Upper Beach Road Railroad Patrons

Google Maps satellite view of the entire former freight area.

Watsonville has always been a major agricultural industrial center and the advent of the railroad into the town in 1873 turned it into a major local hub for canneries, fruit dryers, packing plants, and other agriculture-based factories. In the immediate vicinity of Watsonville Depot, along Beach Road, a number of businesses popped up that used or potentially used the railroad to haul its goods.

The first such company founded beside the railroad tracks was the Watsonville Fruit Dryer & Cannery, located on Beach Road (3rd Street) at the modern-day end of Harvest Drive. The Santa Cruz Railroad Tracks were installed about a half-block away from the packing house and, in response, the company placed a warehouse between the two, allowing it to use the tracks. The company was in operation only from circa 1886 to February 1888 when it fell vacant. The Western Beet Sugar Company purchased the vacant structure around the time that it was erecting its Pajaro Valley Railroad in 1890. A siding that ran on the cannery side of the mainline tracks skirted the edge of the structure on its way to the PVRR passenger and freight depot, located just south of the Southern Pacific Railroad crossing. By 1902 the cannery was gone and the side of the Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad depot had tripled in size, taking over much of the old packing company's space.

Sanborn Map, 1902, showing the Adamson Fruit Company.
(UCSC Digital Collections)

Just opposite Beach Road from the cannery, Adamson Fruit Company erected a fruit drier factory at some point in the late 1890s, this time with the adjacent railroad tracks clearly a part of their operation. By 1904, a fruit packing warehouse sat beside the tracks further to the south, as well. While little is stated on Sanborn Company Insurance Maps regarding the operation, a notation in 1911 states that the facility was run by Chinese workers. It still existed in 1920 under the management of Chinese, but the name of the company was no longer listed in Sanborn maps suggesting the original owners had left.

The Loma Prieta Lumber Company yard south of the Southern Pacific tracks, 1902
(Sanborn – UCSC Digital Collections)

In the late 1890s, the Loma Prieta Lumber Company – which operated a mill in the Aptos Creek area during this time – opened a new lumber yard and planing mill immediately beside the Adamson Fruit Company, likely using the Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad tracks, which ran to the west of their grounds, and the Southern Pacific tracks, which ran to the north, to ship their goods to the Salinas Valley and elsewhere. This locale may have been in response to the Hihn-Hammond Lumber Company yard that was erected on the former Spreckels Beet Sugar Company grounds just to the north along Walker Street. Loma Prieta Lumber Company had previously operated its yard directly in the center of the large Pajaro Station wye. But the relocation may have been to capitalise on the potential of dual shipping routes. The Beach Road ran on either side of the street, with the majority of its facilities located to the west of the Southern Pacific depot. By 1904, the area to the north of the road had been abandoned and only the section beside the PVCRR tracks remained, with limited warehouses beside the track to support export shipping. The lumber yard on Beach Road appears to have been abandoned entirely by 1920, which coincides with the closure of the company in that year.

Watsonville Ice & Cold Storage Company facility, 1914, published by Edward H. Mitchell.

In 1902, a small ice house owned by the Western Ice & Cold Storage Company was built at the end of a short north-bound spur that ran beside the Loma Prieta Lumber Company yard. It remained there in 1904 when the yard was abandoned and then, around 1910, it relocated to the south-eastern corner of the Southern Pacific junction with the PVCRR. This convenient location allowed it to be used by both firms. By 1920, the Southern Pacific had also extended a spur out to this ice house, alongside which it installed a coal shed and a wood shed, presumably to support railroad operations. By 1914, a much larger facility for the Watsonville Ice & Cold Storage Company was erected on the north-west corner of the PVCRR and Southern Pacific junction. This massive and modern facility likely catered to all the local packing houses that required freeze-drying or refrigerating their goods.

Original trackside packing houses, 1902. (Sanborn – UCSC Digital Collections)

Further to the north, the Southern Pacific Railroad erected a grain warehouse and freight house on the southern side of the Santa Cruz Branch tracks by 1886. In the early years, the freight house also housed the ticket office and a small waiting room for passengers. The building was probably built by the Santa Cruz Railroad by 1875, although it is possible it was a newer structure built in the 1880s. The depot was relocated to the other side of the tracks in the late 1890s and the old structures were taken over by four local packing firms: M.N. Lettunich & Company, Porter Brothers Company,  George Wilson Rowe, and the Earl Fruit Company. Mato N. Letunić, known locally as Martin Lettunich, was a Croatian settler who moved to the area round 1890 where he founded, with his brothers Petar and Edwin, the packing business. The former mainline track, since downgraded to a freight spur, ran behind these four packing houses while the fronts of the buildings were extended to Beach Road.

Borcovich & Dragovich advertisement, c. 1920s.

By 1904, only Lettunich and Earl Fruit remained and their buildings were both expanded to full street frontage, filling in gaps left between the original two structures. By 1920, Lettunich had cut his operation in half, leasing out half of his building to Borcovich Dragovich & Company. Earl Fruit had been replaced with the primary packing house of the Loma Fruit Company (the other house was on Walker Street). Next door around 1910, the California Fruit Packing Company placed a rather extensive complex of two large fruit packing houses on the old Loma Prieta Lumber yard property that ran almost to the PVCRR tracks. The operation was short-lived, though, and by 1920 the property had been taken over by a whole lineup of small private packing houses, including J.M Luckrich, M.L. Kalich, Scurich & Jerinich, N.M. Borina, L.P. Cikuth, and P.P. Stolich. For whatever reason, the Croatian farmers were drawn to this block of warehouses. All of these people were local farmers who purchased packing houses beside the tracks and Beach Road to make shipment of their goods easier.

Trackside packing houses, 1920. (Sanborn – UCSC Digital Collections)

Sources available to this author are rather sparse for the period between 1920 and 1973, when a yard map is once again available. However, little seems to have changed at the site except for owners.  Agricultural packing houses and cold storage facilities were still the common residents. Just beside the depot, on the northern corner of Walker and Beach, California Farm Products maintained its warehouse. Immediately beside it, West Coast Farms took over the properties of Lettunich and the Loma Fruit Company. These two corporations occupied the entirety of the block and both properties are now owned by the Dole Food Company, except for a small portion leased to the Resetar Bros. Farming Company. The Dole corporate office sits directly atop the original site of the Watsonville Fruit Dryer & Cannery from the 1880s. Dole still uses some of the old structures of its predecessors and has taken over the entirety of the former Watsonville Depot yard. The Santa Cruz Branch now only has one operable track beside the station.

It seems very unlikely that Dole ever used the rail services available here since no tracks now pass through their properties (although traces of one remain). What was once a vibrant freight and industrial area at the upper end of Beach Road in Watsonville has now declined to such a point that rail services are not even available for local freight. For this area, at least, the age of rail has ended.

Official Railroad Information:
Freight services are rarely listed in official Southern Pacific Railroad timetables and agency books, but a series of SPINS charts provided by George Pepper shows what was still active in 1973. Unfortunately, this is the only record this author has access to from the SP.

Geo-Coordinates & Access Rights:
36.906˚N, 121.766˚W

Most of these properties are now owned by Dole Food Company which occupies the northern part of West Beach Street from Walker Street to the bend in the road just past Harvest Drive. Harvest Drive was once the right-of-way of the Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad and can be used as a reference point. The entire property between Walker Road and Pine Street was the site of the Loma Prieta Lumber Company yard, while the office complex on the south-west corner of Beach and Harvest was the site of the Adamson Fruit Company.

Citations & Credits:

• Google Maps.
• Sanborn Fire Insurance Company maps, 1886 to 1920. UC Santa Cruz Digital Collections.
• Southern Pacific Railroad, SPINS: Watsonville  1973. California State Railroad Museum Collection.

Spreckels Beet Sugar Refinery

Adolph Claus J. Spreckels was not an unknown entity when he decided in 1888 to erect a massive sugar beet refinery just outside downtown Watsonville. The sugar beet king had begun his career in 1872 in Aptos as the owner of a large resort hotel. He, with Frederick A. Hihn, was the primary financier of the Santa Cruz Railroad, which was completed in 1876. Beginning with Rancho Aptos, Spreckels began growing sugar beets in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties, inducing dozens of local farmers to become his clients in the venture. But in 1888, he founded the Western Beet Sugar Company within the Watsonville city limits, and it quickly became the largest sugar beet refinery in the United States.

An overview look at the entire Spreckels refinery yards, c 1895, with the cleaning barns at right, the factory in the center, and endless piles of unprocessed sugar beets. The Southern Pacific mainline is visible in the foreground beside stacks of lumber. The Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad turntable and engine house is just in front of the refinery at center-right.
(PacificNG Collection)

The Western Beet Sugar Company's refinery was built just northwest of the Southern Pacific Railroad station in Watsonville, along Ford Street and near Walker Street and fenced in from the north by Watsonville Slough. Over the course of the next few years, the structures at the factory expanded massively. Four massive beet bins were installed to clean and process the beats. Between the two southernmost bins, a special pair of railroad sidings were installed that ran their entire 900 foot length before passing directly through the middle of the factory itself. These two tracks constituted the Southern Pacific Railroad's connection to the refinery and are the two tracks that still survive at the site today. They were standard-gauged and used primarily for export shipping. To the northwest of the factory, the tracks met, although did not merge, with the tracks of the Pajaro Valley Railroad.

Western Beet Sugar refinery, c. 1900, with the turntable and engine house at left. (Bancroft Library)

The narrow-gauged Pajaro Valley Railroad was constructed in 1890 by Spreckels to help his farmers in the Pajaro and Salinas Valleys get their sugar beets to his refinery in Watsonville. It initially reached Moss Landing and Moro Cojo Slough but was soon extended all the way to the southern outskirts of Salinas where Spreckels was building a brand new, much larger refinery. With this new extension, the name of the company was changed to the Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad which took effect in 1892. With the new railroad and refinery, Watsonville Terminal—the official railroad name for the Watsonville factory—became the northern hub of the line. To support this, many new facilities were built on the southern side of the Watsonville refinery including a turntable, a three-stall engine house, a water tower, and multiple sidings. The Pajaro Valley Railroad tracks crossed the Southern Pacific tracks just west of Watsonville Station's freight yard, and a tiny station booth was added here to allow for transfers between the two lines.

1892 Sanborn map showing the entirety of the Western Beet Sugar Company refinery. (UCSC Digital Collections)

1892 Sanborn map of the Watsonville Creamery & Cattle
Company's facility and railroad stop (UCSC Digital Collections)

Everything at the Western Beet Sugar refinery revolved around the massive four-story factory structure that towered over the grounds. The Pajaro Valley Railroad's main track wrapped around the structure to the west, meeting and paralleling the Southern Pacific tracks that emerged from the factory. They continued to the fringe of Watsonville Slough along a narrow fill that terminated at the Watsonville Creamery & Cattle Company. A small platform was built at the end to allow the loading of freight and/or cattle. The company became Miller & Lux's Cattle Feeding Sheds by 1902, at which point the station here appears to have gone into disuse. This fill still exists and now acts as a private access road for the farm still at the site. Just before the slough, a side track broke off and wrapped around the north side of the refinery to enter a long enclosed cleaning and storage warehouse. Thus, rather uniquely for the region, the Western Beet Sugar refinery was catered to by two entirely independent railroad companies which used two different gauge tracks to accomplish similar goals. For a brief time, the factory was a hub of activity and commerce in the Watsonville area, symbolized by the cooperation of the two railroad companies.

The refinery, in dark contrast and possibly showing more signs of color in its paint scheme, c. 1897.

By the mid-1890s, railroad services had expanded at the refinery and the factory itself nearly doubled in size. A new pair of Southern Pacific tracks ran parallel to its old one, running across the front of the refinery, and a spur off the old line catered to a new sugar loading warehouse. Meanwhile, the Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad track added two additional spurs, one that ran to a storage shed to the northeast of the factory and another that terminated at a the sugar loading warehouse beside the Southern Pacific Track. Beside the old run-around track, another warehouse was erected for freight loading purposes. To the south of Beach Street, a large freight warehouse was also erected alongside the Pajaro Valley tracks to cater to additional Spreckels refinery concerns.

The refinery on a busy day, c. 1895. (California State Railroad Museum)

In 1898, Spreckels formally shifted all refining operations to his new factory outside of Salinas. The Watsonville refinery was renamed Spreckels Sugar Company milll #2 and became a back-up and overflow refinery, listed in the 1902 Sanborn map as "used as a reserve mill only". In other words, the mill was closed for business. The loss of the factory was a blow to local businesses that had hoped Spreckels would help build up the city of Watsonville. Instead, he diverted the crops of the few sugar beet planters away from the city and to Monterey County. Sanborn maps suggest that the dismantling of the factory began after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, when Spreckels probably decided it wasn't worth repairing.

The refinery in its final years, c. 1897. (National Museum of American History)

The 1908 Sanborn map notes it is "not in operation" rather than in "reserve". Large portions of the facility were already gone by that year and even some of the spurs were truncated or removed. The 1911 map shows Kearney Street Extension for the first time with the Hihn-Hammond Lumber Company occupying the former sugar beet cleaning yard. Fruit packing houses already were popping up along the new road on grounds that were formerly Spreckels yards. By this point, only the original two Southern Pacific spurs remained with the Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad still retaining its former trackage, although probably not using any of it. The factory still remained but was "vacant". The final Sanborn map available from UCSC Digital Collections shows a very different in 1920. The Hihn-Hammond Lumber yard has stretched across most of the old grounds while numerous agricultural—mostly fruit—packing companies, driers, refrigerators, and canneries sit on either side of Kearney Street Ext. The old PVCRR turntable remains, but the engine house is gone. Two spurs continue past the turntable on entirely new paths but terminate soon afterwards. The Southern Pacific spurs in the area now cater to the Crown Fruit Extract Company, which sits on the site of an old Spreckels molasses refinery, and the Shell Oil Company, located at the end of Ford Street. The last trace of Spreckels' presence in the area, the Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad, shut down permanently in 1929 and its properties and stock were sold to the Southern Pacific, which immediately scrapped the line.

Official Railroad Information:
As a freight stop along a private spur, the Southern Pacific Railroad did not note the refinery on any of its official documentation. However, the Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad, which had its northern terminus at the refinery, simply called the factory "Watsonville Terminal" from 1899 to 1928. It was located 27.2 miles from the Spreckels factory near Salinas via a long circuitous route following the coast until the track reached the Salinas River, at which point it followed the river inland. The terminus included a turntable, three-stall engine house, a water tower, and a total 7-car capacity for loading product cargoes for shipment out on the main Southern Pacific line.

Geo-Coordinates & Access Rights:
36.906˚N, 121.767˚W

The site of Spreckels Beet Sugar Refinery remains an active industrial area and the original spur built in 1888 for Spreckels still cuts through the heart of this block. Numerous businesses now sit on either side of the spur, including Del Mar Seafoods, Crop Production Services, Tomich Brothers Seafoods, Better Brand Foods, Auto Care Towing, and Terminal Freezers. Of the tracks that once ran through the block, only two remain and neither are in use. A single track runs to the north of Watsonville Station paralleling Walker Street before splitting just before the crossing over Kearney Street Extension. The track now only splits where before it forked multiple times to service the many businesses in the area. The northern fork caters to Terminal Freezers, ending at the end of their building, while the southern fork disappears under gravel behind Auto Care Towing. From Google Maps, it is clear that the track once continued onward to the end of the block, with one spur once crossing the slough along a still-existing fill. A remnant track still parallels Walker Street on the west side for quite a distance longer, while hints of other now removed spurs can be seen throughout the district. Access to this area is restricted to employees of the various companies, although much of the trackage can be viewed from public streets.

Citations & Credits:

• "Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad". Monterey County Historical Society, 2010.
• Sanborn Map Collection, University of California, Santa Cruz, Digital Map Collections, 1886 - 1920.
• "The Western Beet Sugar Company". Santa Cruz County History – Making a Living. Santa Cruz Public Libraries.
• "Western Beet Sugar Company factory, Watsonville, California". America on the Move. National Museum of American History.

West Beach Road Spurs, Part I

The railroad spur that breaks off from the Santa Cruz Branch at Ohlone Parkway and runs to Industrial Road is one of the newest freight areas in Santa Cruz County. The first evidence for the spur there is in a 1931 aerial photograph that shows a single spur breaking off northbound and running alongside two large warehouses that sat between Beach Road and the right-of-way. The primary patron of this spur, and the probable patron for whom it was initially built, was the Apple Growers' Cold Storage Company facility, which maintained a large refrigerated building at the site. Apple Growers' first moved to the site in February 1929 on lands owned by Mitchell Resetar, a local fruit-growing magnate. In 1932, the company was renamed Apple Growers' Ice & Cold Storage Company, under which name it operated until 2011. A tiny little spur forked off at the end, running beside an outbuilding. By 1954, the main spur track had been extended to the edge of the Central Supply aggregates yard, which likely used that spur for importing supplies.

1969 aerial image of the West Beach Street spur (top-center) while only Green Giant and the Apple Growers'
occupied the site. Further growth is clearly planned considering the track's length. (UCSC Digital Collections)

In 1969, a long sweeping spur was broken off from these original spurs at the site of the northern-most warehouse (now demolished). This new spur crossed Beach Road and paralleled the newly-build Industrial Road before turning to the south where it dead-ended between a field and a large open lot. The original purpose for this spur was to cater to Green Giant, which installed its own short spur beside the large facility it built along Beach Road. Green Giant had maintained a small presence in Watsonville for decades at the corner of West Beach and Walker Streets, but in 1969, during a county-wide campaign to attract new businesses to the county (a project that also attracted Lipton to Santa Cruz's West Side), it relocated to West Beach Street directly across from the Apple Growers' facility. For the next 22 years, it remained on the site using the factory for packaging and cold storage until financial troubles forced the company to relocate to Mexico, where labor costs were lower. Pillsbury purchased the company in 1979, so it was they who were responsible for this move. When Green Giant first relocated to Industrial Road, great plans were in place to turn this area into an industrial neighborhood. A spur was broken off directly opposite Green Giant in anticipation of this, but no business ever appears to have used this spur.

Martin John Franich Company advertisement. Date unknown.

By 1973, when the Southern Pacific Railroad published a SPINS map of the area, one can finally get a good look at the types of businesses operating out of this upstart industrial district. Just after the initial break from the mainline track, a short north-oriented spur heads across Errington Road to cater to the Coast Counties Canning Company. The company was founded in 1956 and likely began construction alongside the Santa Cruz Branch soon afterwards. Eventually, this cannery spanned both sides of the road in 1973 and had a second south-oriented spur across the street that also catered to the Travers Cold Storage Company. Coast Counties was likely closed around 1984 when Del Mar Food Products Corporation purchased the company to obtain their processing equipment. The area north of Errington Road was still undergoing development in 1969, suggesting that Coast Counties only had the spur north of that road installed immediately prior to 1973. Ray L. Travers, meanwhile, founded his cold storage company in 1956, pioneering the first controlled atmosphere storage for apples. Over time, his company eventually came to own both Travers and the Apple Growers' facilities, but the ultimate fate of the former remains unknown. Further down the main spur along the original portion of this track, three patrons operated out of the area. Along the first offshoot spur, the Apple Growers Cold Storage Company still maintained its large freezer and facility. Meanwhile, at the end of the spur, the track forked to cater to Martin John Franich Co., a local apple grower, and Granite Construction Company, the successor to Central Supply. Mate Franić, a Croatian immigrant, was one half of the Franich Bros., which split in 1940 creating two separate firms. Martin probably relocated to this up and coming freight area at around that time, and he continued to operate there until his death in 1972. His son, Marty, later became a partner in the company while simultaneously running a car dealership, although when M.J. Franich Company finally closed is not presently known (Marty's dealership still operates, although Marty himself died in 1989). Back along the main spur, the track crossed Beach Road at Industrial Road and almost immediately forks into three segments. At the south, the spur to Green Giant ran alongside the warehouse, while at right, a short spur was built across Industrial Road in anticipation of future development that never came. The main spur itself continued through a gradual southward looping arch before terminating ingloriously at nothing. By 1998, this spur had forked and catered to Dean Foods Vegetables, a packing house, and Cascade Refrigeration, and both were still listed as the proprietors in 2003, although it is unclear whether the latter is still there today.

Google Street View image of the Apple Growers's Ice & Cold Storage grounds after the fire (burn damage at left), 2011.

Today, the majority of these spurs still exist within this area, although only a few of them are still used regularly. Names and ownership have changed as well. For instance, Errington Road is now known as the Ohlone Parkway and is a major thoroughfare across Watsonville Slough. The Coast Counties Cannery is now the Second Harvest Food Bank and the spur to it has long since been removed with no trace of it remaining. Similarly, the spur that went to Travers Cold Storage is gone and the building itself is occupied by Jackel Enterprises, Inc. Along the oldest track, only the main track remains with the track itself truncated and its parallel spur for Apple Growers mostly buried. Regarding the businesses themselves, the Apple Growers building burned down spectacularly in 2011 causing $3 million worth of damage to finished Martinelli's products. The site was bulldozed soon afterwards and is currently a vacant lot. Meanwhile, the truncated track no longer enters the Granite Construction grounds. However, all is not ended in this area. Northstar Biofuels LLC, a newer business occupying the area between the spur and the mainline track, has recently been using the spur (and others) for locally-sourced biofuels.

The full freight area between Ohlone Parkway and Industrial Road, c. 2015. [Google Maps – Satellite View]

Original cider plant on 3rd Street, c 1885. (Monterey Bay Area News)

Across West Beach Street (formerly Beach Road), the spurs to both Green Giant and to the undeveloped field have both been removed, leaving only the main spur track behind. The removal of the Green Giant spur, specifically, occurred after 2003 as it is still listed as being in place in that year. The former Green Giant property was purchased by S. Martinelli's & Company as their West Beach Plant in 1993. Stephen G. Martinelli began bottling Champagne cider in Watsonville in 1868 and after Prohibition, his company eventually switched to producing exclusively non-alcoholic bubbling apple juice (the alcoholic blend was finally discontinued in 1979). Their primary bottling plant and corporate headquarters remains on East Beach Street near Carr Street. In the early 1990s, the company planned to erect a new facility on Kearney Street, but the closure of the Green Giant plant allowed them to move to an established packing house. The West Beach Plant remains today their largest packing and bottling house, but they never used the tracks to export their goods (although Apple Growers', one of their largest distributors, probably did). This main spur track still curves and, when it straightens out, it forks and caters to Dean Foods and now AmeriCold Logistics (formerly Cascade Refrigeration). It is along this spur that the Santa Cruz & Monterey Bay Railroad stores its rolling stock when they are not in use, suggesting that the adjacent businesses do not use them.

Official Railroad Information:
Like most patrons along private spurs, the Southern Pacific Railroad never considered these "stops" in the formal sense, so they never appeared in their station books or on their timetables. SPINS maps released over the years have mapped the ownership of spurs that those remain the only official railroad documentation for this area.

Geo-Coordinates & Access Rights:
36.9037˚N, 121.7679˚W

Portions of this freight area can be viewed along Ohlone Parkway (where the spur breaks off from the Santa Cruz Branch), West Beach Street, and Industrial Road, but permission is required of the companies to visit any of the spurs that remain on private property. Most of the track in this area remains viably in use, so caution is warned when observing the tracks, and make sure to ask permission before following a spur into a private facility.

Citations & Credits:

• Chown, Jon. "S. Martinelli & Co. marks 145th year". Monterey Bay News & Views. 02/07/2013.
• "History". Martinelli's Gold Medal. 2008.
• Howard Cohen. Personal correspondence.
• "Ray L. Travers: Three Generations of Apple Farming in Watsonville, California, 1875-1977". University of California, Santa Cruz – University Library.
• Santa Cruz Sentinel, various articles from 1885 to 1993.
• Southern Pacific Railroad, SPINS 1973. George Pepper collection.
• Union Pacific Railroad, SPINS 1998, 2003. George Pepper collection.
• University of California, Santa Cruz. Aerial Photograph Collection, 1931 to 1969.

Santa's Express Train

Original souvenir map of Santa's Village in Scotts Valley.
(ImageArchaology.com)

When one thinks of railroads, even miniature ones, in Santa Cruz County, the long-departed Santa's Village amusement park in Scotts Valley does not usually come to mind. And for many good reasons, it should not, yet for the entire length of its operation, a small diesel-powered railroad ran around a loop entertaining children and adults of all ages.

Santa's Village—sometimes called Skyforest—was the brainchild of H. Glenn Holland, a property developer from Southern California who had already built a similarly-named park at Lake Arrowhead in May 1955, six weeks before Disneyland opened in Anaheim. In 1957, his Santa's Village franchise became the first to become a chain of amusement parks, with a park opening in Scotts Valley that year, and another park opening in East Dundee near Chicago in 1959. Plans to built two more parks in Virginia and New Jersey were never realised. The Scotts Valley venue was opened on May 30, 1957, on 25 acres of the Lawridge dairy farm which Holland had leased the previous year. Richard Bellack, the resident manager, operated the park as a franchise for the first two summers before selling his role to Bruce Prather.

Santa's Express Train* rounding a corner during Halloween time. (ImageArchaology.com)

Among the opening day attractions was the Santa's Express Train which operated under the name "Magic Train Ride". This 14-inch gauge miniature railroad mimicked the appearance of a generic steam engine from the 19th century, although in actuality a diesel motor drove the train. It was built by the Hurlbut Amusement Company in Buena Park, California. Bud Hurlbut's operation was famous regionally for building the trains at Knott's Berry Farm, where he operated a concession for decades.  It was a relatively simple design with around five painted wooden passenger cars that could see four adults (uncomfortably) or eight mid-sized children in front/back facing seats. The single operator sat perpendicular to the locomotive in the tender car. The train ran around a relatively short circular track which was decorated with an assortment of vegetation. What Christmas theme existed along the route has not been documented or commented upon.

Santa's Express Train with Santa Claus at the wheel! (ImageArchaology.com)

Santa's Express Train ticket booth, with locomotive in the distance. (ImageArchaology.com)

Santa's Village was never a very successful venture, especially once the East Dundee park opened, which was more expensive to run and unable to operate in cold weather conditions. The board of trustees revolted in 1965, forcing Holland to sell all his parks. The Scotts Valley park passed to Noorudin Billawalla in 1966, who operated it under the name Santa's Village Corporation. Billawalla eventually declared bankruptcy in 1977, hoping to recover his expenses and reopen the park as a second Knott's Berry Farm in the north, but the City of Scotts Valley rejected this idea. Suddenly desperate, Billawalla rebranded the park The Village, promoting it as an arts and crafts event space, but it attracted little interest. Scotts Valley demanded the park be brought up to code and also rezoned some of the space as residential, removing many acres from the site. Damage from a winter storm in 1978-9 crippled the park further. In 1979, operations in Scotts Valley came to an end and the entire park, including Santa's Express Train, were dismantled and sold. The property sat abandoned for over a decade until Borland International purchased the site. Besides a small collection of abandoned structures hidden in the woods, nothing really remains of the park except the State Route 17 highway exit "Santa's Village Road". Sadly, even that road is falling apart. The ultimate fate of Santa's Express Train is unknown.

* All images of the train may be of the sister train that operated at the Lake Arrowhead park, which was also of the same design. Both parks were popularly known as Skyforest, causing endless confusion regarding attribution of photos.

Geo-Coordinates & Access Rights:
37.0655˚N, 121.9953˚W

The Santa's Village property is off limits to all unauthorised visitors and trespassing is highly discouraged. Nothing of the rides or the train survive, only the original club house which sits in a very dilapidated and dangerous state remain on site. Relics of the park can be seen at various places throughout the Scotts Valley area, especially iconic multicolored toadstools that once littered the park.

Citations & Credits:

• Gomez, Phil. "Santa's Village in Scotts Valley featured in documentary". KSBW Action News 8. 2013. [Video]
• Grennier, Bobbie. "Santa's Village Scotts Valley". 2011.
• Kelley, Edward J. Personal correspondence.
• Nanney, Duncan. Personal correspondence.