Loma Prieta

A lumber company has to have some excellent connections to be able to convince a massive railroad company to build a dedicated branch line directly to its mill. Yet that is precisely what happened with the Loma Prieta Lumber Company in 1882. Granted three members of the board of directors of the new lumber company were major financiers of the Southern Pacific Railroad, but it still was an unusual feat, especially for Santa Cruz. Previously all railroads in the county had multiple patrons: this would only have one, at least initially. To do things properly, the Loma Prieta Railroad Company was founded first as an independent standard-gauged railroad, and the Southern Pacific took it over in 1887 once more direct funding was required to sustain the mill and track. The track followed Aptos Creek closely until its junction with Bridge Creek. Just south of this junction, the first major section of track terminated at the Loma Prieta Lumber Company's massive planing mill. The mill opened up for business in spring 1884.

The shingle mill at Loma Prieta, located directly behind the mill along a spur, 1888.
(Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History)

The mill was able to process 70,000 board feet of lumber per eleven-hour workday. The mill employed 150 men plus 80 contractors, decidedly the largest milling operation in the county at the time. Just above the mill, Aptos Creek was dammed to create an extremely long and meandering log pond. To the south of the mill, a quarter mile of lumber piles flanked three freight spurs. Two dedicated locomotives ferries flatcars between Molino and the mill, passing materials to another locomotive which ran between Molino and the Monte Vista mill sites further to the north.

The town of Loma Prieta with the station at right and the general store at right, c. 1890. (Santa Cruz MAH)

Loma Prieta, however, was not simply a freight stop, it was an entire town. Between the mill and Bridge Creek, and all along both banks of Aptos Creek, the village of Loma Prieta arose, catering specifically to the families of mill workers. A standard Southern Pacific depot building was erected beside the tracks, a structure that included a full-service telegraph office and passenger agency office. The community had its own hotel, general store, and business office, as well as a post office (established in 1885) and a Wells Fargo express station. By the early 1890s, over thirty homes were situated on the hillsides around Loma Prieta. The Loma Prieta School District was founded in September 1885 to cater to the children living near the camp. The railroad station was located 4 miles north of Aptos and 117 miles south of San Francisco via Pajaro Junction.

The Loma Prieta Hotel and the General Store, c. 1890. (Santa Cruz MAH)

A disastrous storm in early 1899 utterly destroyed the Monte Vista mill, forcing the Loma Prieta Lumber Company to abandon its facilities along Aptos Creek. The Loma Prieta town was abandoned and the mill dismantled. The post office closed in October 1901. In 1908, the company returned to the old mill site and constructed a new facility in the place of the old one. Three years later, the Molino Timber Company took over the mill and used it to process the timber harvested on China Ridge until 1918. In that year, the Loma Prieta Company once again took control, using the mill to process lumber harvested from high up Bridge Creek until late 1920. During all of this time, Loma Prieta was only considered a freight stop. The town had long since disappeared, taking with it the post office, general store, hotel, and many other amenities. Aptos became the new go-to town for employees needing a weekend break.

The log pond and the tracks to Monte Vista above the Loma Prieta mill (in the distance). (Santa Cruz MAH)

The site of the town of Loma Prieta today is marked with a plaque in the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. It is north of the last parking lot along the Aptos Creek Fire Road on the east side of the creek. There is a nearby path that crosses over the creek via a bridge; this roughly marks the southern end of the lumber yard.

Citations:

• Clark, Donald. Santa Cruz County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary. Scotts Valley, CA: Kestrel Press, 2007.
• Hamman, Rick. California Central Coast Railways. Santa Cruz, CA: Otter B Books, 2002.

Ready

The Loma Prieta Branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad north of Aptos had gone through highs and lows by the 1910s when it was once again in use as a full-time lumber right-of-way. The communities around the Loma Prieta Mill had long since disappeared but the tracks remained behind and the Loma Prieta Lumber Company reactivated the abandoned mill and resumed logging operations in the area in 1917.

Quite a ways south of these operations and about 1.8 miles above Aptos, a new spur was installed that went by the name "Ready" since it sat on lands owned by Ruth Ready, daughter of Tessie Hihn Hall, and a granddaughter of Frederick A. Hihn. Some records alternatively title the spot "Hihn Spur", though that name has been used elsewhere along the line. The spur was used by the Loma Prieta Lumber Company, which the Hihn Company partially owned, to access a new mill built on the east side of the tracks. Unlike other operations in the area, the primary purpose of this small mill was to cut split stuff, railroad ties, and small-scale lumber.

Ready first appeared in Southern Pacific Railroad agency books in January 1918 at 114 miles from San Francisco via Watsonville Junction. It was recorded as having a class-B freight station, though it did not have a loading platform. This was probably because the loading was all done directly at the adjacent mill so no platform was required. The class-B, therefore, implies simply that there is a spur at the site. It remained unchanged in agency books until the branch was abandoned in 1928. Unfortunately, its history in timetables, if there were any, is not available to this historian at this time.

The operations at Ready were relatively short-lived. The Loma Prieta Company abandoned its Aptos Creek operations after the 1920 logging season. Ready and its mill may have continued in use for part of the next year due to it being the closest stop to Aptos and having a small-scale mill on site. However, by 1921, the site was definitively closed and it was no longer mentioned in timetables or agency books.

The site of Ready today is just before the first crossing over Aptos Creek along the Aptos Creek Fire Road, which also serves as the entry road in to the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. A pull-out on the east side of the road still marks the site of the spur and the mill, with the road itself marking the site of the Southern Pacific right-of-way through the area.

Citations:

• Donald Clark, Santa Cruz County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary (Scotts Valley, CA: Kestrel Press, 2007).
• Rick Hamman, California Central Coast Railways (Santa Cruz, CA: Otter B Books, 2002).