You may see a few photos from nearby locations here. Many shoots span multiple spots in the same session.
Davenport Beach & Bluffs
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Where we shoot, on a map
Davenport Beach & Bluffs is the bluff-top walk twelve miles north of Santa Cruz that gives you most of what Panther Beach gives you without the cliff scramble. A long flat path runs along the coast above Davenport village, the Pacific dropping a hundred feet to your left, the village a five-minute walk to your right. Whales pass within a few hundred yards in winter. When you're done shooting, you walk to dinner.
The way I actually pitch Davenport to couples is as the easy answer for north-coast bluff drama. Panther Beach is ten minutes south, sits at the bottom of a steep dirt trail, and rewards couples willing to scramble down — and back up — for a session. Davenport doesn't ask that of you. You park in or near the village, you walk a flat dirt path along the bluff top, and within sixty seconds you're on open coast with the Pacific dropping straight down to your left and California-rural farmland sweeping to your right. The cliff-edge frames look essentially the same as Panther's bluff-top frames. The difference is you didn't have to earn them.
The lay of the land
The Davenport story I tell most often is the whale one. A January engagement session, late afternoon, the couple was nervous about the cliff edge — partner being surprised was queasy about heights, so we'd planned to keep the frames inland of the bluff lip and use telephoto compression to fake the openness. We were maybe twenty minutes in, working a frame with the village in the background, when I caught a spout in my peripheral vision over the partner's shoulder. I asked them to turn around without lifting my camera. They turned, the second spout came up about two hundred yards out, and the whale's back arched and showed for a slow three seconds before it sounded. The partner who'd been nervous about the cliff edge walked themselves to within five feet of it without thinking, just to keep watching. We got fifteen more minutes of frames that day with both of them at the lip, untroubled. Lesson I tell every couple now: book Davenport in the migration window if you can. The whales will do more than I can to make the place feel real.
Make a trip out of it
Where to stay
Getting here
A few things about Davenport Beach & Bluffs
Davenport was founded in 1867 by Captain John Pope Davenport, a New York whaling captain who set up one of the last shore-based whaling stations on the West Coast. The original 'Davenport's Landing' was about a mile north of the current village.
— Wikipedia / Santa Cruz County History WikiThe current village location is technically 'New Town Davenport,' built in 1906 around the Santa Cruz Portland Cement Company plant. The cement works ran for 104 years before Cemex closed it in 2010; the kiln stacks south of town are the remains.
— Wikipedia / LocalWiki / Cemex closure announcement 2010The wood pilings sticking up at low tide off the south end of the beach are what's left of Davenport Pier, where ships once loaded cement and lumber straight from the bluff via an overhead cable chute.
— general historical record / LocalWikiGray whales pass within sight of the bluffs every year during their winter migration south to Baja and again on the return, roughly mid-December through April. Davenport is one of the best dryland whale-watching spots on the entire California coast — Whale City Bakery in the village is named for the migration.
— Monterey Bay Sanctuary / California State Parks whale-watching guideThe Davenport Jail, a 7-by-10-foot concrete cell built in 1914, sits next to the village center and is one of the smallest historic jails in California. It's on the National Register of Historic Places and now serves as a tiny museum.
— National Register of Historic Places / LocalWikiSan Vicente Creek empties onto the south end of the main beach. The creek is why the beach is formally called San Vicente Beach in state-park references, even though everyone (locally, on maps, in search results) just calls it Davenport Beach.
— California Beaches / WikipediaThe bluff-top trail is a named segment of the California Coastal Trail, the 1,200-mile coastal path that runs from Oregon to Mexico. The Davenport stretch is one of the more accessible and most photographed portions in the Santa Cruz section.
— California Coastal Trail / coastal.ca.gov
Davenport Beach & Bluffs also appears as San Vicente Beach, Davenport Beach, Davenport Bluffs, Davenport Main Beach, or Coast Dairies State Park.