Logan

Logan on a 1915 USGS Survey Map.

The history of Logan is a history of the Granite Rock Company. When the Southern Pacific Railroad first set up its track between Gilroy and Pajaro in the early 1870s, it discovered a large granite outcropping on the southern bank of the Pajaro River just on the Monterey Bay side of Chittenden Pass. For the first twenty years after its discovery, local firms operated out of the quarry, hauling out their crushed granite at Logan Station, a nearby freight railroad station. In 1899, a group of local investors purchased the 27-acre quarry for $10,000 and incorporated on February 14, 1900, as the Granite Rock Company.

A freight car parked at Logan near the crushing plant.
(Granite Rock Company)

From the very beginning, the Southern Pacific and the quarry at Logan had a relationship. As construction of the Salinas Subdivision line continued into the Salinas Valley, crushed granite from Logan was used as ballast for the railroad cross-ties. Sledge hammers and ox carts were used to get the ballast down to the station for shipment. An insular mining tram system was soon developed throughout the quarry to ease the transport of rock. Beside the mainline track, a long siding was installed for use by Granite Rock. A rock crushing plant was installed beside the siding while rocks were dropped in the top. Processed granite was loaded onto waiting freight cars below.

The 1906 earthquake heavily damaged the facility, leveling the crushing plant and forcing an almost complete rebuild, but the simplicity of the operation meant it was back in operation the next year, providing granite for the rebuilding of San Francisco as well as the erection of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk's Casino. Following the earthquake, quarrying moved deeper into the property and a small locomotive called the "Dinkey #1" was purchased to shuttle mine cars between the quarry and the crushing plant.

The ruined crushing plant after the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906.
(Granite Rock Company)

In the 1920s, the company helped build the adjacent Highway 129. In the 1930s, the first asphaltic concrete plant in California was erected at Logan beside the crushing plant. The quarrying operations at Logan continued to increase in the following decades. By 1970, 7,500 tons of granite rock were being shipped out per day from Logan, which were shipped on 25 100-ton hopper freight cars purchased by Granite Rock Company. Graniterock strongly believed in the value of shipping via rail, an aspect of freight transport that was losing popularity by the 1970s. In 1989, Graniterock completely remodeled its facilities at Logan, renaming the site the A.R. Wilson Quarry. The quarry still operates today off of State Route 129 northeast of Watsonville. The "Dinkey" engine was heavily restored and donated to the California State Railroad Museum.

The Logan plant is now more solidly associated with the nearby town of Aromas, where most of the quarry's staff have lived over the past 110+ years. The name "Logan" itself has largely disappeared and its origin is not known to this historian.

The Logan station point, July 31, 1949, crushing plant at right. (Wilbur C. Whittaker)

Official Railroad Information:

The crushing plant at Logan from the air, with the sidings in front, 1951.
(Granite Rock Company)

Railroad records are fairly complete regarding Logan, but unfortunately they are not complete for this historian. The earliest record possessed by this historian shows Logan on a Officers, Agencies & Stations Book entry in 1899 listed as between Chittenden's and Aromas, at mile marker 93. It had a class-A freight status, meaning it had a platform, which was located on the right (southeastern) side of the tracks. No other services were listed that year.

The Logan station point was 93.2 miles south of San Francisco via San José and the San Francisco Subdivision. It was 7.2 miles north of Watsonville Jct. (Pajaro). Logan was the northern start of a double-track that continues today to Watsonville Jct. In 1940, Logan had no recorded spur, just the double-track. It offered regularly-scheduled passenger and freight service to and from the stop, as well.

Passenger service is no longer provided at Logan and, indeed, the stop's current name on Union Pacific timetables is not known to this historian. It was still under the name "Logan" in 1987. However, the station is certainly still active. Google Maps show that the tracks beside Logan are still in use and that there are at least four sidings beside the mainline as well as at least five in-use spurs. More may be buried beneath loose gravel or are not visible on the maps.

Geo-coordinates and Access Rights:
36˚N 54' 2.857" x 121˚W 38' 2.591"

Logan is still owned and operated by the Granite Rock Company and access is by permission only.

The Logan facility in 2013, still in use though parts of it are falling into disrepair, no longer used by Graniterock.
(Wikipedia)

Citations & Credits:

• Wolpert, Rose Ann. "Graniterock Museum".

Watsonville Depot

USGS Map of Watsonville, noting the station, from 1914.

The history of an entire city is truly beyond the scope of a single article, and this historian will not attempt it here. These articles focus first and foremost on individual railroad stops, and that is how Watsonville will be treated. Other articles will expand on the Watsonville freight yard and its importance to Santa Cruz County, especially after the turn of the century. This article, however, is about a rather important, but not spectacularly so, station near the southeastern end of the Southern Pacific Railroad's Santa Cruz Branch.

Watsonville was devised by Judge John H. Watson and D.S. Gregory on 5,496 acres of land illegally seized from Sebastian Rodriguez, owner of Rancho Bolsa del Pajaro in 1851. The rancho was a Mexican land grant awarded to the Rodriguez family and in its initial years it was called Rancho Bolsa de los Rodriguez but it was later named after the abundance of seabirds (los pajaros) that nested in the sloughs around the property. The first American settlers arrived in 1852 but it would be more than a decade before the town formally came into being. In this time, a few major road arteries were put in place, primarily Pajaro Street (soon renamed Main Street), and the Santa Cruz-San José turnpike. The Pajaro River to the southeast established the towns boundary there, while nearby sloughs kept the town relatively boxed in. Watson and Gregory did not initially name the town "Watsonville", but rather called it "Pajaro", after the river. A local sheriff deputy, H.F. Parsons, is generally considered the person who named the community after Watson, calling it in a police report "Watsonville". Watson moved to Idaho in 1865 and never returned, but the town adopted his name when it was incorporated on March 30, 1868. The town's first post office (and the second in the county) was established there in November 1853, though under what name is not certain. The first school in town opened that same year in a private house, with a permanent schoolhouse erected in 1864. A high school was later erected nearby in 1894. The town later became the City of Watsonville in 1903.

A Claus Spreckles wagon down the tracks from Watsonville Station, c. 1880s.
[Margaret Koch Collection – Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History]

Railroading and Watsonville were early companions. A year before the town was incorporated, the California Coast Railroad Company was incorporated to connect Gilroy and Watsonville together, thereby bringing Gilroy in contact with the sea, and Watsonville in contact with the Santa Clara Valley. Frederick Augustus Hihn was an investor in this early line and would continue to invest in local railroading ventures into the 1870s. He desired nothing less than to control the means of shipping out lumber from Santa Cruz County. In March 1868, the San Francisco & San José Railroad merged with the Santa Clara & Pajaro Valley Railroad, thereby forming the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. The Southern Pacific's long-term goal was to reach deep into the Central Valley and eventually to Arizona where it would connect with a transcontinental route. A few months afterwards, the Southern Pacific absorbed the Central Pacific Railroad, thereby becoming the largest railroad company on the West Coast.

Watsonville entered the game in 1870 when the California Southern Railroad Company, a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific, sought to connect Gilroy to Salinas via Watsonville on a 45-mile-long track. In the second half of 1871, the line was completed, but it did not pass through Watsonville as planned, but instead remained on the south bank of the Pajaro River, at the small community of Pajaro. While locals now had access to the railroad, they had to cross the county line to get their wares to the trains. The situation was problematic, but manageable.

A patriotic celebration at the station on July 23, 1916. [Santa Cruz MAH]

But Frederick Hihn and the residents of Santa Cruz were not happy. They demanded to have a railroad that went all the way to Santa Cruz. In 1872, the Santa Cruz & Watsonville Railroad was founded to meet this need. Initially, funding fell through and agreements with outside lines fell apart. The company was reincorporated in September 1872 as the Santa Cruz Railroad; it would be locally built and narrow-gauged, but it would bring the railroad through Watsonville to Santa Cruz. Financial panic the next year stalled progress but it began in ernest in mid-1873. Watsonville, however, who voted against the railroad and saw no need for it suddenly found itself locked out of negotiations, with grading crews wrapping the track west of the city, thereby bypassing it. In December 1874, the town sued the railroad, stating that they had reneged on terms from 1873. The proposed "Watsonville Station" was not close enough to the city to meet the terms of the agreement. The court agreed with Watsonville and the track was realigned to run closer to Watsonville.

Construction progressed rapidly from both ends. The initial construction had begun in Santa Cruz heading toward Watsonville, while bridgework on the Pajaro River bridge began as soon as the dust settled on the issue of where to align the track near Watsonville. On May 7th, 1876, the railroad line finally opened to the public, with Watsonville the first stop on the northern run to Santa Cruz. The Santa Cruz Railroad went through a turbulent five years before finally being acquired by the Southern Pacific in 1881. Soon afterwards, the tracks were completely overhauled and standard-gauged, allowing them to compete somewhat with the narrow-gauged South Pacific Coast route over the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Watsonville Station on October 6, 1946. Passenger service has ended and the station only services freight and local bus connections. Mainline service continues across the Pajaro River at Watsonville Junction. [Wilbur Whittaker Collection]

Watsonville, in this long story, remained an important lynchpin in the plan. Besides acting as the southern base of the county, the route through Watsonville to San Francisco also remained shorter until the completion of the Mayfield Cut-Off in 1909. Freight sent via this route got to San Francisco faster generally if sent from south of Santa Cruz. Watsonville was located 101.8 miles from San Francisco via Pajaro Junction, 18.4 miles from Santa Cruz, and 1.8 miles from Pajaro Junction. The station served as the western terminus of the Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad, a narrow-gauged route that ended outside of Salinas and operated from 1890 until 1929. The station had 20,485 feet of siding and spurs, many of which went to local businesses that maintained partnerships with the Southern Pacific Railroad and will be discussed in other articles. After 1909, the station was 97.5 miles from San Francisco via the Mayfield Cut-Off. The station provided passenger, freight, Railway Express Agency, and telegraph service, and was a major switching point for local trains running between Santa Cruz and Watsonville. It also featured access to the local streetcar line that ran down Beach Street to the Watsonville Wharf and Camp Goodall.

A Google StreetView photograph of the station today from almost exactly the same angle as the photograph above it. Little has changed, but the windows have been boarded up or sealed and the structure has been used irregularly as a local business center or commercial building. [Google StreetView]

Passenger service at Watsonville Depot ended in 1938, but freight service continued until very recently. Suntan Specials, as well as other excursion trains, ran continuously through to 1959, after which they became less common, disappearing entirely after 1965. Spurs to various local freight concerns still exist today around the site of the depot. The depot, meanwhile, has survived all this change and remains at the junction of West Beach Street and Walker Street. The remnants of a few spurs can be found in the asphalt near the station while pieces of historic siding run all the way down Walker Street on both ends, misperceived today as parking stops but once freight loading locations. Santa Cruz County now owns the right-of-way in this area and passenger service may well resume in the coming years as the Santa Cruz & Monterey Bay Railroad attempts to restart all types of service along the line, with Watsonville being one of the major planned stops.

Cristo

For most of its existence, the Manresa stop stood alone between Leonard and Ellicott. But in 1918, a firm under the leadership of Donald M. Crist and Irving Carl called the Ferro Products Company established an iron processing plant on the hills above Manresa Beach. The land they purchased had previously been owned by the College of Santa Clara, a Catholic institution that eventually became the University of Santa Clara. The beach, then known as Zils Beach after its original owner, Peter Zils, was known for its black sands, rich in magnetite which was used to make sponge iron and steel alloys. Almost immediately, the new firm was sued by a local, Henry Goetz, who complained that Crist and Carl dumped its refuse material on the surrounding countryside. The partners won the case since they owned the property. Soon afterwards, they began increasing their productivity and petitioned the Southern Pacific Railroad, whose Santa Cruz Branch passed directly in front of their facility, for a siding and stop.

The "Playland Special" near Rob Roy and Cristo, overlooking Manresa Beach, May 28, 1939. The building in the background is the Ferro Products Company refinery. Photo by Wil Whittaker. (Jim Vail Collection)

Initially, the company appears to have used the nearby Manresa station to ship out its product. But upgrades to the facility in late 1920 prompted the railroad company to dedicate a special siding just for the facility. Thus "Cristo"—named after Crist—became a stop in June, 1921, located 90.8 miles from San Francisco via the Mayfield Cut-Off and 8.4 miles from Watsonville Junction. A freight-loading platform was built for the firm on the northeast side of the tracks. The siding was small, only long enough for three cars. Passenger service via a flag-stop was maintained for local commuters, though it was not listed on the non-commuter schedules. By the mid-1930s, the stop had been removed from timetables except as a casual flag-stop, which means it was footnoted as an additional stop outside of the standard timetable. The station did not have any other facilities and appears to have mostly been a freight stop, despite the option of a passenger stop.

The Ferro Products Company became the Ferro Products Corporation in late 1921, with new corporate offices installed in San Francisco and the company passing under the management of D.C. Jackling. The president of the new company, A.J. Maclean,  took over for Don Crist, while Crist became general manager. The company became a branch of the Triumph Steel Company in early 1925. In 1932, the company shifted to creating stainless steel at a new $150,000 steel plant erected on the site of the old iron plant. Meanwhile, the Triumph Steel Company became the American Alloy and Steel Company.

The railroad siding continued in agency books as late as 1941, after which this historian's records do not extend. Problems with the facility upgrade in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, may have ended the company's presence in Santa Cruz County as newspapers no longer record the company or Crist after October 1932. It is likely the company left Santa Cruz at around the time, abandoning the siding. In this case, the Southern Pacific simply left it in its agency books, awaiting a time when those books would be cleaned of abeyant stops.

Citations:

• Clark, Donald. Santa Cruz County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary. Scotts Valley, CA: Kestrel Press, 2007.

Manresa & Robroy

Manresa on a 1914 United State Geological Survey map.

In 1894, the College of Santa Clara opened along a stretch of Monterey Bay coastline a Catholic retreat called Villa Manresa. The name was a reference to Manresa, Spain, where Saint Ignatius of Loyola recovered from wounds received at the Battle of Pampeluna. While recovering there, he first conceived of the ideas that formed the backbone of his Society of Jesus (the Jesuit order). For the next thirty years, Villa Manresa was an isolated location, accessible only via San Andreas Road and the Southern Pacific railroad.

The railroad, which passed directly through the property on its branch between Santa Cruz and Watsonville, first established a stop at Manresa around 1907. It was located above the beach and just south of the Manresa Beach railroad bridge. The station had no services, no station structure or platform; it only had a sign. The stop was 90.4 miles from San Francisco via the Mayfield Cut-off, 11.5 miles from Santa Cruz, and 8.6 miles to Pajaro Junction. It never had regularly-scheduled passenger service but was retained only as a flag-stop.

Manresa did, however, have a 129-foot-long spur which was installed around 1907. What it was used for the first thirteen years of its existence is unknown, but beginning in 1920 it was used by the Ferro Products Company to ship out its products. The company mined iron oxide from the sands nearby and built a refinery beside Villa Manresa. The spur beside the factory was extended to 279 feet in 1912 and was extended again to an unknown length in 1920. A platform was also installed in 1912. How long Ferro Products operated at Manresa is unknown; the company was reorganized in 1921 and may have abandoned the site soon afterwards. The last mention of the facility at Manresa is in March 1923.

The Manresa property was divided in two in 1925 and the bulk of it was sold to David W. Batchelor who turned it into his Rob Roy resort and residential subdivision. Batchelor was Scottish and wanted to name the community after the famous Highland outlaw Rob Roy; the street names also were all Scottish in nature. The 270-acre property was extensive and included a private beach, a bath house, a deer park, a dance pavilion, bridle paths, hiking trails, and seasonal cottages, in addition to permanent residential homes. The local Hill School relocated to Rob Roy in 1932, marking the community's transition from a resort into residential area. The nearby railroad stop was renamed Robroy—all one word—in 1926 to reflect the change in ownership. Passenger service to the subdivision seems to have never have taken off and it ended by the early 1930s. The station was removed from Southern Pacific Railroad agency books only in 1940.

The Rob Roy subdivision did not thrive in the Great Depression and was eventually bought out in 1935 by Edward G. Burghard who renamed the community La Selva Beach, a reference to the forests that speckle the hills above the beach. The school became the La Selva Beach School in 1936, merging into the Aptos School District in 1942, and a post office was established for the community many years later in 1952. Railroad service only existed at La Selva Beach until 1938 when passenger service along the entire branch line ceased. The tracks, however, continue to pass through the community even today, rarely used since 2011. The adjacent 21-acre beach became Manresa State Beach in 1948 and is no longer the exclusive purview of the La Selva locals. The site of the station is at the bottom of Margarita Road while the spur stretched from that point to the bottom of Playa Boulevard.

Citations:

• Clark, Donald. Santa Cruz County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary. Scotts Valley, CA: Kestrel Press, 2007.

Leonard

Leonard on a USGS Map, 1914.

On the barren stretch of the Santa Cruz Coast between Aptos and Watsonville, a man named Thomas W. Leonard owned a farm. The farm was nothing overly remarkable, encompassing 515 acres of the San Andreas Rancho, but it had its merits. In 1878, small deposits of gold were found near the property. This mining continued into the 1880s. The farm also happened to sit directly in the path of the Santa Cruz Railroad as its plotted its course in the early 1870s. Leonard died in 1892, but his three sons maintained the property into the 1910s.

Leonard's property was located quite close to the beach and picked up a post office in March 1883 to service the local tourist crowd. The post office closed five months later but the miniscule community became known as "Leonard's", or rather "Leonard", as a result. Since the railroad passed directly through the property, it made sense to establish a stop nearby, which was built around the same time as the post office, located 450 away. The design of the station is unknown, but it appears to have been staffed, at least seasonally. By the late 1890s, it included a 291-foot spur and a freight platform. This suggests that there was at least some local use of the station as freight. It was permanently a flag-stop, which suggests it wasn't the most popular place in town, though it also implied that passengers could use the stop to pick up trains.

The station was located 10.7 miles from Santa Cruz, 109.8 miles from San Francisco via Watsonville Junction, and 89.7 miles from San Francisco via the Mayfield Cut-Off. The stop remained in timetables until the early 1930s and stuck on agency books until World War II or later. The spur was lengthened into a 590-foot-long siding in 1912, a feature reflected on the map above. The siding was on the northeast side of the mainline track.

John Joseph Montgomery and his flying machine, 1905.

Leonard had a brief fame in 1905 when it Professor John Joseph Montgomery, a local university mathematics teacher, successfully flew the first engineless aircraft more than a year before the Wright Brothers had their flight in South Carolina. Three flights on March 16, 17, and 20th, 1905, were conducted on the property of the Leonard Family. The pilot of the flights would die the following month after a flight accident in Santa Clara. Montgomery himself died in a crash in 1911 when he hit what is today known as Montgomery Hill near Evergreen Valley College in San José. The legacy of Montgomery was quickly overwhelmed by the Wright Brothers and has yet to be adequately resurrected.

Leonard's Ranch was annexed to Seascape Beach Estates (later Seascape) in 1969, though there remains a small agricultural parcel near the station site today. The site of the station is near the end of Summer Avenue near Seascape Park.

Citations:

• Clark, Donald. Santa Cruz County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary. Scotts Valley, CA: Kestrel Press, 2007.

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).

Aptos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Citations:

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

Capitola

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Citations:

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

Opal

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

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

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

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

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

Citations:

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