Stations: Yellow Bank

Nine miles north of Santa Cruz, the coastal terrace narrows to such a point that the mountains of the Coast Range nearly fall into the Pacific Ocean. Here there is little room for agricultural fields, yet bold dairy farmers and ranchers saw no obstacle to practicing their trades.

Rancho Arroyo de la Laguna had been pastureland since Mexican times. At some point in the early 1860s, William Elder & Company, a San Francisco dairy business, acquired most of the rancho from James and Squire Williams and soon operated a small dairy alongside Yellow Bank Creek. T. H. Hatch & Company took over the business in May 1866 and continued to run the North Coast dairy among its other operations. Hatch employed several overseers through the years, with William Chalmers in charge of the dairy throughout the 1870s and W. R. Shaw superintendent around 1880. Two Swiss dairy farmers, Jeremiah S. Respini and James Fillipini, likely had worked at Yellow Bank Dairy for several years when, in April 1882, they purchased Shaw’s interest in the company. Over the next decade, Respini gradually acquired the rest of the property.

Men milking cows probably at Yellow Bank Dairy on the Coast Road south of Davenport, ca 1910. [Courtesy University of California, Santa Cruz – colorized using MyHeritage]

Yellow Bank is a unique name in Santa Cruz County, obviously descriptive in nature but with an uncertain origin. The earliest recorded mention of the name appears in the Santa Cruz Sentinel in September 1873, where it is claimed that the name comes from the sulfurous nature of the creek that turns the banks a bright yellow. A year later, a different Sentinel article asserted that “it is derived from the fact that the earth in the vicinity is of a deep golden cast from the iron pyrites, and that the buildings [of the dairy] are painted yellow.” Modern sources attribute the name to rust iron bands of sedimentary injection deposits in the mudstone cliffs or more generally the yellowish hue of oxidized iron in the cliffs. In addition to the dark yellowish bands, the cliffs and hillsides also show blackish-blue bands indicative of oil-rich sand injections, the largest such outcropping in the world. The State Minerologist asserted in 1900 that some of these bands had been “blown up by heat” creating the yellow color, hence the source of the name. The presence of these bands prompted an ultimately unsuccessful oil speculation frenzy on the property in 1901.

As with all of the dairies along the North Coast, Respini and his predecessors focused on producing cheese and butter, two products that could endure the long journey to market. The property was notable for its two tall milking barns that were built by F. A. Miller in 1874. Construction of these reportedly required Miller to build a small sawmill on nearby Liddell Creek and a planing mill near the construction site. These barns were 160 by 36 feet each in size and were designed to feed and house around 200 dairy cows. A creamery nearby was modern in design, with plumbing installed to help maintain sanitation and a ten-horse engine used to separate the cream from the milk. By 1900, the facility included extensive hay fields and storage facilities, a blacksmith and tool shop, a horse barn, a bunkhouse for up to twenty men, a flower garden, and a ten-room ranch house for the superintendent and his family. Because the dairy was situated directly beside the Coast Road, it also had telephone service. Around 1891, Respini had partnered with his neighbors F. A. Moretti and the Moretti Brothers to manage their properties jointly. Together, they had at any given time 170 milking cows, with 600 more cows grazing in one of fifteen separate fields across a 4,400-acre property.

Earl Stone wearing a boy's brigade uniform while driving a cart for the Seaside Creamery outside the Seaside Creamery store on Pacific Avenue, 1904. [Courtesy UC Santa Cruz – colorized using MyHeritage]

In April 1901, Respini formally combined his property with those of the Morettis to form a new business, the Coast Dairy and Land Company. This quickly grew to encompass five dairies south of Davenport Landing with a total population of 800 cattle. The dairy products were sold primarily in San Francisco but also throughout the Monterey Bay and Bay Area. In Santa Cruz, the company took over the Hugo Hihn flatiron building at Pacific Avenue and Front Street and turned it into the Seaside Creamery, where butter was churned fresh every day after an early morning delivery of cream and milk. The store also served ice cream and sold buttermilk and varieties of cheese. For fifteen years, the company thrived under Respini’s and Moretti’s leadership. Indeed, most of the modern town of Davenport as well as the Santa Cruz Portland Cement Company’s plant were built atop Coast Dairies land. In 1912, the company sold a section to Santa Cruz to provide water for the city (it still provides approximately 20% of its drinking water). Throughout this time, the dairying complex at Yellow Bank served as the heart of the operation, with around a dozen buildings associated with the business along the Coast Road.

The arrival of the Ocean Shore Railway in early 1906 changed everything for Coast Dairies. For the first time, the company’s extensive farms would be on a mainline route to San Francisco. The railroad, however, first had to overcome a major obstacle in its path: Respini Creek and its tidal lagoon. As it did with several other inlets, the railroad constructed a traditional trestle across the lagoon and then, as part of its arrangement with the adjacent Coast Line Railroad, the trestle was filled in and widened to support three sets of rails. A drainage tunnel was built through the adjacent hillside to allow the lagoon to drain. Construction on the bridge over Yellow Bank Beach ran from late December 1905 to early February 1906, and it was in the process of being filled around the time that the Francisco Earthquake struck on April 18. A result of the construction was the rerouting of the Coast Road. The road had previously followed along the top of the cliff before darting inland around the head of the lagoon in a horseshoe bend known as the Yellow Bank Curve, a dangerously sharp turn in the time of the automobile. The railroads’ construction forced the entire road to shift to the east of the tracks, lessening—though not eliminating—the deadly curve.

Ocean Shore Railroad, “Plans of the Oceanshore RR Co.” 1912, showing the location of Yellow Bank, the fill over Respini Creek, the Coast Line (Southern Pacific) tracks, and the old and new route of the county (Coast) road. [Courtesy UC Santa Cruz]

The earliest timetables for the Ocean Shore Railway do not mention Yellow Bank as a station, though all employee timetables for the first several years have been lost. The Santa Cruz Evening News first names it as a flag stop in December 1907 alongside four others between Santa Cruz and Davenport. However, unlike most of the other flag stops, Yellow Bank did not feature a passenger shelter or siding, though there was likely a freight platform beside the mainline. This meant that dairy and agricultural products had to be loaded directly onto passing trains. In addition to freight traffic for the dairy, the station also likely catered to beachgoers wishing to dip their toes in the waters at Yellow Bank Beach. This beach no longer goes by that name—beachgoers in the 1950s discovered that a rock at the beach resembled a dark wildcat. Thus, the locale was rechristened Panther Beach. Since the beach sat directly below the tracks, it became one of the more popular picnic and surf swimming spots along the line.

An artichoke field on the Coast Road near Yellow Bank, ca 1930. [Courtesy UC Santa Cruz – colorized using MyHeritage]

By the time the First World War broke out in 1914, Respini had already died and the other Swissmen of Coast Dairies were in trouble. Switzerland forbade its citizens from fighting in a war and the United States was considering conscription. As a result, in 1915, Luigi Moretti, his brother-in-law G. Marotti, and his nephew S. Respini returned to Switzerland. They never permanently returned, though the Moretti family remained the primary owners of Coast Dairies. Daily management of the dairy fell to Leonard T. Winterhalder and Frank Bowell, whose families managed the property until 1924. At the same time, the property was changing. In March 1914, the Coast Road was shifted east of the main dairy complex, reducing the severity and grade of the Yellow Bank Curve, though not entirely eliminating the danger. In 1919, part of the Coast Dairies property was repurposed for planting artichokes and other vegetables, a trial that would change the fortunes of the company in the long term.

Aerial photograph of Yellow Bank dairy shortly after the demolition of the Ocean Shore Railroad line, 1928. [Courtesy UC Santa Cruz]

In October 1920, the Ocean Shore Railroad ceased operations. It seems likely that the San Vicente Lumber Company, which continued to operate the line for another three years, offered its services to the Coast Dairy and Land Company during this time. Southern Pacific, in contrast, had never established a stop at Yellow Bank and there is no evidence that it ever catered to the dairy there until after San Vicente ended its operation in 1923. In November 1924, Yellow Bank appears for the first time in a Southern Pacific employee timetable as a flag-stop. This suggests that the dairy at least entertained the idea of shipping via Southern Pacific after Ocean Shore Railroad had been abandoned. Yet likely higher freight fees and less frequent service made this option unappealing. In response, the dairy company shifted to shipping out goods via truck and Southern Pacific abandoned its station sometime in the mid-1930s. Despite these setbacks, the company continued to thrive throughout the 1920s, possibly buoyed by bootlegging and black-market smuggling along the remote North Coast. At the same time, the company continued to expand its shift to agriculture by leasing a large section of the property to the Grossi family for artichoke growing.

Crews working to demolish the two large barns at Yellow Bank Dairy, February 1955. [Courtesy UC Santa Cruz – colorized using MyHeritage]

The Great Depression led to more pronounced changes for Coast Dairies. Stricter health code laws passed in the 1920s and 1930s made it much more difficult to produce dairy products on the difficult-to-access North Coast. Federal regulations mandated that dairy cattle be tested for tuberculosis, while state laws increased the frequency and standards of sanitary inspections. These made it increasingly difficult to turn a profit. Meanwhile, the company was still owned by the original Swiss families who remained in Switzerland, making leadership distant and abstract. In December 1934, stockholders in the company revolted and ejected Luigi Moretti from leadership, though he retained ownership of the firm. Management was taken over by John R. Wilson of the Anglo–California National Bank of San Francisco, with Fred Pfyffer appointed secretary and general manager.

Portrait of Fred Pfyffer, published in the Santa Cruz Evening News, May 31, 1935.

Pfyffer had first arrived in Davenport in 1928 and was soon employed by Coast Dairies. In June 1931, he incorporated Davenport Artichoke Growers’ and Shippers’ Association and began collectivizing most of the artichoke and brussels sprout operators leasing land from Coast Dairies to assist them in packing and shipping their vegetables across the United States. At the same time, he oversaw the conversion of most of Coast Dairies’ land from dairying to agriculture and beef cattle raising. The last corporate dairying operation ended in 1940, which also marked Pfyffer’s removal to a new facility in Santa Cruz on Mission Street, where he built a larger plant beside the Southern Pacific tracks. The last vestige of the old dairy ended in February 1955 when the two old barns at Yellow Bank were demolished leaving only concrete foundation blocks.

Advertisement for Davenport Artichoke Growers and Shippers Association, published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel September 17, 1939.

Coast Dairies was dissolved in 1996 and its property was purchased by Bryan Sweeney of the Nevada and Pacific Coast Land Company. However, Sweeney did not realize the difficulties he would face in trying to turn a profit from this property. His plan to subdivide the land into 139 parcels went public in 1997, and soon several conservation organizations joined together to purchase the entire property. The transaction was concluded in October 1998 and the 400 acres west of State Route 1 were transferred to the state in 2006 to create Coast Dairies State Park, a unique seaside park that runs uninterrupted from Red White and Blue Beach to Davenport Beach. The Bureau of Land Management acquired the remainder of the property in 2014, most of which has since become the Cotoni–Coast Dairies unit of the California Coastal National Monument.

Geo-Coordinates & Access Rights:
36.9928, -122.1685
8.9 miles north of Santa Cruz from both the Ocean Shore and Santa Cruz Union depots

The site of Yellow Bank Dairy is to the east of State Route 1 at Panther Beach. A long parking area is directly to the south on the west side of the highway. The dairy property itself is leased by the Federal Bureau of Land Management—no trespassing is allowed. Likewise, the surviving Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line grade is owned by the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission and trespassing is not allowed. However, Panther Beach itself is publicly accessible as part of Coast Dairies State Park. The site of the former railroad station at the southern end of the fill across Yellow Bank Creek, which may explain the raised parking area there.

Citations & Credits:

• Barboza, Tony Barboza. “Stretch of Northern California coast to be permanently protected.” Los Angeles Times. April 14, 2012.
• Bender, Henry E., Jr. “Ocean Shore Railroad”. 2017.
• Comelli, Ivano Franco. La Nostra Costa (Our Coast): A Family’s Journey to and From the North Coast of Santa Cruz, California (1923–1983). Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006.
• Environmental Science Associates, for The Trust for Public Land, "Coast Dairies Long-Term Resource Protection and Use Plan: Existing Conditions Report for the Coast Dairies Property." 2001.
• Griggs, Gary. "Our Ocean Backyard: Yellow Bank Beach," Santa Cruz Sentinel. September 11, 2018.
• Majors, Thomas Earl. “The Majors Family and Santa Cruz County Dairying: An Interview Conducted by Elizabeth Spedding Calciano”. Santa Cruz, CA: University of California, 1965.
• Neely, Christopher. “Parking battle leaves Santa Cruz County’s lone national monument gated from the public.” Lookout Santa Cruz. May 30, 2023.
• Ocean Shore Railroad Company. “Plans of the Oceanshore RR Co.” 1912.
• Orlando, Alverda, Sally Iverson, and Ed Dickie. Images of America: Davenport. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2020.
• Piccione, Gavin. "Panther Beach, an Extraordinary Geologic Feature in Santa Cruz." Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. April 3, 2025.
• Santa Cruz Sentinel, Santa Cruz Evening News, and Santa Cruz Surf, various articles, 1866–1960.
• Southern Pacific Railroad Company, Coast Division Employee Timetable No. 121 (November 1, 1924).
• Southern Pacific Railroad Company, Coast Division Employee Timetable No. 143 (February 16, 1936).

Freight Stops: Ocean Shore Maintenance Yard

The existence of the Ocean Shore Railway in Santa Cruz County was in hindsight such a fleeting thing that it is often forgotten how important the project once was to the county. From anticipated electrification of the entire system to a substantial pier at the Main Beach to a massive viaduct over the Southern Pacific Railroad's yards to extensions of the route north to San Francisco and south to Fresno and beyond, the company had a grand vision and aspirations to something great. And while all of those dreams vanished in the fires of the 1906 Earthquake and the financial crises that followed, the railroad did successfully build some infrastructure in the county. The heart of that infrastructure was the company's maintenance yard on the West Side of Santa Cruz.

The Ocean Shore Railroad's maintenance yard near Garfield Park with a locomotive in the engine house at right and the remains of Ocean Shore #2 in the center with its tender at left in front of a passenger car, ca 1910. [University of California, Santa Cruz, Legacy Digital Collections – colorized using DeOldify]

Permission to construct the yard was granted by the city in June 1905 and building began shortly after. The completed yard encompassed several blocks within David Gharkey's old tract between Lighthouse Avenue to the east, Gharkey Street to the north, Centennial Street to the west, and Oregon Street to the south. Through this section, the Ocean Shore's track curved gently southwest from its bluff-top passenger shelter. From just south of Gharkey Street, the track split, with double-track running all the way to Garfield Avenue. A crossover was located near the junction of Delaware Avenue and Colombia Street, although the double-track continued to Garfield, where it stopped abruptly. Presumably, this was the start of the long double-track that was intended to continue up the coast to San Francisco, but only this short section was ever built along the Southern Division. Where the double-track broke off, a second track also detached to form the southern wye, which stretched south to Oregon Street. The wye allowed the railroad's locomotives to turn around without the need of a turntable, which was not available along the Southern Division. The other wye on the Southern Division was located north of Davenport at Folger beside Scott Creek.

Only complete layout map of the Ocean Shore Railway's yard in the Gharkey Tract from microfilm, showing curve angles, spurs, the wye, and support structures, ca 1907. [California State Library]

In addition to the double-track and wye, the maintenance yard had four other spurs throughout the area. The northern most of these, measuring 415 feet in length, broke off from the wye track and crossed Santa Cruz Street where it paralleled Laguna Street before stopping at Monterey Street. Another 450-foot-long spur broke off from the main line near the same place but turned west to stop at Liberty Street. A structure near the top of these spurs sat alongside Laguna but no purpose for this building is described on the only available map of the area.

The final two spurs more clearly related to the engine house and maintenance yard, which was located on the north side of Monterey Street midway between Centennial and Liberty Streets. The spurs flanked the buildings with a 466-foot-long spur snaking over them to the north and a straight 337-foot-long spur cutting through the engine house, with both ending at or in Centennial Street. The engine house was capable of housing two locomotives but no additional rolling stock, and no other covered areas were provided in the yard. Three tanks capable of holding 310,000 gallons of water stood beside the engine house to refuel locomotives. Two maintenance shops in an L shape were connected to the engine house. Most of these features can be seen in the photograph at the top of this page, with a tender and car parked on the longer spur and a locomotive in the engine house.

The yard limits for the Ocean Shore's Santa Cruz operations spanned from the end of track above the Southern Pacific yard at West Cliff Drive to the city limits at Moore Creek and the San Vicente Lumber Company's millpond (Antonelli Pond). Within this area were three stations—Santa Cruz, Garfield Ave. and Rapetti—the middle of which was composed entirely of a small 8' x 10' wood frame passenger shelter located at the southwest corner of Garfield (Woodrow) and Delaware Avenues. This structure served as a transfer point with the Union Traction Company's electric streetcar line between Vue de l'Eau and the rest of its network and, as such, was a regularly scheduled stop. No photographs of the shelter exist, unfortunately.

Subdivision map of "Marx's Property" within the Gharkey Tract, showing details of the Ocean Shore Railroad's freight yard, October 13, 1913. [California State Library]

The maintenance yard was linked directly to the operations of the Ocean Shore Railway and may not have survived much into the Ocean Shore Railroad's existence after 1911. The San Vicente Lumber Company, which had its mill on Shore Investment Company (an Ocean Shore subsidiary) land at Rapetti Ranch beside Antonelli Pond is noted on a Sanborn map in 1917 as having a long car shed and a separate car shop. These were not present in 1911. It is possible that these were or became the new maintenance facilities for the Ocean Shore Railroad in the mid-1910s, especially since the railroad only operated two locomotives at a time on the Southern Division during this time. The Rapetti property certainly served as the maintenance yard after October 1920, when the railroad sold its southern rolling stock to the lumber company and abandoned any remaining stations and shelters in Santa Cruz County. If the original maintenance yard survived until the end of the railroad's existence, it was decommissioned at some point in late 1920 or early 1921. Most of the property remained undeveloped until after World War II, when it was subdivided into housing parcels.

Geo-Coordinates & Access Rights:

36.9580N, 122.0315W

The location of the company's shops were at 404 Centennial Street, which today is occupied by a private home. No visible trace of the Ocean Shore's maintenance yard survives but there are relics that can be found on property lines. Indeed, the entire route of Delaware Avenue between Columbia and Santa Cruz Streets is due to the Ocean Shore's alignment and its subsequent conversion to a public road in the 1940s. The properties that most obviously still reflect the former Ocean Shore right-of-way through this area are 224 Gharkey Street, 403 Laguna Street, 302 Monterey Street, and 301-303 Santa Cruz Street, although the orientations of some structures in the area may also reflect the railroad's original alignment.

Citations & Credits:

• Bender, Henry E., Jr. "Ocean Shore Railroad." December 2017.
• Hamman, Rick. California Central Coast Railways. Second edition. Santa Cruz, CA: Otter B Books, 2007.
• Whaley, Derek R. Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Coast. Santa Cruz, CA: Zayante Publishing, forthcoming.

Stations: Santa Cruz (Ocean Shore)

If the Ocean Shore Railway was a thing of dreams, then its plans for its depot in Santa Cruz was the Emerald City. And it proved just as ephemeral. When the company was incorporated, it did not anticipate the type of opposition it received from the Southern Pacific Railroad. Despite cooperating to a degree in the parallel construction of the Coast Line Railroad (SP) and the Southern Division of the Ocean Shore Railroad from the northern city limits of Santa Cruz to Davenport, no such politeness could be found within the city. Both Southern Pacific and the Cowell Lime Company did their utmost to block the railroad's entry into Santa Cruz and succeeded spectacularly.

The Ocean Shore Railway's West Cliff Drive shelter overlooking the Southern Pacific Railroad's yard in Santa Cruz, c 1906. [Louis L. Stein, Jr. – Colorized using DeOldify]

When it was incorporated in 1905, the Ocean Shore intended to build an impressive trestle viaduct from the hill above Neary Lagoon across the Southern Pacific tracks, Blackburn Terrace, West Cliff Drive, and Pacific Avenue to eventually reach Cedar Street, where a large freight yard would be located between Center Street and Cedar and from Lincoln Street in the north to the Santa Cruz Union Depot in the south. Fred Swanton captured this visionary idea in the panoramic painting below, published in 1907.

Enlargement from a panoramic painting of Santa Cruz showing in the center the Ocean Shore Railway's proposed viaduct over the Southern Pacific yard and onto Cedar Street, 1907.

The finishing touch would have been a massive cathedral-like passenger depot on Pacific Avenue. Had it been built where planned, it would have occupied both sides of Cathcart Street on the west side of Pacific Avenue from the University Town Center building to the Catalyst. Chief Engineer J. B. Rogers described the proposed depot to the Santa Cruz Sentinel in November 1907:

"The building will certainly be better than any building now existing in Santa Cruz, I assure you. We desire naturally to make our station the center of the city if possible and to make it a revenue producer. No I can not tell whether it will be a steel structure, stone, brick, or of what material it will be, but I am of the opinion that it will be at least four stories high. That will allow three stories for office purposes above the ground floor, which floor will be used as the station. Yes, the electric trains will run right into this building, on the first floor, and up to Pacific Av. The station waiting rooms, booths, etc., will undoubtedly take up the entire ground floor, so that there will not be a single bit of the Pacific Av. frontage blocked off and rented for business purposes. A large amount of the railroad business will undoubtedly be transacted in the upper stories of the depot building."

The company purchased much of the required land for this project but all of its attempts to cross the Southern Pacific yard were blocked.

Sketch of the Ocean Shore Railway's right-of-way in Santa Cruz showing the proposed viaduct entry into the city and the planned steamship pier on the waterfront, 1906. [Jack Wagner]

By the end if 1905, the Ocean Shore had erected a temporary 8 foot by 10 foot wood frame shelter on the hill above the Southern Pacific yard immediately adjacent to West Cliff Drive. The purpose of this structure was two-fold. First, it allowed passengers from the Santa Cruz Union Depot to more easily access the Ocean Shore's trains by simply walking up West Cliff Drive and around to the shelter. Second, it provided access to the Santa Cruz Main Beach, which hosted the popular Neptune Casino and Plunge until both burned down in mid-1906. Whether there were plans to keep a permanent shelter at the site or whether it was simply a temporary structure built in the interim while awaiting the construction of the main depot on Pacific Avenue is unknown, although the track beside the shelter was originally intended to continue onto a new steamship wharf between the Cowell Wharf and the Railroad Wharf.

The first revenue train leaving the Santa Cruz passenger shelter at West Cliff Drive, June 1906.
[Randolph Brandt – Colorized using DeOldify]

Beside Bay Street, under which the Ocean Shore's right-of-way passed, the company maintained its passenger agency depot. It was situated at the northeast corner of Laguna Street and Bay Street and it appears in miniature in a single aerial photograph taken in 1906 by George Lawrence. The structure was small and simple, resembling in many ways the cottages used by Fred Swanton's Santa Cruz Beach Cottage & Tent City Corporation. Passengers would purchase tickets for the train here and presumably board either at the West Cliff Drive location or near the freight house located midway between Gharkey and Santa Cruz Streets off Laguna.

Enlargement of George Lawrence's aerial photograph of Santa Cruz, focusing on the Ocean Shore right-of-way with the small depot beside Bay Street at center-right. Note the Bay Street railroad overpass at far right.

The financial upheavals of the Ocean Shore Railway between the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and  1911 led to the reincorporation of the company was the Ocean Shore Railroad Company. This marked a change in strategy for the company including the abandonment of some of its structures. At Santa Cruz, it meant the cutting back of the line to the small depot on Bay Street with the track beyond that point likely abandoned. All transfers with the Southern Pacific Railroad would now pass through the more even grade at Rapetti/Orby, where the San Vicente Lumber Company maintained its large mill. The end of the line on West Cliff Drive remained mile marker 0.0 but the station had decisively shifted. Stanley Steamer autobuses were brought in to connect the line between Swanton and Tunitas and tickets for this and other services were available at the Bay Street depot.

Sanborn Fire Insurance map for 1917 showing the Ocean Shore depot over the right-of-way on Bay Street.
[University of California, Santa Cruz Digital Collections]

Over the following nine years, passenger service came to a crawl as the Ocean Shore continued to fail to connect its separate lines. Eventually, autobus transportation and the better efficiency of the Southern Pacific trains, which could reach San Francisco directly via two routes, meant that passenger service was simply no longer required. Nonetheless, the Ocean Shore maintained such service throughout the duration of its life as an active railroad. In 1920, the company ceased operating as a railroad and the local track was taken over by the San Vicente Lumber Company, which had no need for passenger depots or shelters. The ultimate fate of the Bay Street depot is unknown but it was likely moved and converted into a home as such was the fate of many such structures.

Geo-Coordinates & Access Rights:
Beach Shelter: 150 West Cliff Drive, 36.9629N, 122.0257W
Santa Cruz Station: 221 Bay Street, 36.9606N, 122.0284W
Santa Cruz Passenger Terminal (?): 512 Laguna Street, 36.9592N, 122.0290W

The site of the passenger shelter is now occupied by the Westcliff Townhomes on West Cliff Drive, just before the truss bridge over the railroad tracks. The shelter would have been on the bluff just behind the buildings, which is now occupied by gardens. The passenger depot on Bay Street is either gone or heavily modified into the private residence that now occupies the site. The likely site of the passenger terminal further north along Laguna has certainly been replaced with a new building if there ever had been a building there to begin with. Curiously, the homes on 512 and 520 Laguna are oriented toward the right-of-way rather than the road even though the buildings appear to have been built in the 1960s.

Citations & Credits:

• Bender, Henry E., Jr. "Ocean Shore Railroad." Unpublished, 2017.
• Hamman, Rick. California Central Coast Railways. Second edition. Santa Cruz: Otter B Books, 2002.
• Hunter, Chris. Images of Rail: Ocean Shore Railroad. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2004.
• Nanney, Duncan. Personal correspondence.
• Nurkse, Peter. Personal correspondence.
• Wagner, Jack R. The Last Whistle: Ocean Shore Railroad. Berkeley, CA: Howell-North Books, 1974.