Santa Cruz Trains did not begin as a brand, but as a single book: Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains. When I first started my research on the topic in 2012, I had no idea that it would become a book until around mid-2013, and I didn’t actually begin working on it until April 2014. In many ways, I viewed the book as a natural expansion of Bruce MacGregor and Rick Hamman’s… Read More »Re-envisioning Santa Cruz Trains
History is a difficult thing to write because it requires so many sources! If only there were a helpful book that had all the sources gathered together in one place. Well, now there is! I introduce for your reading and research pleasure, Santa Cruz Trains Sourcebook: The Dream of Steam, 1854–1873, available TODAY from Amazon.com. In this little treasure are over 500 newspaper articles relating to the pre-history of railroads in Santa Cruz County, from… Read More »Sourcing Santa Cruz’s Railroad History
Following a very busy year that saw two inaugural publications in two new series, 2024 is off to a very good start. The success of SIDETRACKED: Laurel & Glenwood made it clear that small-format, photo-heavy books are a great means of providing readers with more depth than is possible in the larger Santa Cruz Trains books while also showcasing a wider range of imagery. Thus, this year I have released SIDETRACKED: The Santa Cruz Beach… Read More »A Day at the Beach with Santa Cruz Trains
The second SIDETRACKED book by Derek R. Whaley reveals the history of the Santa Cruz Beach before the Boardwalk SANTA CRUZ, CA, May 17, 2024—Exactly 100 years ago, the Giant Dipper on the Santa Cruz Beach opened to an excited public. It was a groundbreaking milestone in a history that stretched 75 years into the past, to a time when California was not even a state. SIDETRACKED: The Santa Cruz Beach to 1903 explores the… Read More »Press Release: SIDETRACKED: The Santa Cruz Beach to 1903
There was a time once when the only book I imagined writing or editing was my own fantasy series. Santa Cruz was a place, trains were cool but irrelevant, and history was a fun hobby but nothing more. One by one, those dominos fell. In 2003, I shifted my major from Media Communications to History. In 2011, I began writing blog posts about Santa Cruz County’s railroading history. And in 2019, I embarked upon a… Read More »The Memories of Ernest Otto
![A Southern Pacific train at Mayfield Station, ca 1886 [Mountain View Public Library]](https://zayantepublishing.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/A-Southern-Pacific-train-at-Mayfield-Station-ca-1886-Mountain-View-Public-Library-930x617.jpg)
