Picture yourself entering the Boardwalk from Beach Street at Entrance #5 (it passes under the Giant Dipper.) Go to your left past Hot Dog on a Stick, and stop at the “Bay Brews” concession. Enjoy a local craft beer and linger over the dramatic scene behind the bar, which fancifully pictures the Boardwalk as it was in 1973.

The Boardwalk’s annual Clam Chowder Cook-Off draws more than 80 cooking teams and fills the park with thousands of chowder lovers from throughout Northern California.

Now in its 38th year, the Cook-Off is the country’s largest and longest-running clam chowder cook-off. In 1982, the first year, the event was quite different from the event we have today.

A successful event wasn’t apparent from the start. In fact, for each the cook-off’s first half-dozen years it was unclear if that year would be its last.

Did you know that a "dark ride" has occupied the same location on the Boardwalk for over 80 years? Our first dark ride, "Dante’s Inferno – A Trip to Hades" opened in 1932. In succeeding decades, we re-themed the same dark space into the likes of "Treasure Island," "Pirate’s Cove," "Haunted House,"  the "Haunted Castle in 1973, and today's "Haunted Castle" which opened in 2010. Read on to learn more about the evolution of the Boardwalk's signature dark ride. 

Does anyone remember a Boardwalk train set featured in the movie Harold & Maude?  The coin-operated model train set once occupied prominent space in the Casino Arcade. I remember dropping a dime in one of its control stations and watching my train run its course. The problem is, our archives are strangely silent about this attraction. We have only the scant memories of a few Boardwalk old-timers like me, who loosely recall it. Do you?

Planes, trains and cars beguile many kids in their early years, but parents know their youngsters are equally fascinated by dinosaurs! Our Cave Train ride has been the home of playful dinos since its inception but there was also a time when we used life-sized dinosaurs to spike interest in visiting our amusement park. 

Read on to see how it went!

Sudden storms beached many a boat over the years, especially before the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor opened for business in the mid 1960s. However, a sudden squall on October 7, 1972 beached a vessel like no other I can recall.