HONOR STATUE - RIDE WITH HER
The Story
Santa Cruz County is the birthplace of surfing on the mainland United States. In 1885, three young Hawaiian princes rode redwood boards at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River and ignited something that has defined this coastline for over 140 years.
Surfing is woven into the fabric of who we are — our culture, our economy, our identity.
For more than 30 years, the iconic bronze statue “To Honor Surfing” has stood sentinel on West Cliff Drive, overlooking Steamer Lane. He is beloved. He is woven into the rhythms of daily life in Santa Cruz. He watches the surfers, gets dressed up at Christmas, and has become one of the most recognized landmarks on the California coast.
But he tells only half the story.
Women have been part of this ocean community from the very beginning — surfing, paddleboarding, swimming, competing, shaping boards, raising families along this coast, and building the culture that makes this place what it is. They have always been here. They have simply never had a monument.
“To Honor the Women of the Water”
changes that.
The Project
A bronze female surfer statue — approximately 16.5 feet to the top of her board, the same scale as her counterpart on West Cliff Drive — will be installed on the Capitola Esplanade, the oldest beach resort on the West Coast and one of the most beloved coastal destinations in California.
Like the male statue, she is not modeled after any one person. She is an archetype — representing every woman who has ever loved this ocean. The first two female surf statues in the world honor individual champions. She honors all of them.
She will stand in front of her longboard, bronzed in a wetsuit — a nod to the evolution of surfing — and gaze out over the water, timeless, resolute, and enduring in her presence.
The male surfer stands near the western end of the Santa Cruz World Surfing Reserve, overlooking Steamer Lane. She will stand at its eastern gateway, in Capitola — the Reserve’s newest member, welcomed in August 2025. Together, they bookend seven miles of the most celebrated surf coastline in the world.
Together, they will frame Santa Cruz from East to West — two landmarks, two surf breaks, one complete story.
The Women Making Waves
The waves in Santa Cruz have always been shaped by women’s hands.
The story begins with Antoinette Swan — a woman of Spanish and native Hawaiian Aliʻi lineage who settled in Santa Cruz in the 1860s and hosted the three young Hawaiian princes in 1885.
Dorothy Becker arrived next in the written record. In 1915, the Santa Cruz teenager traveled to Hawaii, learned to surf on a board borrowed from Duke Kahanamoku. She returned home acknowledged as the first woman surfer from the American mainland.
In the 1930s, Pat Collings, Jane Fairchild, Shirley Templeman, and others surfed alongside the Santa Cruz Surf Club boys — and were never once invited to join. When Fox Movietone newsreel cameras arrived in 1936 to document Santa Cruz surf culture, it was the surfing girls they chose to film.
The 1950s brought Sheila Ralston, Betty Van Dyke, Erlyne Colfer, and others — Santa Cruz’s First Ladies of Surfing — who paddled out in an era when lineups were almost exclusively male. Erlyne Colfer received Jack O’Neill’s first women’s wetsuit.
Jane McKenzie has been surfing since the 1960s. In 1987 she became one of the first women admitted to the Santa Cruz Longboard Union and won its first women’s division that same year. She is still surfing today, and sits on this project’s advisory council.
Robin "Zeuf" Janiszeufski-Hesson was known at Pleasure Point as its Queen — a teacher, a connector, and an inspiration to generations of women in the water. During her battle with cancer, she attended her own memorial paddle out — the only woman ever invited to do so.
Dr. Sarah Gerhardt became the first woman to surf Mavericks in 1999, at waves documented at 40 to 50 feet. A physical chemistry professor at UCSC, she is one of the most iconic figures in Santa Cruz surfing history.
Ashley Lloyd is beloved on this coast today. A surfer and founder of Ashley Lloyd Surfboards, at one point one of the only women in the world running her own surfboard shaping business.
This is a brief, incomplete, unfinished history.
She continues it.
3rd in the World
There are two female surf statues in the world today. The first was installed in Dana Point in 2022 — in honor of Joyce Hoffman. The second was unveiled at Bondi Beach, Australia in November 2025 — in honor of Pauline MENZ-ER, the 1993 world champion.
Both of those statues honor individual champions.
She is the first female surf statue in the world not dedicated to any one person. She represents all of them, all of us. Every woman who has ever paddled out, swam, boated, or just loves the ocean, and has known that the ocean belongs to her too.
The first two female surf statues in the world honor champions.
She honors all of us.
Our Newest Icon
Like her counterpart, she will become part of our daily lives. We will drive by her, walk by her, sit beside her on those curved benches. She will watch us surf, witness sunrises and sunsets over Monterey Bay, and stand as a quiet, constant presence through every season and tide.
In a few years, a young girl growing up on this coast will not remember a time when there was only one iconic statue here. That is the point.
“Little girls who are not yet born will grow up seeing her the way we grew up seeing him, and they will know, from the very beginning, that the ocean belongs to them too.”
– Kayla Pearson
Equity is the Point