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How often is roadway design still making waves (and headlines!) six years later? The Tom Ralston Concrete Dolphin Design at the Santa Cruz Municpal Wharf is both beautiful and functional in helping traffic flow.
Be sure to get all the details from this recent front page story at in the Santa Cruz Sentinel - https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2022/07/14/photo-traffic-follows-the-dolphins/
Also archived here - https://archive.ph/lVVfs
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Tom Ralston Concrete designed and built the Concrete China Town Monument in 2015. The Monument honors their makeshift burial ground built far in the back of the Evergreen Cemetery as the Chinese were resented by much of the local populace.
Evergreen Cemetery is one of the oldest public cemeteries in California, and it is the final home to many of Santa Cruz County's early pioneers, leaders, and makers of history. The Cemetery is owned and managed by the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) with the leadership of a group of energized volunteers.
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Tom Ralston, at bottom right in black jacket, and his crew pour new stepping pads this week for visitors to access the rocks and water below Lighthouse Point in Santa Cruz. The new concrete steps create a safer pathway, and according to Ralston, replaces a path that was “very dangerous and slippery with moss, and the angle of the rocks was not conducive to a safe pathway especially for small children and elderly surfers.” Ralston’s crew chipped down the granite rock, which was imported from the foothills of the Sierra and poured flat areas in between the jagged rocks to provide an easy traverse. (Shmuel Thaler – Santa Cruz Sentinel)
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Tom Ralston Concrete was honored to be able to work on the monument for the City of Santa Cruz with Chinese philanthropist George Ow. Tom was interviewed for a documentary on the Chinatown Bridge on Inside Santa Cruz after the work was completed. In this episode, Inside Santa Cruz documents the inspiration, design, and construction of the Chinatown Bridge Dragon Gate Monument over San Lorenzo River, and discusses the history of Santa Cruz's Chinatowns.
In the documentary, George Ow introduces Tom saying, "Tom Ralston is a master cement artisan and artist. He wrote the book on fancy cement and we get the benefit of three generations of experience and knowledge. Tom and I have worked on a previous Chinese gate over at Evergreen Cemetery, and we had so much fun with that we decided to do one here."
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The project will include new stairs as well as a stainless-steel railing and is projected to be completed in about two weeks. Tom Ralston Concrete is a third-generation Santa Cruz County concrete company founded by Wilbur Thomas Ralston in 1928. A 2011 inductee to the Decorative Concrete Hall of Fame, Tom Ralston has been working in the concrete industry since 1964 and took over the company when his father Jim retired in 1989. (Shmuel Thaler/Santa Cruz Sentinel)
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The Decorative Concrete Council (DCC), a specialty council of the American Society of Concrete Contractors (ASCC), St. Louis, Mo., has announced the winners of its 13th annual Decorative Concrete Awards competition. The winners were recognized at ASCC’s Annual Conference, September 23, 2021.
Tom Ralston Concrete's Chinatown Arch was awared 2nd place for the Decorative Concrete Council Award : Multiple Applications, Under 5,000 SF.
Good Times Magazine called the arch "One of the 50 best things created in Santa Cruz during COVID."