Capitola — Colorful Cottages, a Rebuilt Wharf, and a Real Flood-and-Erosion Story

What Capitola Actually Is

Capitola is a small, independently incorporated city in Santa Cruz County, sitting where Soquel Creek meets Monterey Bay about five miles south of downtown Santa Cruz. The resort itself predates the city: Samuel A. Hall opened "Camp Capitola" as a tent-camp beach resort on July 4, 1874, and the city's own historical materials describe it as the oldest seaside resort town on the Pacific Coast. Landowner Frederick Hihn, who had purchased the property in 1856 and built the area's first wharf, spent the following decades turning that tent camp into a full Victorian-era resort -- cabins, a hotel, a skating rink, a theater, a bandstand -- by the 1880s. The Santa Cruz Railroad's 1876 extension made it accessible to real tourist volume rather than just local day-trippers. The town's most-photographed feature, the row of pastel Mediterranean-style Venetian Court buildings crowding the beach, was designed and built by architect Henry Allen in the 1920s -- not a modern paint job on old cottages, but a deliberate architectural project nearly a century old.

Capitola did not become its own city until much later, and the story behind that matters for how the town still operates: residents voted to incorporate on January 4, 1949 by a narrow 297-243 margin, largely to avoid being annexed by neighboring Santa Cruz, and the city was formally incorporated January 11, 1949. That gave Capitola its own budget, zoning authority, and police department -- control it has used, among other things, to limit high-rise development near the water and preserve the small-scale character of the village. The result today is one of the smallest and densest incorporated cities on the Central Coast: about 1.6 square miles holding roughly 9,400-9,700 residents depending on the year and source, a population that Census and ACS-based estimates show has actually declined modestly since the 2020 Census count of 9,917.

Capitola also has a genuine, dated agricultural claim to fame that's mostly gone now: from the 1930s through the 1970s, the Brown Bulb Ranch just outside town grew roughly 90% of the world's tuberous begonias, and the city was known as the "World Begonia Capital." The Capitola Begonia Festival ran from 1952 through its 65th and final year in 2017, when the successor grower (Golden State Bulb Growers, formerly Brown Ranch) stopped growing begonias commercially -- a real, dated end to a genuinely unusual local industry, not an ongoing attraction a buyer should expect to find today.

Dining & Things to Do

Capitola Village's defining experience is the Esplanade -- a short, walkable strip of restaurants and shops facing Capitola Beach and the rebuilt wharf, with most restaurants offering direct Monterey Bay views. Currently operating waterfront spots commonly named in visitor coverage include Margaritaville (Mexican seafood and margaritas), Paradise Beach Grille, Zelda's on the Beach, and The Sand Bar, which looks out over both the beach and the mouth of Soquel Creek. The 855-foot Capitola Wharf itself -- rebuilt after the January 2023 storm and reopened in 2024 with new decking, a boat launch area, restrooms, and interpretive signage about Monterey Bay wildlife -- is a genuine public amenity for a morning walk, not just a backdrop.

Beyond the beach itself, Capitola Village's core draw is simply walkable browsing: a tight cluster of clothing shops, gift stores, and art galleries within a few blocks, anchored visually by the pastel 1920s Venetian Court buildings, one of the most-photographed streetscapes on the Central Coast. New Brighton State Beach, a short distance south along the coast, gives residents and visitors a quieter, less commercial beach and campground alternative to the busier village beach. For a broader restaurant and nightlife scene, downtown Santa Cruz and its boardwalk are a short drive north -- this page's real-cost and investment-outlook pages, and the comparison links in the sidebar, cover that market directly.