For 145 years, Santa Cruz was a leading source of tanned hides, first in California and later throughout the world. After the Gold Rush, demand for leather goods such as boots, harnesses, and machinery belts for farming and mining equipment helped drive the industry, and the Santa Cruz region, with its ranchos and cattle, abundant water, tanoak forests, limestone deposits, and access by sea, was well suited to support it. Three tanneries operated on this site where Pogonip Creek meets the San Lorenzo River. The earliest was Grove Tannery, a small operation started in 1856 that was almost entirely washed away in the flood of 1861. It was followed by Kron Tannery, which by the 1890s employed 50 workers. Kullman Salz Company, later Salz Tannery, took over in 1918. By the 1960s Salz Tannery employed 400 people, processed about 13 million square feet of leather a year, and sold to customers around the world. By the 1990s much of the leather industry had shifted overseas, and Salz, the oldest and longest running tannery in California, closed in 2001. Today the site along the San Lorenzo River remains active, with artists in the historic refurbished buildings where leather tanners once worked, and the Tannery Arts Center continuing a long tradition of local craftsmanship and industry as an integral part of life and work in Santa Cruz County.