Santa Cruz Wedding

Santa Cruz is the county seat of Santa Cruz County, California, United States.

As of the 2000 census Santa Cruz had a total population of 54,593. It is located on the northern edge of the Monterey Bay, about 72 mi (115 km) south of San Francisco.

Santa Cruz was first settled by the Ohlone, Native American hunter-gatherers who inhabited the region between 500 BCE and the early colonial period. Santa Cruz was discovered by Spanish exlorer Don Gaspar de Portola in 1769 and was subsequently colonized in the mid-1700s by Spain, which established both a mission (Mission Santa Cruz) and a secular settlement named Branciforte. As with many of the early Spanish settlements, the settlement was named for the Catholic feast day on which it was founded. The Ohlone were concentrated into the mission by the Spanish and suffered a rapid decline due to newly introduced diseases and exhaustion from forced labor practices enforced by the dominant Spanish rule.