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The 2000 acre (8 kmē) UCSC campus is located 75 miles (120 km) south of San Francisco and has an elevation change of about 900 feet (275 m) from the base of campus at 285 feet (87 m) to the upper boundary at 1,195 feet (364 m). The lower portion of the campus primarily consists of the Great Meadow, and most of the upper campus is within a redwood forest. The campus is bounded on the south by the city's upper-west-side neighborhoods, on the east by Harvey West Park [2] and the Pogonip [3] [4], on the north by Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park [5] [6] [7] in the town of Felton, and on the west by Gray Whale Ranch, a portion of Wilder Ranch State Park [8] [9]. The northern half of the campus, while originally intended to house ten colleges in addition to the ten that currently exist, has remained in its undeveloped, forested state aside from hiking and bicycle trails. Students forgoing the expenses of an apartment or dorm room are not an uncommon sight in the denser parts of the woods living in semi-permanent tent communities, despite restrictions against camping on campus and in the surrounding state parks.
Although the original founders had outlined their plans for the University in the 1930s, the opportunity did not present itself to build such a unique educational experiment until the City of Santa Cruz made a bid to the University of California Regents in the mid- 1950s to build a campus in the mountains outside town. The formal design of the Santa Cruz campus begun in the late 1950s and construction started in the early 1960s. The campus was originally intended to be a showcase for contemporary architecture as well as a place for learning. The first building on campus to be completed was Hahn Central Services. Not long after opening, Hahn Central Services was subject to a devastating fire that gutted the building. It was then rebuilt using the undamaged concrete structure.
Until recently, most of the buildings on campus have been named after people of great worth: educators, writers, philosophers, and alternative thinkers. This tradition has slowed recently in favor of selling naming rights to buildings and colleges (e.g. Kresge College of the Kresge K-Mart fame). The roads on campus are named after the UC Regents who voted in favor of building the campus. Clark Kerr Hall is named after the then-President of the University of California, who imagined building a university as several Swarthmores (i.e., small liberal arts colleges) in close proximity to each other. (As such, each college was originally intended to be primarily educationally self-sustaining.)
UCSC opened during a time of civil unrest when student protests on college campuses across the United States were common. According to popular myth, incoming students are sometimes told that the campus was designed on a decentralized plan, with no central quadrangle or central administrative buildings to serve as rallying points for protests. However, the campus opened in 1965 and was designed several years prior, so this story is relegated to folklore, as the original protests in question didn't begin until the mid-1960s.
The geology and history of the campus are closely tied. The campus is built on a portion of the Cowell Family ranch, which was given as a gift to the University of California. The original living quarters for ranch employees are mostly still standing at the base of campus, as is the stonehouse which served as the paymaster's house. The stonehouse was home to the campus newspaper, City on a Hill, from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. Many of the other original ranch buildings have been renovated to be comfortable modern offices despite their antiquated appearance.
The Cowell Ranch was a part of the Henry Cowell Lime and Cement Company . The limestone that runs under most of campus was pulled from one of several quarries, the most notable being the Upper Quarry, which is popular with students that wish to smoke cannabis away from the patrolled colleges despite its central location. There is an amphitheater in this quarry that is used for most of the large gatherings on campus. The original campus plan indicated a stadium in the Lower Quarry, but this plan never was realized. (Indeed, the Lower Quarry is now home to The Village, a student housing community, ending any forseeable possibility of a stadium there.) Once the limestone was quarried, lime was extracted by burning it in limekilns adjacent to the quarries. The fires were fueled by the redwood trees that were logged from adjacent land. Although most of these kilns are fenced off, they are still visible in several locations on and around campus.
Another interesting feature of UCSC are the creeks traversing the campus within several ravines. Footbridges span these ravines on pedestrian paths linking various areas of campus. These footbridges make it possible to walk to any part of campus within 20 minutes despite the campus being built on a mountainside with varying elevations. At night fog shrouds the ends of these bridges, so that one can be in the center without being able to see either end or the bottom of the ravine below, with only the orange lights along the path twisting away into the woods providing any sense of place.
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