Railroads: Bridge Creek Railroads

From the earliest years of logging activity within the Aptos Forest, the narrow canyon of Bridge Creek has attracted the interest of lumber companies. Three companies built railroads along the feeder creek's banks and each railroad required creative engineering to overcome the obstacles of such a confined space. Today, remnants of all of these railroads can be found in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park.

Carolyn Hansen and Christinia Johnston walking on the Big Tree Gulch railroad line near Hoffman's Camp, ca 1919. [Aptos History Museum – colorized using MyHeritage]

Bridge Creek Spur (1898)

When the Loma Prieta Branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad was first constructed up Aptos Creek, the company and its associate, the Loma Prieta Lumber Company, decided not to extend a track up Bridge Creek. The reason was rather straightforward: the west bank of the creek was owned by Timothy Hopkins, the east bank by the lumber company, and the headwaters by the F. A. Hihn Company. The complicated relationship between the three made any effort to extend a railroad through the narrow canyon something to postpone until all other timber tracts were spent. In the meantime, a long, switchbacking spur starting near Spring Creek meandered over the east bank of Bridge Creek so that logging crews could harvest the timber within the lumber company's land.

Location of the Bridge Creek Spur and Baird's skid road, 1898. Map by Ronald Powell.

In 1898, after the last timber was cut at the headwaters of Aptos Creek, the Loma Prieta Lumber Company finally decided it was time to harvest timber along Bridge Creek. The Hopkins property extended about 0.7 miles north of the Loma Prieta Branch just north of the village of Loma Prieta. The terrain through this section was fairly level, so the lumber company paid the railroad to extend a spur 1,700 feet along the west side of the creek to a point just north of the confluence of Bridge and Aptos Creeks. The route required at least four bridges, three small ones across seasonal streams and a more substantial bridge across Porter Gulch directly behind the Porter House.

William Baird built several long skid roads up China Ridge down to this new spur, the longest measuring around 3,000 feet. These met the spur at two points. The northernmost was in a roughly 500-foot-long cut, which allowed logging crews to roll logs directly onto waiting flatcars. The cut can still be seen today on the west bank of Bridge Creek. A little to the south, a loading ramp was built beside the track where logs brought down from Hinckley Ridge could be pulled onto waiting flatcars with assistance from a donkey engine that was installed across on the east side of the tracks. This loading ramp still existed until the storm of January 1982 washed all traces of it away. No known photographs of this short-lived spur survive.

At the end of the 1898 logging season, the lumber company decided to shift its focus further south to Love Gulch, so Southern Pacific tore up the tracks to repurpose them. Although most of Hopkins' land was logged out as a result of this harvesting effort, portions of the Loma Prieta Lumber Company's land on the east bank of the creek and all of the Hihn Company's land remained available for harvesting.

Splitstuff Area Railroad (1912–1918)

In coordination with the construction of the Molino Timber Company's railroad along China Ridge to Hinckley Gulch, the F. A Hihn Company decided in 1911 that it was time to harvest the timber in its property at the headwaters of Bridge Creek. The new railroad would be passing right above the property, so the opportunity was too good to let pass. The problem, however, was that the terrain was too steep from the top of the ridge to the shelf below, a distance of 350 feet, to actually connect the two areas. As a result, the Hihn Company built its own narrow-gauge railroad on the shelf and transferred pallets of splitstuff up to the other railroad via a cable hoist situated at Sand Point.

Approximate layout of the Splitstuff Area at the headwaters of Bridge Creek, ca 1915. Map by Ronald Powell.

The Molino railroad reached Sand Point around May 1912 and installed at least two short spurs to hold flatcars. From this point, the Hihn Company set to work laying the groundwork for its own railroad below. The so-called Splitstuff Area is actually two separate shelves that encompass about 100 acres. A 200-foot drop separates the upper from the lower shelf. The shelves are not level, but have a more even grade, which gave room for pieceworkers to cut splitstuff. Railroad tracks were only laid in the upper landing—the lower was accessed via a steep skid road that passed through a narrow cut.

The Loma Prieta Lumber Company's largest steam donkey operating on Bridge Creek, ca 1920. [Aptos History Museum – colorized using MyHeritage]

The upper landing grew into a maze of tracks, although it is likely that the tracks were moved once one section was cleared of usable timber. A long track ran from the bottom of Sand Point west before curving around the side of the hill toward today's West Ridge Trail Camp. Many spurs broke off of this main track, some curving in curious ways to follow the contours of the land and maintain a manageable grade. One spur even reached today's Hinckley Fire Road and followed it a short length before descending back down toward a feeder stream of Bridge Creek. The precise arrangement of the tracks and the order in which they were built remains a mystery since the Hihn Company did not document such details and no known photographs survive of the operations here.

A donkey engineer on his engine in a clearcut area of Bridge Creek, ca 1920. [Aptos History Museum – colorized using MyHeritage]

This isolated railroad relied upon the services of the company's Betsy Jane locomotive, which had been used at the Valencia Creek and Gold Gulch mills before disappearing from the records for a decade. The locomotive was disassembled, hauled to Bridge Creek in parts, and then reassembled on site.

Following Frederick Hihn's death in 1913, the F. A. Hihn Company was reincorporated as the Valencia–Hihn Company and continued operating as it had previously. However, low profits and tensions between Hihn family members finally led the company to sell its Bridge Creek holdings to the Loma Prieta Lumber Company in 1917. The lumber company immediately took over operations and expanded its vision for the area. The company would extend a railroad up Bridge Creek from the south and link into the railroad already at the headwaters. The issue of different gauges of track would be dealt with when the time came. In the meantime, Loma Prieta began sending large logs via highline from Hinckley Gulch to Bridge Creek. A new spur was extended across the Hinckley Fire Road specifically to collect these logs, which were directly loaded onto waiting flatcars. The cars took the logs to one of several small millponds, where they would await the extension of the Bridge Creek track to the Splitstuff Area.

Bridge Creek Railroad (1918)

By the spring of 1917, the Loma Prieta Lumber Company was already anticipating its coming acquisition of the Valencia–Hihn Company's Bridge Creek property. As such, it began grading a new railroad along the east bank of Bridge Creek from just behind the Porter House. While the ultimate plan was to connect this track with the Splitstuff Area, the interim plan was to extend the railroad to Maple Falls. To construct this line, Loma Prieta disassembled the Molino Timber Company's trackage beyond Sand Point and repurposed the tracks. Since that railroad was still operating in some capacity, Loma Prieta also bought a new narrow-gauge Shay locomotive that it could use along the new trackage.

Composite map showing the routes of the Molino Timber Company's railroad on China Ridge, the isolated Splitstuff Area railroad, the Bridge Creek railroad, and the Big Tree Gulch railroad, with modern trails noted, 1917-1921. Map by Ronald Powell.

Actual construction of the new line did not begin until after the 1917 logging season had ended. The route was about 1.85 miles long and crossed Bridge Creek twice. Indeed, at least fourteen bridges and half-bridges were needed to take the track this distance along an increasingly narrow gulch. Along a short section of track on the east bank, an intricate pile of redwood logs were stacked to allow the right-of-way to cross a deep depression. This feature still exists today along the Bridge Creek Trail as one of the only noticeable remnants of the former railroad grade. Near the end of the track, Camp 4 was established—retaining its numbering from the Molino Timber Company's camps—and several short spurs were built here for transloading stations.

Loma Prieta's Shay locomotive helping grade the Bridge Creek line, early 1918. [Aptos History Museum – colorized using MyHeritage]

The camp operated effectively through the 1918 season and plans were still in place to extend the line further north the next year, but fate stepped in. On the evening of September 11, an unusually violent storm struck the Aptos Forest with devastating effect. Both the Splitstuff Area and Camp 4 were devastated, with large sections of track destroyed or rendered unusable. The Betsy Jane, meanwhile, fell off its rails and into one of Bridge Creek's feeders, where it was soon buried under piles of mud and debris. Once all of the damage was inspected, the Loma Prieta Lumber Company decided to give up on the Splitstuff Area and abandon its Bridge Creek trackage in favor of a new line located further up the western ridge. The loss of so much track also led the company to abandon the Molino railroad along China Ridge so that it could reuse the tracks along the new railroad grade it intended to build to Big Tree Gulch on Bridge Creek.

Steam donkeys and a train operating on Bridge Creek, ca 1918. [Aptos History Museum – colorized using MyHeritage]

Big Tree Gulch Railroad (1919–1921)

Following the destruction of the Splitstuff Area and the lower railroad along Bridge Creek, the Loma Prieta Lumber Company decided to build a new track along the western wall of Bridge Creek gulch. The initial route was surveyed to be three miles to a section known as Big Tree Gulch due to an especially large tree that stood there. Like its predecessor, the company hoped to extend the line all the way to the Splitstuff Area so that it could recover its abandoned logs and harvest the remaining timber along the way.

Layout of Hoffman's Camp along the Big Tree Gulch railroad, 1920. Sketch by Ronald Powell.

To access the new railroad grade, a switchback was built behind and above the Porter House. The switchback had a 20˚ grade, which the company's two Shay locomotives could surmount, but only if they were hauling no more than four empty flatcars. Gravity and brakes were responsible for returning rolling stock to the bottom of the switchback. The main track only had a 3˚ grade but crossed over several gullies and sinks resulting in at least ten bridges and half-bridges, though none as substantial as those found on the lower track. Large portions of this right-of-way are now part of the Loma Prieta Grade Trail beyond the Porter House.

Hoffman's Camp viewed from a distance, ca 1920. [Aptos History Museum – colorized using MyHeritage]

Just within the boundary of the former Valencia–Hihn Company's land, the Loma Prieta Lumber Company built Camp 5, more commonly known as Hoffman's Camp. It featured one long spur, used mostly for maintenance, and a full camp for workers, including cabins, stables, a bunkhouse and cookhouse, and other amenities. The camp's superintendent was Louis Hoffman, and his wife served as the cook. The track extended 0.6 beyond the camp to Big Tree Gulch, where a final switchback brought the line to its terminus just beside the eponymous big tree. Frederick Hihn had left this and three other trees standing in the hope that they would be preserved as the last of the old-growth giants in the Aptos Forest. The lumber company only saw profit, though, and cut them down. A further extension of the line 1.5 miles to the north into the Splitstuff Area never happened, either due to lack of funds or insufficient timber to justify the expense.

Molino's shay hauling splitstuff shortly after it was moved to the Big Tree Gulch railroad, 1919. [Aptos History Museum – colorized using MyHeritage]

Logging crews worked along the Big Tree Gulch railroad for two and a half seasons before they were rather deceptively dismissed midway through the 1921 season. The truth is that the Bridge Creek operations did not result in a profit. The trees along the creek, especially in the Splitstuff Area, were poor quality, and there was also less timber available for harvesting than had been estimated. Costs had also gone up since the end of World War I. Thus, after the last of the Big Tree Gulch trees were harvested, the lumber company decided to wind up operations in the Aptos Forest. It shut down its mill on Aptos Creek and shipped its remaining uncut logs to the San Vicente Lumber Company's mill on Santa Cruz's West Side. The tracks and ties along Bridge Creek were pulled and sold for scrap, and the rolling stock was placed in storage to be sold. Over the years, the company sent crews to the Splitstuff Area at least two times to retrieve logs and pallets abandoned there in 1918, but these were hauled out by truck rather than train.

Large logs from Big Tree Gulch being hauled behind the Loma Prieta Lumber Company's mill on Aptos Creek, ca 1920. [Aptos History Museum – colorized using DeOldify]

Citations & Credits:

• Hamman, Rick. California Central Coast Railways. Second edition. Santa Cruz, CA: Otter B Books, 2007.
• Powell, Ronald G. The Reign of the Lumber Barons: Part Two of the History of Rancho Soquel Augmentation. Santa Cruz, CA: Zayante Publishing, 2021. (Amazon Associates link)
• Powell, Ronald G. The Shadow of Loma Prieta: Part Three of the History of Rancho Soquel Augmentation. Santa Cruz, CA: Zayante Publishing, 2022. (Amazon Associates link)
• Southern Pacific Railroad, miscellaneous records.
• Stoodley, Bert, personal papers.

Railroads: Love Creek Railroad

Logging activity in the Santa Cruz Mountains was on the rise in the 1880s. Redwood mills from south of Felton to north of Boulder Creek and along many of the San Lorenzo River's feeder creeks rapidly expanded following the construction of the San Lorenzo Valley Flume & Transportation Company's v-flume that ran down the valley. It alongside its subsidiary Santa Cruz & Felton Railroad brought millions of board feet of lumber to market via the Railroad and Powder Works Wharves at the Santa Cruz Main Beach. James Pieronett Pierce, a Santa Clara entrepreneur and speculator, wanted in on the local action and approached the task from several angles. Already the founder and president of the Bank of Santa Clara, Pierce used his wealth to embed himself within Santa Cruz County community and industries. He purchased the Pacific Avenue Street Railroad line in 1877 as well as the Santa Cruz Opera House. He became a director in both the railroad and flume projects. But more importantly to Santa Cruz history, he bought the land of Harry Love midway between Felton and Boulder Creek in order to harvest thousands of acres of redwood timber.

A waterfall below a narrow wooden bridge on Love Creek, c. 1900.
[Santa Cruz Public Libraries – colorized using DeOldify]

Captain Harry Love, 1860s.
[Santa Cruz Public Libraries –
colorized using DeOldify]

The California Ranger Harry Love was famous for having tracked down and killed the outlaw Joaquín Murrieta Carrillo on July 25, 1853. In the late 1850s and 1860s, Love lived on a ranch three miles north of Felton along a creek later named after him. At some point in the mid-1860s, Love fell on hard times and sold portions of his ranch to several individuals, including a Captain Staple, who grew Christmas trees on a section and otherwise worked for George Treat's sawmill south of Felton, and Charley Brown, who ran a mid-sized lumber mill somewhere along Love Creek. James Pierce bought Staple's property around 1876. The original tract encompassed the entire west bank of the Love Creek basin, which at the time was estimated to contain between thirty and fifty million board feet of redwood timber. Across from the confluence of Love Creek and the San Lorenzo River, Pierce built his baronial summer residence on a slight rise from where he could view the entire surrounding valley. This property would later evolve into Hotel Rowardennan in the 1890s, but in the meantime, Pierce grew hay for the livestock used in his logging operations.

In 1877, Pierce bought the Enterprise Mill on Love Creek from John Mill, presumably a relative of Harry's. Two years later, he incorporated the Pacific Manufacturing Company. By 1881, he had bought out a former business partner, H. W. McKoy, and took control of his mill as well and shipped this new machinery up the San Lorenzo River. At the confluence of Love Creek and the river, he erected a mid-sized lumber mill, which grew quickly as Pierce added more machinery and expanded the size of the affiliated settlement, initially known as Pacific Mills. During the next few years, he joined many other lumber firms in using the flume that passed through the village to transport lumber to market. When the Felton & Pescadero Railroad snaked through the area in mid-1884 to replace the flume, Pierce jumped at the opportunity to expand his reach up Marshall and Love Creeks, areas which had only lightly been harvested thus far.

County survey map showing parcels for sale in Ben Lomond with all of the Southern Pacific and Pacific Manufacturing Company's trackage in town, September 1887. [Santa Cruz County Records]

From the time that the new railroad passed through his mill town, Pierce planned to install private narrow-gauge railroad tracks to his timber tracts. Other local lumber firms had already done so including the Santa Clara Mill & Lumber Company, the Union Mill, and the F. A. Hihn Company, so its feasibility had already been proven. A September 1887 survey of the town of Ben Lomond shows tracks heading up Hubbard Gulch (then called Paterson Gulch) to the west, another track across the San Lorenzo River beside the vehicular bridge to the south, and a third track up Love Creek to the north, in addition to the mainline track and many spurs that ran through the village. The route up Hubbard Gulch crossed the San Lorenzo River to the west in roughly the same location as the Highway 9 bridge today. It then turned up Hubbard Gulch Road and continued for an unknown length. Pierce hoped that it would eventually run for three miles until reaching the logging community at Pine Flat at the top of Ben Lomond, but this never appears to have happened and the track probably did not extend more than a quarter mile up modern-day Hubbard Gulch Road. The southern track was certainly the shortest and probably catered to Pierce's personal residence just across the river.

The Pacific Manufacturing Company planing mill in Santa Clara, 1898.
[Alice Iola Hare Collection, Santa Clara City Library – colorized using DeOldify]

The third and longest track was installed along Love Creek and this route is much better documented both on maps and in newspapers. From the available evidence, it was in operation from December 1887 until at least 1893. The line's only known track joined the mill company's internal mainline near the junction of Fillmore Avenue and Mill Street in Ben Lomond and then proceeded north, crossing the Southern Pacific Railroad's Felton Branch east of Main Street and continuing until merging with modern-day Love Creek Road at Central Avenue. Beyond Sunnyside Avenue, the crudely-built narrow-gauge railroad entered the redwood wilderness of the Love Creek basin. From this point, there is a good description of the route given in the Surf in 1889:

The cream of the day's enjoyment was a trip on this pocket edition of a railway up the picturesque Love creek canyon to the logging camp. Seated in comfortable chairs upon the flat car, steaming along through the mild spring air, stopping to pick up a few ferns, or remove a fallen branch from the track, crossing Love creek thirteen times in a mile and a half and watching the mountains as they rose height beyond height, this was certainly an ideal way of penetrating the everlasting hills. The "man at the wheel," like the mate of the Nancy Bell, was captain and crew and all, and evidently made a pet of his tiny engine.

A glimpse into the canyon where the great body of timber begins enables one to feebly realize the vastness of Mr. Pierce's four thousand acre tract of timber, which extends nearly to the town of Boulder, and which will be tributary to the mill at Ben Lomond.

The train mentioned in this description was a small locomotive and six flatcars that Pierce purchased in early 1888 for use on his private lines. No photographs of the rolling stock have been found and even the style of the locomotive is unknown.

County survey map of Love Creek properties and the Love Creek Railroad, c 1887.
[Santa Cruz County Records]

The actual length of Pierce's trackage in the area of Ben Lomond is inconsistently reported by newspapers of the time. The article above implies that the Love Creek track was at least a mile and a half and the article elsewhere states that Pierce owned a total of 2.5 miles of trackage in the area. The figures for the tracks in town amount to just short of one mile of additional track, so that may be the maximum extent for the rest of the area. However, logging companies often installed and uninstalled track as needed and it is possible that as much as seven miles of track ran up Love Creek at one point, and more frequently three miles is given for the length of this route. The latter seems more likely since the Love Creek basin in total is only four miles in length. The evidence for where precisely the route went beyond Smith Creek is unclear, although it did continue further along Love Creek for at least a short distance. The logging camp mentioned by the reporter was almost certainly at the confluence of Love and Fritch Creeks, which was the last flat area before continuing up increasingly steep grades.

A waterfall on Love Creek, c 1900. [Santa Cruz Public Libraries]

When precisely the Love Creek Railroad shut down is unknown. Partners Duffey and Simmons began running a mill two miles up Love Creek in October 1890, however, and continued to run the mill on behalf of Pierce until it was destroyed in a boiler explosion in May 1891. Duffey alone rebuilt and shut down for the season in December. It seems likely that this mill continued to use the Love Creek Railroad to get its lumber to Ben Lomond since a December 1892 newspaper report stated that the old locomotive had jumped the track at the southernmost crossing over Love Creek, spilling its lumber into the creek bed. This means that the railroad was still in operation a year later. Following the derailment, horses were used to haul the machinery back onto the grade and the railroad resumed service. 

There are no further mentions of the railroad after December 1892 and it likely was removed before or after the summer 1893 season. By this point, Pierce had incorporated the Ben Lomond Land & Lumber Company in order to consolidate his twin goals of selling his property to interested developers and cutting his remaining timber. The mill in Ben Lomond was also gone and most of the trackage in the town had been consolidated. Whether Pierce even owned the Love Creek Railroad route by 1893 is unclear, but it certainly did not last much beyond that time. In May 1893, the Bank of Santa Clara failed, leaving Pierce short on funds. It was likely this that led to the dissolution of his company and the sale of the remaining land he owned in the region, the remainder of which were sold following his death in 1897. Today, traces of the railroad are occasionally found on the west bank of Love Creek near Smith and Fritch Creeks, where significant bridges were once located. But nothing much remains and that which does is found by chance, usually on private property.

Citations & Credits:

• Hamman, Rick. California Central Coast Railways. Second edition. Santa Cruz, CA: Otter B Books, 2007.
• Pepper, George. Personal correspondence.
• Santa Cruz Sentinel, 1885–1892.
• Santa Cruz Surf, 1885–1892.
• Whaley, Derek R. Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Second edition. Santa Cruz, CA: Zayante Publishing, forthcoming.