Early history of the area recalls the Sayante people finding shelter and game in the plentiful forests.

The area provided them with enough acorns, fish from Lompico and Newell Creek, and small game to live a peaceful, easy life.

[citation needed] In 1769, the Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolá arrived to the area which is now known as the City of Santa Cruz.

When Portola came upon the river which flows from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the sea, he named it San Lorenzo in honor of Saint Lawrence.

Over the next 20 years, word spread throughout the Ohlone tribes, including the Sayante Indians, that the Santa Cruz Mission would provide a regular source of food, even through the winter, warm shelter in the winter, clothes made from woven fabrics, manufactured items both useful (such as pots and pans) and curious (trinkets such as glass beads, etc.

For the Mission system to work it required the services of large numbers of "workers" (to till the gardens, construct and maintain buildings, etc.).

This was difficult for New Spain (Mexico) to provide because few there were willing to relocate to what was considered the harsh and primitive environment of Alta (Upper) California.

In addition, diseases which were mostly annoyances to their European hosts decimated the Indian populace, and only small groups remained after 1820.

The Lompico area became part of Rancho Zayante, which was granted by Mexico in 1834 to Joaquin Buelna and consisted of 2,658 acres (10.76 km2) just north of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park.

By the 1850s, Felton became the hub of the logging industry and the coastal redwood trees that blanketed the area became the largest export.

Early loggers described the area as dense, nearly impenetrable redwood forests, howling canyons, and frequent encounters with ferocious grizzly bears, the last of which, a silvertip sow, is said to have been killed near Bonny Doon in the late 1880s.

Eventually the original trusty oxen were replaced by wood burning donkey engines, of which some tracks can still be found today in Lompico.

Between 1890 and 1900, the entire area was clear cut and the forest is now in the process of reestablishing itself on the young, steep slopes of marine sedimentary rock common to the California coast.