This 1885 street honors wheat farmer Henry Cutler Hubbard (1844-1929), who had ties to several early Valley families and was also a county supervisor. Born in Vermont and raised in New Hampshire, Hubbard moved to Soquel (near Santa Cruz) in 1868, shortly after his sister Kate married Benjamin F. Porter, who ran a tannery there with his cousin George. (Hubbard inevitably got a job at the tannery.) The rest of his family soon joined them and remained in Soquel even after Hubbard and his best friend Francis Marion “Bud” Wright (1841-1937) decided to try their luck in the SFV. They located here in 1875 and leased two large ranches from the Porters before buying their own 1,100 acre spread, Hawk Ranch, in 1887. “Hub and Bud” farmed that land until 1909, when they sold it off to become the townsite of Zelzah, named by Wright’s wife Emily (née Vose). Hubbard married Kate Paxton Maclay (1863-1929), daughter of San Fernando founder Charles Maclay, in 1884. Although nearly two decades younger, she preceded him in death due to an automobile accident. They had two grown children.
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