Santa’s Redwoods

Driving north from Santa Cruz, I watch the coastal city loosen into rolling hills and redwood forest. Six miles later, Scotts Valley gathers beneath the trees. Highway 17 continues toward San Jose and Silicon Valley, but one exit interrupts the commuter map with a direction from a storybook: Santa’s Village Road.

The village is gone. The name remains. In 1957, Southern California builder H. Glenn Holland leased twenty-five acres of the former Lawridge dairy farm and planted Christmas in the middle of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Holland had already created a Santa’s Village at Lake Arrowhead in 1955. Scotts Valley became the second of three villages, followed by East Dundee, Illinois, in 1959.

The gates opened on May 30, 1957. Christmas no longer had to wait for December. From old photographs and memories, I can almost hear the miniature Santa’s Express circling the grounds. Elves sold tickets and guided children toward the bobsled ride and the whirling Christmas tree. Gingerbread buildings stood among enormous candy canes. There was a frozen North Pole beneath the California sun and an Alice in Wonderland hall of mirrors where children could lose themselves before finding Santa.

A petting zoo brought families close to gentle animals, while real reindeer gave the fantasy four legs and antlers. Perhaps the park’s greatest attraction, though, required no machinery at all. The redwoods already knew how to create wonder.

They shaded the paths and rose above the painted buildings like the pillars of a natural cathedral. Beneath them, Christmas did not seem imported from some distant, snowy country. It seemed to have been growing quietly in Scotts Valley all along.

That is the peculiar beauty of this part of California. Scotts Valley rests between two powerful worlds. Santa Cruz and the Pacific Ocean lie just to the south. San Jose and Silicon Valley wait beyond the mountains. Commuters hurry along Highway 17, but the redwoods measure time differently. They turn a short distance into an escape.

For more than twenty years, families followed that road into Holland’s Christmas landscape. Then the California dream changed. Santa’s Village Corporation filed for bankruptcy in 1977, and the park closed in 1979. Its rides and storybook buildings disappeared. The property later became associated with the headquarters of Borland International, and portions of the surrounding land gave way to homes.

“California is forever building one future over another.

Yet the highway sign survived. Santa’s Village Road still invites travelers to leave Highway 17, even though the destination named upon it has vanished. The sign has become a roadside monument—not to what remains, but to what people remember.

I look beyond it toward the forest. Santa borrowed the redwoods for twenty-two years, but the redwoods kept the story. The train has stopped, the mirrors are dark, and the reindeer have departed. Still, beneath the high green canopy, it is easy to imagine the sound of a bell and a miniature engine moving through the trees.

The village disappeared. The road still leads to Santa’s Redwoods.