Rustic event venue on the UC Santa Cruz campus, with sweeping views of the Monterey Bay and adjacent to the 30 acre Organic Farm at UC Santa Cruz
94 Ranch View Road
Santa Cruz, CA
95064
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The Cowell Ranch Hay Barn was originally built as part of the Cowell Davis Lime Works which was a thriving lime production business operating on what is now the lower part of the UCSC campus in the 1860’s.
The Cowell Lime Works was a manufacturing complex that quarried limestone, produced lime and other limestone products, and manufactured wood barrels that enables the finished lime to be shipped all over the world.
The Hay Barn was used to store hay for the livestock that was an integral part of the ranching and lime extraction operation of the site. Located west of the blacksmith shop and north of the cooperage, it had been used as a utility and storage structure by the campus until it was condemned as unsafe and vacated. Helped by generous donors and countless hours of volunteer time, the campus was committed to restoring the hay barn, and to making it a centerpiece of the campus entry.
Beginning in 2014, the old, dilapidated Hay Barn was carefully disassembled and the pieces catalogued. In rebuilding the Hay Barn, the designers and builders replicated the original timber frame materials and construction techniques and incorporated as muchof the old materials as they could. New wood components match the original in species, design, color, texture, and other visual qualities. Santa Cruz Timber Frames were contracted for the construction, and the building was framed in one day in the spring of 2015 with the help of volunteer timber framers and other community volunteers.
