Davenport

Davenport is not a Santa Cruz neighborhood. It is a small unincorporated village of roughly four hundred people on Highway 1, about ten miles up the coast from the city, and it has its own identity, its own history and its own character entirely. Anyone describing it as part of Santa Cruz has not spent time there.

The town exists because of cement. The plant was founded in 1906 by William Dengee, Irving Bachman and Charles Crocker as the Santa Cruz Portland Cement Company, and for more than a century it was the reason Davenport was here, a genuine company town with worker cottages built around the works. The plant was idled in 2010, taking jobs and tax revenue with it, and Santa Cruz County has since run a planning process for the 103 acre site, with a coastal restoration and reuse plan reviewed by the Board of Supervisors in 2019. That transition is the central fact about Davenport today and anyone buying here should understand where it stands.

What remains is a village with a spectacular setting. The coastline north of Santa Cruz is some of the least developed in the state, with Davenport Beach and Shark Fin Cove within walking distance and the cliffs running north toward Ano Nuevo. Wilder Ranch State Park, seven thousand acres of coastal terrace and ranch history, sits between Davenport and the city, and Ano Nuevo State Reserve with its elephant seal colony is up the coast.

The Whale City Bakery and the Davenport Roadhouse are the village institutions, and on a weekend they are busy with cyclists and day trippers from over the hill. Housing is limited and mostly older, including original cottage stock built for plant workers, and inventory is thin enough that a year can pass with only a handful of sales.

I want to be straightforward with my own clients about what living here means as the years go on. Davenport is a genuine small community with real neighbors, and it is also ten miles from a grocery store of any size, twenty to twenty five minutes from Dominican Hospital, and reliant on a single coastal highway that closes for slides and accidents. If you drive comfortably and love the coast, it is a wonderful place. If driving has become difficult, it gets hard quickly, and there is essentially no low maintenance or attached housing here to move into.

Schools in this part of the coast are served by area districts rather than by Santa Cruz City Schools, and assignment depends on the parcel, so I check rather than assume. Cabrillo College in Aptos serves the wider county, and the Santa Cruz Public Libraries operate a countywide system with a single card.

Getting anywhere means Highway 1 south into Santa Cruz, roughly twenty minutes when the road is clear. Santa Cruz METRO runs a north coast route, which is genuinely useful for anyone who no longer wants to drive that stretch.

On price, the typical Santa Cruz area home is running around $1.35 million as of late summer 2026, but Davenport trades on its own terms. With so few sales in any given year, a town median is close to meaningless here, and value comes down to the specific property, its condition, its views and how it is served by water and septic. My Santa Cruz home prices page covers the wider market and the full Santa Cruz area guide has more on the region.

Selling a property in a small coastal village takes a different approach from selling in town, starting with finding the specific buyer who actually wants this life rather than the idea of it. I have worked this coast for more than two decades. If you are weighing whether to stay in Davenport or move closer to services, that is exactly the conversation I have with older adults and their families, without any pressure attached. Book a call with me, or read how I prepare and market a home.