A hundred years ago, intense kiln fires kept people at a distance while men speaking Portuguese and Italian labored to quarry stone, work the kilns, haul in hundreds of loads of firewood, and sometimes blast rock from the cliff face up the canyon. During much of the late 1800s, Santa Cruz County led the state in lime manufacture, producing lime that was mainly shipped to San Francisco for mortar used in brick buildings. Limestone was cooked in kilns at about 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, removing carbon dioxide and leaving calcium oxide, or lime, which was then packed in barrels for shipping. These kilns were built in the mid 1870s by I.X.L. Lime Company and operated on and off until 1919, by which time most of the surrounding redwoods had been cut to fuel the kilns or make barrels.
