burned down several years ago.)
Outraged by the city's refusal to recognize the historical significance of the building as the last standing vestige of the Fifties' teenage cruisin'-the-drag culture in Santa Cruz County, more than 50 Santa Cruz High School students of that decade residing throughout the U.S. began writing to City Hall and the local newspaper asking that the building be preserved, restored and made part of the museum complex.
If you would like to learn more about the Cross Roads and efforts to save it, please continue reading this and succeeding pages. And then feel free to join the campaign to Save the Cross Roads.

o News Bulletins

Web Site Updated Jan. 10, 2004 -- City Breaks Ground on New Park (See Item #25, Page 9). Photo Gallery Added in December 2003 (click on red box near bottom of the page; click on the other red box for guestbook entries).
o March 2003: Greasy Spoon, a quarterly newsletter spotlighting U.S. drive-ins, diners, coffee shops and cafes -- past and present -- devoted its center spread to Crisis at the Cross Roads. Most subscribers belong to the national Society for Commercial Archaeology (See Page 16)
o Sept. 6, 2002: The Sentinel newspaper reported the city received a $6-million state grant for park construction, excluding funding for the museum, which must be separately financed (See Page 9)
o July 26, 2002: The Sentinel reported that the City Council approved the park plan (See Page 9)
o July 19, 2002: The Sentinel prints only the second of 50 or more letters it has received. Letters continue to dribble in from persons who have surfed onto this web site, but no others have been published. (See Page 15)
o June 2, 2002: Sharmon Nash, an SCHS History teacher, 1951-1985, who was a Cross Roads customer, endorses preservation of the drive-in in a letter to the Sentinel copied to City Hall. It was never published. (See Page 11)
o May 8, 2002: San Jose Mercury Columnist Leigh Weimers tells about the Cross Roads crisis. (See Page 11)
o May 8, 2002: The City Planner assigned to research the origins of the building for the draft environmental impact report chastises the City Council for its ensuing indifference and vehemently challenges the findings of a city-hired outside consultant who ruled in the EIR that the former drive-in lacks historical value. (See Page 12)
o May 3, 2002: The National Trust for Historic Preservation publishes an article on the plight of the Cross Roads, titled At A Crossroads -- A California City Longs for Its Small-Town Past (See Page 14)

Contents (Underlined headings below will link you to the pages.)

Pages 1-2] When Happy Days Reigned in Santa Cruz
A look at Santa Cruz's cruisin'-the-drag, drive-in-culture of the Fifties, featuring anecdotes from Santa Cruz High grads about their drive-in experiences and their comments on the role drive-ins played in teen society.
The Cross Roads actually opened in 1947 in an old wooden building at the same location. It moved across the street for two years in the VFW clubhouse and, in early 1952, returned to the original site but in the "new" building that still stands today. After it was sold in 1960, it became Danny's Drive-In for a few years before it was turned into a liquor store. The other major drive-in was Spivey's Five-Spot at Ocean and Water Streets, known as Bosley's Drive-In earlier in the decade. The Five-Spot lasted as a drive-in into the late 1960s. A third drive-in at Laurel and Front streets near downtown Santa Cruz was out of business by the mid-1950s. A photo of it is at: Chicken Villa

Pages 3-4] Letters to City Hall and The Sentinel
Excerpts from letters to the Santa Cruz City Council and to the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper from 1950s' Santa Cruz High students residing throughout the U.S. who want to Save the Cross Roads as a museum for future generations to enjoy.

Pages 5-6] Bringing Back the Diner
Reprint of a Jan. 16, 2002, article that appeared on Page 1 of the Santa Cruz Sentinel about efforts to Save the Cross Roads from the City Hall wrecking ball. The article is followed by Class of '54 letters to City Hall and the paper responding to deceptive and polarizing remarks by city officials.

Page 7] All About Carhops
o Many familiar words of the 20th Century seem to be disappearing from our hi-tech 21st Century vocabulary, such as mimeograph machine, fountain pen and phonograph ... will carhop become one of them?
o Roxy (Payton) Newland of Watsonville, SCHS Class of '57, recalls her days as a Cross Roads carhop in an opinion piece that was published in the Sentinel.
o Read the recollections of a Missouri and an Indiana carhop of the 1950s, whose memories were published in two different historical documents posted on-line.
o Origin of the word "carhop."

Page 8] Those Were the Days
Take a trip down Memory Lane in the never-to-be-repeated decade of the 1950s in small-town Santa Cruz, Calif.

Page 9] What Happened? Updated Aug. 10, 2003
A chronological list of events and actions, including links to relevant newspaper articles, about the Santa Cruz City Council's decision to raze the Cross Roads.

Page 10] Additional Letters to The Sentinel and City Hall
The second wave of letters supporting preservation of the Cross Roads is posted on this page. (Later letters are posted on Page 15.)

Page 11] Retired Fifties' SCHS History Teacher Backs Preservation/Other News Reports
o San Jose Mercury News Columnist Leigh Weimers, dean of Northern California daily newspaper columnists, spotlighted efforts to Save the Cross Roads in his May 8, 2002, column.
o On May 7, KSBW-TV [Channel 8 in Salinas, Calif.] reported on efforts to Save the Cross Roads.
o Sharmon Nash, a U.S. History Teacher at Santa Cruz High from 1951 to 1985, wrote to the newspaper endorsing preservation of the Cross Roads.
o A Ph.D. in history reports that the term "teenager" was born in the '50s.

Page 12] City Planner Castigates Council & Challenges EIR Consultant
Suzi Aratin, the city planner who "discovered" the Cross Roads, contradicts findings by the city's outside EIR consultant who ruled the former drive-in has no historical significance and condemns the City Council for its indifference. Ms. Aratin argues:
1) "It is apparent that the building IS eligible for inclusion in the Santa Cruz Historic Building Survey ... which would give the building protection under the California Environmental Quality Act."
2) "It has become obvious, through letters ... that there is significant public interest in the preservation of the Cross Roads building ... To discount the experiences of people who lived in Santa Cruz in the 1950s simply because [city] research into the structures remaining on the Depot site was not conducted until late in the master planning process is ludicrous."
3) "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."
Note: A city parks spokesperson reported in the KSBW-TV piece that Cross Roads supporters petitioned City Hall
far too late in the planning process. However, the parks person failed to point out that the city itself didn't look
into the origin of the building until mid-June 2001, almost three months after the Depot Park plan was
unveiled to the public on March 18. Moreover, the consultant's report dismissing the building as
historically insignificant is dated Nov. 1, 2001, one week after the City Council gave consensus approval to
the plan. The first email letter to City Hall asking that the building be preserved is dated Oct. 28, 2001.

Page 13] Spivey's 5-Spot and McDonald's
A look at a simulated Spivey's 5-Spot, a small drive-in chain, which had a drive-in in Santa Cruz. In 2002, the City of San Jose, where a former 5-Spot building still stands on First Street, has decided to make the structure there a historical landmark! Also, a report on how McDonald's really started, which eventually turned drive-ins into drive-throughs and made carhops obsolete.

Page 14] National Trust On-Line Article
America's leading preservation organization -- the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C. -- made the plight of the Cross Roads its "Story of the Week" on May 3, headlined At a Crossroads -- A California City Longs for Its Small-Town Past. You can read it on Page 14 or in the National Trust's on-line archives.

Page 15] Even More Letters
This page contains letters supporting the Cross Roads received after June 30, 2002. The first is from Diana-Jo Peters, Soquel, Calif., Class of 1960.

Page 16] Greasy Spoon Article
The Winter 2003 issue of Greasy Spoon, a quarterly newsletter mailed to members of the Society for Commercial Archaeology, features a two-page spread titled, Crisis at the Cross Roads. The article is reprinted in its entirety.

Page17] When Grandma Was A Carhop
Why was carhopping so popular an occupation among teenage girls in the Fifties? Two former Cross Roads carhops, now grandmothers in their mid- to late-60s, reminisce about the era when they could make $50-$75 or more in tips on a Saturday night. That's equivalant to $350-$525 in terms of 2004 dollars.

Where to Write

If you would like to join the growing number of 1950s' high school students who are trying to Save the Cross Roads from extinction, please write to the Santa Cruz City Council and to the Santa Cruz Sentinel Editor at:

Santa Cruz City Council

Sentinel Letters to the Editor

And please send a copy to me at:
Klempnauer/Cross Roads

Please include your name, current postal mailing address and telephone number, name of your school and year of your class, and any special memories you have about the '50s and, in particular, any special recollections and/or anecdotes about your drive-in experiences, wherever they occurred. Keep them to 150 words, the newspaper's limit. The Sentinel won't publish letters that don't contain a postal mailing address and phone number, which it requires to verify it's your letter. Email addresses, street addresses and phone numbers are not printed! If your spouse attended local schools, ask him or her to also write a letter. Married females should include their maiden names, e.g., Jane (Doe) Smith, for surname recognition. Also, please ask siblings and friends from the era to join the campaign and write letters to City Hall and the Sentinel.

The Author

I'm Len Klempnauer, son of the Cross Roads founders, the late Leonard and Louise Klempnauer, and a '54 grad of Santa Cruz High. My sister, Marcia, a carhop and waitress at the Cross Roads, graduated in '56. Our younger sister, Rosemary, graduated in '66. Our spouses are, respectively, the former Shirley Neighbors, Porterville, Calif., High Class of '57; Ron Ross, Watsonville, Calif., High Class of '56; and Pete Tuana, Santa Cruz High, Class of '64.

(The visitor counters on the succeeding pages weren't installed until early January 2004; so the count on those pages doesn't represent the true total of visitors, which is more accurately reflected on this introduction page.)

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