By Kevin Newhouse
I grew up on Trout Gulch Road and for most of my life the open field across from the Post Office was just a short cut to Aptos Station. One day though, I remember seeing a few kids with shovels building up what looked like bike jumps. It didn’t strike me as anything special … just some kids killing time outside. I didn’t realize it at the time but I was witnessing the birth of the world famous Post Office Bike Jumps.
Fifteen years later, there I was again. Only this time I was witnessing the death of the jumps. It was the night before the demolition, watching the riders for the last time, when the first excavator pulled in. Everyone there felt it. There was an unspoken feeling of loss. We all knew the end was here.
I recently caught up Tyler McCaul, who was one of the first kids out there shoveling dirt and is now a professional bike rider. He and his brother Cam, who is also a professional bike rider, grew up on Soquel Drive, just around the corner from the Post Office. One day, approximately 1998 or 1999, they found what used to be someone’s dirt jump spot. There were only a few jumps at that time, all on the face of the dirt lot, and they were very much neglected and overgrown with weeds. As fate would have it, Cam actually met someone at the final Post Office Bike Jam (an annual event that featured some of the best riders in the world) that mentioned these jumps initially belonged to him. He and his friends were riding them as far back as 1989!
Tyler and Cam, along with a few friends, eventually fixed the smaller jumps and began riding them. According to Tyler, “We all grew up in different parts of Aptos, and oddly enough, the jumps happened to pretty much be right in the center of where we all lived so it was the perfect meeting spot for us. We’d meet there every day after school and ride until the sun went down.”
There was one big overgrown jump they used to call “the big double.” It had approximately a 7-foot tall lip and a 20-foot long gap. “We never thought any of us would ever be good enough to hit it” remembers Tyler, “but eventually we uncovered it and started riding it.” That’s when Tyler and his friends realized bigger jumps were more fun so they decided to build more. Eventually they built a 40-foot gap jump referred to as “the 40. You had to start near the top of Cathedral Drive in order to gain enough speed to successfully clear the jump.
That’s when things really took off at the Post Office.
People started taking notice of the jumps and word spread throughout the biking community. More people started showing up to ride, including Jamie Goldman, Greg and Andrew Watts, Alex Reveles, Ryan Howard, and Shawn Wilson.
Early on, they used to have to run from the Deputy Sheriffs because they were getting calls from angry neighbors about kids riding in the middle of the street to get speed for the jumps. Eventually the neighbors recognized these kids weren’t just a bunch of punks up to no good. The neighbors grew to like them and would often come watch them ride, along with the Deputies that used to chase them away.
The Post Office jumps went through a lot of changes over the next 15 years and cycled through a lot of different people that would maintain them. A few years back, when Barry Swenson Builder acquired the land, it looked like the bike jumps were doomed. However, Jesse Nickell III, the company senior vice president of construction and development made arrangements for Santa Cruz County to lease the land for $1 a year in order to make it a temporary public park.
This act of generosity has not been taken for granted. Instead of dwelling on the destruction of the jumps, most of the riders have expressed their gratitude for allowing something this magical to happen for as long as it did. It’s absolutely amazing to see how mature and cooperative these guys have been.
The bike jumps meant so much to so many people. It was a way for these riders to follow their passion, while having fun, and staying out of trouble. Tyler’s one wish is that they can have another bike park like the Post Office, so that the youth of Aptos and Santa Cruz can experience all of the amazing things that he has since he started riding in that dirt lot over 15 years ago.
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To find out how you can help support finding a new location, please visit, www.postofficejumps.org
For more information about the Aptos History Museum, upcoming events, or becoming a member of the museum, please visit www.aptoshistory.org and follow us on Instagram@aptos_history_museum.