Celia Scott, long-time Santa Cruz resident and former mayor and member of the City Council, passed in her own home from natural causes on Jan. 17, 2025, at the age of 89. Celia’s leadership in Santa Cruz’s environmental community helped preserve the Pogonip, Lighthouse Field, and other open and wild spaces in the Monterey Bay Area and North Coast for current and future generations and for flora and fauna that call them home.

After moving to Santa Cruz in 1969, Celia became involved in efforts to prevent a four-lane freeway from being extended from Highway 17 through what is now the Pogonip Park, the base of the UC Santa Cruz campus, and Santa Cruz’s Westside to meet up with Highway 1. She worked with her future second husband, UCSC physics professor Peter Scott (1933-2024), and many others to pass Proposition 20, which created the California Coastal Commission in 1972 to preserve California’s coast from private development. Celia’s work as a lobbyist for the California chapter of the Sierra Club took her to Coastal Commission meetings from San Diego to Crescent City to advocate for public access and environmental preservation. She also served as staff for the Santa Cruz County Planning Commission.

Celia was born in New York City to Lucy Whitaker and Fred Leighton. Mr. Leighton left Lucy and Celia shortly afterward, and Celia’s first four years were spent in Knickerbocker Village, the nation’s first public housing project, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

In 1939, Lucy married Carl Haessler and moved to Highland Park, Michigan. Their home was a nexus for labor, pacifist and civil rights activism, and under frequent surveillance by the FBI and Detroit Police Department’s “Red Squad” during the McCarthy era.

Celia graduated from Oberlin College in 1956, then attended the London School of Economics where she became inspired with the post-war movement to create greenbelts around English cities. Celia returned to the U.S. to earn a master’s in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961, and was strongly influenced by the work of historian, urban sociologist and critic of technology Louis Mumford, and by environmentalist Rachel Carson.

In 1984, Celia earned a law degree from Santa Clara University to add legal abilities to her volunteer work to preserve the Bonny Doon Ecological Preserve, and the Quail Hollow, Wilder and Grey Whale ranches. With many others, Celia and Peter Scott led efforts to pass Measure O that set aside the Pogonip, Arana Gulch and Moore Creek as a greenbelt around Santa Cruz.

In 1994, Celia Scott was elected to the Santa Cruz City Council. Celia and Peter Scott co-authored a campaign song “Dancing on the Brink of the World” (“The River Song”) through which they expressed their love of Santa Cruz’s natural history and environment. Celia also took up the causes of homelessness and housing affordability. She applied her legal skills and political experience in support of the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation’s efforts to support rail, bus, bike and pedestrian alternatives to widening Highway 1. In her retirement years, Celia served as a docent for Año Nuevo State Park.

Celia loved walking in nature, gardening, backpacking in the Sierra Nevada, playing with her cats, singing in choirs and contradancing. Celia and Peter Scott allowed a miniature wilderness to grow around their house in Santa Cruz, delighting in the wild creatures that lived there. Celia saw her role as advocating on behalf of animals and plants and trees that could not speak for themselves, and a guardian for the natural world, with a particular love for Santa Cruz County’s unique and fragile ecosystems.

Celia is survived by her sons Anthony and Roland, and granddaughter Genevieve Von der Muhll, of Virginia. Contributions in Celia’s name may be made to the Center for Biological Diversity.

Please contact Chris Krohn at ckrohn@cruzio.com regarding memorial services for Celia and Peter Scott that will be held May 10 on the UCSC campus.