Aptos

U.S. Geological Survey Map of Aptos, 1899. (USGS)

Aptos was one of the most important railroad stations in Santa Cruz County. This may seem a slightly strange statement, but it's truth is evident simply from the United States Geological Survey map from 1899 at right. Most noticeably, perhaps, is that besides the tracks going to the west toward Santa Cruz and to the south toward Watsonville, there is a third line going to the north, into the mountains. Indeed, a fourth line would soon join these three to the northeast in a few years' time. It was these two lines to the north that made Aptos such an important stop along the line. They brought to Aptos and, therefore, to the railroad mainline precious timber cut and milled by the Molina Timber Company and the F.A. Hihn Co.'s mill on Valencia Creek. The former's importance was so great that the Southern Pacific even built a shortline railroad into the very heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains just for the mill.

However, the history of Aptos Station itself is the topic here, while the histories of the mills will come later. When the Santa Cruz Railroad was completed in 1876, Aptos was a small village with an insignificant passenger stop that only saw occasional passenger usage. Camp Capitola to the west was more popular since it was on the beach. In fact, Aptos Station wasn't even that close to the beach because the track swung inland to keep it on a level grade and to bring it closer to the potential timber tracts up in the hills. Yet for seven years, nothing was done about those tracts. The Southern Pacific took over the Santa Cruz Railroad in 1881, and only in 1882 did the first whispers of development begin. On July 10th, the whispers became a shout as the Watsonville Mill & Lumber Company announced its plans to form, with the cooperation of the Southern Pacific, the Loma Prieta Railroad Company, tasked with reaching and harvesting the vast material wealth above Aptos. To mill the lumber, the Loma Prieta Lumber Company was founded.

Just to the east and up Valencia Creek, another railroad, this one narrow-gauged, was under construction by F.A. Hihn Co. by 1886. The railroad was to access the tracts of timber up the creek, and Hihn built his mill just outside of town to make shipping out via rail easier. After a fire burned down his first mill later that year, Hihn switched from using donkeys to transport his freight cars, to using a small steam engine. For five more years the mill harvested the lumber of Valencia Creek until closing in 1892. A spur for the railroad ran from Aptos to the mill, where narrow-gauged tracks them took over to the current logging camp.

A freight yard did not develop of Aptos until late in 1883 when the Santa Cruz Railroad line was standard-gauged. Indeed, work on the Loma Prieta branch was done in standard-gauge but with narrow-gauged rails until the Santa Cruz Railroad track's conversion was completed. That task was done by November 13, 1883, when the Loma Prieta branch opened to the public. The area around Aptos Depot exploded into a flurry of activity as support sidings were added repeatedly until there were four separate sidings on either side of the main line. In addition, a spur branched into three and led into a lumber yard. A turntable was eventually added in the around 1890, located at the end of a spur that headed toward Watsonville. This was later removed in the early 1900s and replaced with a wye further to the north, using the Aptos Branch track as one corner of the wye. A new spur was also added to the lumber yard, oddly located at the end of the northernmost spur and heading in the opposite direction.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Aptos, 1892. (UC Santa Cruz Digital Collection)

The Aptos Depot began as mostly a flag-stop when it appeared in timetables from 1875. It only had a station building from about 1882 with the original structure situated on the west side of the tracks. The building was a standard-issue Southern Pacific station with a platform on the track side and a small bay window facing the tracks to serve as a ticket booth. This building did not change, though it was upgraded and expanded somewhat over the years. A freight house was eventually added in the early 1900s across and slightly to the north of the depot, beside the Aptos Branch track. From 1881, the station had regularly scheduled railroad service and this persisted until the end of passenger service along the line in 1938. The station was 7.8 miles from Santa Cruz and 112.6 miles from San Francisco via Pajaro Junction. After 1908, it was 87.0 miles from San Francisco via the Mayfield Cut-Off.

The Aptos freight yard, c. 1910s. (Paul Johnston Collection – Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History)

Paul and Christina Johnston outside Aptos
Depot preparing to go on their honeymoon,
1913. (Paul Johnston Collection – MAH)

In April 1899, a massive spring storm destroyed Aptos Branch rail line and led, soon after, to the closure of the Loma Prieta Lumber Co. mill. In 1901, the track was extended once again along a different path to access timber in Soquel Creek and by 1908, the Loma Prieta Lumber Co. was back in business, but the cost of running this new mill was prohibitive and it closed down after only one season. With that, the Loma Prieta Lumber Co. moved to a tract of land near Swanton on the North Coast. The Molino Timber Company picked up the slack and harvested the remaining redwoods beginning in 1910, using once again the old Southern Pacific track. At a point along the line, a steep incline requiring a cable hoist was installed. At the top of the incline, a narrow-gauged track meandered for miles along the top of the ridge where it shuttled lumber from various tracts to the top of the incline, where it was hauled down and milled. The company worked the area until 1917 after which it abandoned its track and sold it for scrap metal. One last operation along the line occurred the following year, when the Loma Prieta Lumber Company returned in 1918 to harvest the timber around Bridge Creek and Porter Gulch. The route was too difficult for standard-gauged traffic so the company took a hint from the Molino Company and used a narrow-gauged train to collect the felled trees. For four summers the company harvested the tracts along Bridge Creek and then in spring 1921, it closed down its Aptos operations for good. The Aptos Branch lingered for nearly a decade before finally being removed in 1928. Whether it saw any service during this time is unknown. Regardless, Aptos quickly returned to a simple passenger stop on the Santa Cruz Branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad.

An accident near the tracks. Aptos Depot and its freight yard in the background, c. 1920.
(Paul Johnston Collection – MAH)

The extensive sidings and spurs began to be removed prior to 1910 as demand on the line had decreased. Of the four spurs to the east, only two survived by 1908, one as a short maintenance track and the other to the F.A. Hihn Company's freight warehouse. The four sidings in town remained behind for another two decades before they were finally removed as non-essential. In 1909, there were still 3,086 feet of sidings and spurs at Aptos Depot. Even as late as 1941, roughly half that trackage still remained at Aptos, though the wye had been removed by that point. But with no passenger service and little freight traffic, the depot and the sidings became unnecessary.

Locals protesting Southern Pacific's decision to fence its tracks through town,  c. 1960s. (MAH)

When precisely the sidings were removed is unknown, though it may have been as early as during World War II. The freight depot was probably demolished first. Its site later became the Aptos Station shopping center. The end of the Suntan Specials ensured the demise of Aptos Station, which closed in 1962, though it likely hadn't been used for over a decade. The expansion of Soquel Drive soon after forced the demolition of the Aptos Depot, which was located immediately beside the road.

Citations:

• Rick Hamman, California Central Coast Railways (Santa Cruz, CA: Otter B Books, 2002).
• Kevin Newhouse, Images of America: Aptos (Arcadia Publishing, 2013).

New Brighton

New Brighton, located on the coast east of Captiola and west of Seacliff, was originally a small Chinese fishing village in the 1850s. Many fishing families, especially those of Italian descent, were moving into the more populated regions of the county, thereby forcing the Chinese into increasingly remote locations. For decades, Chinese fishermen (they did not bring their families with them) fished at the beach, remaining largely isolated from the Santa Cruz and Watsonville communities on either side of them. The beach, then known as China Beach, had calm waves and the fishing crews were able to built extensive docks for their boats in the waters. The Chinese lived on the beach, drawing their fresh water from leaks in the nearby cliffs. They owned no property and had no public recognition of their land, which sat at the fringe of the high tide line. The Chinese Expulsion Act of 1882 slowly drove the Chinese out of the area and by 1900, all trace of them had disappeared.

The Santa Cruz Railroad first made its was through the area around 1873, though it wouldn't be completed for another two years. In any case, the railroad utterly bypassed the beach throughout the 1800s, only establishing a flag-stop there in 1900, likely at the insistence of local property developers. A resort had existed at China Beach since 1877 when Thomas Fallon, former mayor of San José, built Camp San Jose near the site, but any railroad traffic to the resort was strictly unofficial. The name did not attract the crown either Fallon or Santa Cruz had hoped for, so in 1882 Fallon renamed it New Brighton, after the New Brighton Hotel which he built on the property. Fallon died three years later, and the property fell to his descendants who only periodically chose to use or lease the site. It's location was poor for a campground, being atop the cliffs in an open plain exposed to the elements. Camp Capitola, further to the west, was far more popular and was protected from the elements to a much greater degree. The hotel fell into disuse and was eventually demolished.

Railroad service to New Brighton grew by 1908 when the Southern Pacific began officially entering it into its agency books. By 1909, it was also listed in employee timetables at 6.1 miles from Santa Cruz and 85.1 miles from San Francisco via the Mayfield Cut-Off. The site had no spur or siding or, indeed, was a regularly-scheduled stop. It only catered to those who wished to embark or disembark at the location. If any station structure existed for the stop, this historian has not seen it. The station remained on timetables into the early 1930s until it was relegated to the flag-stop appendix by 1939. It was completely removed in June 1941, although passenger service by that time had already ended except for special excursion trains.

Curiously, by the last few years of its existence, the stop may have actually served a permanent stop. New Brighton became a California State Park in 1933, though the name itself wasn't adopted for a number of years due to protests from Fallon's heirs. The state beach has been in constant use ever since, usually paired as an informal unit with the adjacent Seacliff State Beach. It encompasses 95 acres of land including a windswept campground. The site of the station goes unremarked, but was along Park Avenue near the current entrance of New Brighton State Beach. E Clampus Vitus recognized the Chinese history of the park in October 1984 with a plaque, while the Pacific Migrations Visitors Center, which opened in 2003, documents the history of the early residents—including the Chinese—in the area.

Citations:

• Sandy Lydon, "Why is New Brighton State Beach not called China Beach", Central Coast Secrets. <http://www.sandylydon.com/sec_03.html>
• "Seacliff & New Brighton State Beaches", California State Parks (2002).

Capitola

Capitola Village—the heart of historic Capitola—has not changed much since it was originally founded by Frederick Augustus Hihn on June 18, 1874. Sure the buildings have changed, the entire nature of seasonal vacations have been altered, and the industrial aspects of the village are no more, but when it comes down to it, Capitola Village is still a resort town. And that is mostly because of the railroad.

Artistic impression of Camp Capitola in the 1880s. (http://capitolabythesea.com/history)

Samuel Alonzo Hall began allowing seasonal vacationers to stay on the beach outside his farm beginning in 1869. Hall leased the land from Hihn and accepted that the property was popular with the vacationing public. The land was pinched between the Soquel Landing Wharf, built a decade earlier by Hihn to serve as a shipping point for the logging mills of the Soquel Creek basin, and the California Sugar Beet Company mill up on the hill to the east. The name of the town, "Capitola", likely was after a heroine from a series of novels by E.D.E.N. Southworth. The opening of the Santa Cruz Railroad in 1876 accelerated the development of what would become Camp Capitola, though Hall wasn't pushed off of his land until 1879. Standard-gauging of the railroad in 1882 after its acquisition by the Southern Pacific prompted Hihn to formally recreate the property into a summer resort, subdividing the region into parcels for rent or purchase. Before he was done, Camp Capitola was already a popular tourist destination.

Postcard of Soquel Creek with the trestle overhead, c. 1900s.

The initial tent city evolved into a mix of cottages, tent cottages, and more formal structures. The big change came in the 1890s when Hihn hired architect Edward L. Van Cleeck to design a 160-room hotel on the Esplanade. Other permanent structures soon followed. Hihn actively worked to push out industries from using the flat at the mouth of Soquel Creek, accepting the presence of the wharf but otherwise eliminating eye sores from the area.

The first Captiola Depot at its second location, confirmed by the presence
of a siding alongside the mainline tracks. (Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History)

The railroad, on the other hand, was a welcomed industrial tool to the camp. When graders first passed through Camp Capitola in 1874, they did so high above Soquel Creek where a massive trestle that included multiple imbedded truss spans over the creek and two access roads. The station for the community, therefore, was high up on the grade rather than near the creek. Nonetheless, the first depot for Camp Capitola was constructed in 1876 under the name "Soquel", just beyond the western end of the trestle alongside what is now Cliff Drive. Vacationers would either walk down the road and across the creek or take a buggy to the resort. The structure was a square box built on stilts with few amenities. The trestle was replaced in 1886 with a sturdier structure able to withstand the weight of standard-gauged trains. Three years earlier, the depot was moved to the east bank of the river along what became Park Avenue, placed on the north side of the tracks so that passengers would no longer have to cross the creek to get to the Camp.

Swimmers and vacationers posing on the beach with the Hotel Capitola in the background. (Santa Cruz MAH)

Just after the turn of the century, Hihn petitioned the railroad to replace the depot with a new and more decorative structure. In the process, he also had them move it across the street to 250 Monterey Avenue. This new station matched the style of many of the others in Santa Cruz County, with a Victorian-style bay window acting as the ticket booth, and a covered porch to shelter waiting passengers from the elements.  The new station included a 1,580-foot-long siding that ran from the end of the trestle eastward. This siding was still in place at the beginning of World War II. The station sat on the south side of the tracks and is still there today, though it has been rotated 90˚ and turned into a private residence. The original station owner sold it to Lucinda Savoy, who passed it on to Bea and Harry Schultz, who sold it to Cecil Carnes. It finally was sold to Dan Floyd and Suzanne Lankes in 1990 after which they converted it into The Inn at Depot Hill. This is one of the only surviving stations in Santa Cruz County and the only one that is opened to the public.

The current Soquel Creek trestle overlooking Capitola-by-the-Sea. (Santa Cruz MAH)

The town thrived into the 1910s when Hihn's daughter sold the entire town, now called Capitola-By-The-Sea, to Henry Allen Rispin, who turned the village into a Spanish Revival-themed resort. His conversion did not entirely succeed resulting in the present mix of Victorian-, Spanish-, and other-themed structures present in Capitola Village today. The advent of the automobile in the late 1910s and the completion of the Glenwood Highway to San José meant that people were no longer visiting Capitola-By-The-Sea for month-long visits, but rather stopping in for only a few days. The tent cities disappeared and auto camps replaced them. To maintain patronage, events were held constantly through the summer while such facilities as the 300-seat Capitola Theater, beach-side concessions and rides, and a skating rink helped draw new customers. In addition, the old bathhouse was restored and upgraded after ocean flooding undermined its foundation in 1932.

The county take-over of Capitola-By-The-Sea, generally known simply as Capitola by the 1930s, began as early as the end of the 1920s when Rispin faced financial and political difficulties. The Great Depression and numerous fires that destroyed large parts of the community forced the county to intercede and take control of the bulk of the village. Regular railroad passenger traffic ended in 1938 due to poor sales, though excursion trains sometimes stopped in the summer. All remaining passenger trains ended in 1941 and when the Suntan Specials resumed in 1947. For three years, the trains stopped at Capitola village on its way to the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, but in 1950 service was abandoned to Capitola. The station was formally abandoned in January 1956 and the structure was given to the last station agency for $1. The era of railroad traffic to the town was done.

The Inn at Depot Hill, heavily upgraded and modified since its last use as a railroad station sixty-five years ago.

Capitola grew increasingly into a permanent town of established residences, though the village always attracted modest tourist populations because of the beach and the seaside environment. The City of Capitola was incorporated on January 4, 1949, but the center of the town had migrated to the western bluff above Soquel Creek. The large trestle over Soquel Creek stills stands and is now owned by Santa Cruz County for its Santa Cruz & Monterey Bay Railway, but repairs must be made on the trestle before it can be used for regular passenger service. Once completed, it is likely that Capitola will once again have passenger service, though the depot would likely be placed closer to 41st Avenue to the west than its historic location to the east.

Citations:

• Carolyn Swift, Capitola Historical Context Statement (Capitola, CA: City of Capitola Community Development Department, 2004).

Opal

At the southern end of 47th Avenue near the cliffs overlooking old town Capitola, the Santa Cruz Railroad once again met up with the Pacific Ocean. Since the Santa Cruz Main Beach, it had slowly been moving inland, but the cove created by Soquel Creek eroded the land away, returning the train to the cliffside. How the area got the name "Opal" is unknown, though it seems to have come from the railroad.

A USGS Map from 1912 showing Opal at the bottom-left corner.
The track coming from the bottom is the Union Traction Company
trolley line from Santa Cruz.

Little information is available regarding this station or the nearby housing subdivision, though the railroad station came first, installed by the Southern Pacific Railroad at the bottom of 47th Avenue at its junction with Portola Drive around 1901. The station was 4.1 miles east of Santa Cruz and 116.4 miles south of San Francisco via Parajo Junction. Opal provided access for the railroad to the freight pier and Capitola. The sidings and spurs at Opal were extensive, measuring 4,943 feet—nearly a mile. A heavy industrial yard was located at the top of the cliffs to the north of the tracks, with at least three long spurs running along side the tracks. This yard was maintained by Frederick A. Hihn's Loma Prieta Lumber Company where it kept a large lumberyard, planing mill, and hay barn. The spurs were extended by 400 feet in 1912. A freight station and a supply shed were both located along the northernmost spur. The stop was removed from timetables in 1931. For many years, Opal was the only formal stop between Santa Cruz and Capitola, with Seabright, Twin Lakes, and Del Mar only footnoted seasonal flag-stops. Opal was a freight-only stop with no flag service ever noted, thus passengers could not use the stop, even after the nearby residential subdivision was installed.

The residential subdivision was developed north of the switch after World War I in July 1923 under the direction of Kathryn McGeoghegan, widow of Eulice Hihn. McGeoghegan later lost the property in a foreclosure to Frank Blake in 1931. Blake sold 40 acres to Harry McBain in 1936 and he chose to use the name of the old railroad stop as an impetus to nreame all the streets of the neighborhood after precious gems. Thus, Crystal Street, Emerald Street, Garnet Street, Jewel Street, Opal Street, Ruby Street, Topaz Street, Jade Street, and Diamond Street all create what locals refer to as the "Jewel Box". The original subdivision was between 45th and 49th Avenues, but expansions to the neighborhood after World War II continued the themed-naming. The freight yard was abandoned in the 1930s but buildings from it may have contributed to some of the homes in the Jewel Box.

Today, Jade Street Park sits atop the old Opal freight yard, with the Capitola Community Center nearby, even though the subdivision is technically a part of the City of Santa Cruz. The streets are still named for precious jewels and the tracks still pass to the south of the subdivision, but trains no longer stop there, at least not currently. Santa Cruz County owns the right-of-way now and may someday reinstate a stop in the area, though probably not at the park.

Citations:

• Donald Clark, Place Names of Santa Cruz County (Scotts Valley, CA: Kestrel Press, 2002).
• Carolyn Swift. Historic Context Statement for the City of Capitola. Capitola, CA: Capitola Community Development Department, 2004.