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Ocean Shore shops near Garfield Park showing boiler explosion, 1910s. Courtesy UC Santa Cruz.
Ocean Shore shops near Garfield Park showing boiler explosion, 1910s. Courtesy UC Santa Cruz.

The Santa Cruz Coast or Bust!

Happy New Year everyone! This is Derek R. Whaley, your friendly neighborhood author and editor. 2025 was a busy year for me with two book releases, another 12 detailed blog posts on SantaCruzTrains.com, and 365 Instagram posts showcasing Santa Cruz train history, not counting my other pursuits and my day job. One thing that has suffered, though, is my goal of publishing Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Coast in time for Christmas… Read More »The Santa Cruz Coast or Bust!

A Southern Pacific train at Mayfield Station, ca 1886 [Mountain View Public Library]
A Southern Pacific train at Mayfield Station, circa 1886. Courtesy Mountain View Public Library.

Re-envisioning Santa Cruz Trains

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

Full wrap cover for Santa Cruz Trains Sourcebook: The Dream of Steam, 1854–1873

Sourcing Santa Cruz’s Railroad History

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

A Day at the Beach with Santa Cruz Trains

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

Lowell Bready, Sutton Christian, George Moorad, Ernest Otto, and Laura Rawson in the Sentinel office, 1938
Lowell Bready, Sutton Christian, George Moorad, Ernest Otto, and Laura Rawson in the Sentinel office, 1938.

The Memories of Ernest Otto

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