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SANTA CRUZ -- When the news of the end of the World War reached Santa Cruz in the early morning hours of Nov. 11, 1918, the city erupted with the sounds of bells and whistles.

Young boys raced into Birkenseer's Chinatown and bought armloads of firecrackers that they set off all along Front Street. A crowd of celebrants gathered in front of the post office, singing and shouting, but their voices were muffled by the gauze masks they all wore. The war may have ended but the ordinance requiring everyone to wear a gauze mask was still in force. Anyone venturing outdoors in Santa Cruz without a mask risked a $10 fine and a night or two in jail.

Awkwardly, the war ended in the midst of the largest epidemic in modern history.

The shooting and killing may have stopped, but the influenza continued to suffocate its victims, filling their lungs with fluid and strangling them in their bunks. Named the Spanish influenza though public health officials said it probably originated in Asia, it spread quickly through tightly packed groups of soldiers across Europe in the spring and summer of 1918, and onto the East Coast by September. The influenza claimed its first victim in Santa Cruz County on Oct. 15 when a healthy, active 31-year-old woman named Loula Jones died in her sister's home on Pacheco Street.

Two days later, when Jones was buried in an open-air funeral at Oakwood Cemetery, Dr. A. N. Nittler, the city's public health officer, counted 13 cases of the influenza in Santa Cruz. Within a week the number was 72. On Oct. 26, under the urging of Dr. Nittler, the Santa Cruz City Council adopted the mandatory mask ordinance.

The flu met a very mobilized population. A year of meatless Tuesdays, wheatless Wednesdays and unrelenting Liberty Loan Drives trained the local populace as well as a drill sergeant. Differing opinions were crushed early on, and if you were not sufficiently supportive of the war effort, your neighbors turned you in to the sheriff who would personally check the level of your patriotism. One didn't dare question the judgment of health officials or the Red Cross. The cloak of patriotism was over it all.

With the sheer force of will and modern technology, America had gone Over the Top! And the Spanish influenza was just another enemy, albeit difficult to see. Public health officials tried to tread the fine line between alerting and alarming the public. The U.S. Public Health Service published a bulletin that instructed, should you become ill, you "should go home at once and go to bed." It was clear that the influenza was spread from one person to another through sneezing, coughing or touching, so public officials prohibited any gatherings where the influenza could spread: movie theaters closed, service clubs stopped meeting, churches stopped holding indoor services and the public library closed as did all schools. And though they were not mandated to do so, most local saloons closed.

The individual prophylactic of choice was the gauze mask, and by early November, Santa Cruz, Watsonville and the county passed ordinances requiring everyone to wear a gauze mask when outside their home. The day after the ordinance took effect in Santa Cruz, Irving Harris, suitably masked, was seen walking his mask-wearing cocker spaniel. He happily posed for photographs.

The supplies of gauze masks quick ran out, and the Red Cross recommended that citizens wear bandanas tied around their faces stage-coach-robber-style, but medical officials held out for gauze masks.


Two Santa Cruz women challenged the ordinance by wearing the masks on their arms arguing that the law didn't say where the mask had to be worn. The City Council quickly changed the law to mandate the mask be worn over the face.

These weren't your modern, lightweight, thin masks, either. They were three layers of heavy gauze made heavier by the wearer's constant exhaling and slobbering until the straps would start to droop under the weight of the gooey, wet mass of gunk. Some argued that the masks might be causing as much trouble as they prevented. Cigar smokers claimed that the masks discriminated against them.

As more people got sick, the Red Cross set up temporary hospitals in Watsonville and Santa Cruz, and volunteers visited the sick at their homes. Immigrants from Japan, Italy and Croatia were hit particularly hard by the influenza, and the disease targeted people between the ages of 20 and 40. At one point every Italian fishing family in Santa Cruz was stricken by the disease and no fishing boats went out.

And as usual, the rumor spread throughout Santa Cruz that the influenza was spread originally from Watsonville.

Despite the public health measures, there seemed to be no correlation between the masks, staying away from crowds and coming down with the flu. Maybe that was the scariest part of the epidemic -- it seemed to wander willy-nilly across the landscape, strangling its victims at random.

Then, just as the number of cases declined and officials began to relax their ordinances, the flu would roar back stronger. There were three such waves in Santa Cruz County between mid-October of 1918 and mid-February of 1919, and during its surges, the mortuaries could not keep up with the flow of bodies.

When the epidemic finally ran its course in 1919, an estimated 675,000 people died in the United States and from 20 million to 40 million died worldwide. We will never know exactly how many people died in Santa Cruz County as a result of the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919, but a cursory examination of the record suggests it was in the hundreds. All of our older cemeteries have clusters of 1918 and 1919 burials, and many family albums have pictures of relatives wearing masks, reminders of the time 90 years ago when the influenza came into town. From all indications, though it might have a different name and number, it's back.

Sandy Lydon is historian emeritus at Cabrillo College. Visit his Web site,