A huge storm and high tide that sent waves topping 20 feet slamming into the tourist mecca of Capitola last week, wreaking severe damage upon the city’s historic wharf and waterfront restaurant row, was highly dramatic — but not an anomaly.
Capitola, in its picturesque cove, has been a storm target since its early days as the privately owned “Camp Capitola” seaside resort, long before its incorporation as a city in 1949. And the wharf that lost a 40-foot section Jan. 5? It’s been there before. And not just once.
Capitola Historical Museum curator Deborah Osterberg dug back into the past 100 years and compiled a litany of weather-wrought catastrophes