Out of Isolation and Into the World Beyond

For the past four years, I have been working on editing and publishing Ronald G. Powell’s mostly lost manuscripts into The History of Rancho Soquel Augmentation trilogy. Throughout the course of doing this, I did not forget about my first passion: Santa Cruz Trains. Indeed, editing Parts 2 and 3 reminded me of what I had set aside to finish Powell’s work, but it also gave me inspiration to move beyond what I had originally envisioned back in 2018, when I began work on Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Coast.

As discussed in previous author diaries, the Santa Cruz Trains project has ballooned twice since 2019. Originally, the plan was to heavily revise Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains so that the new edition could release alongside Railroads of the Santa Cruz Coast. Working on Powell’s manuscripts and doing fortnightly or monthly blog posts led me to re-envision my Santa Cruz Trains series further.

One problem that needed a resolution involved the various freight companies. They defied the format I had set out in the first book because they were (and are) not stations, but they are places where trains stop. I addressed this in Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains by associating them with the closest actual station, or in the case of freight yards (Santa Cruz and Los Gatos), I included special sections focused on all of the freight stops, organized geographically. But this wasn’t very satisfactory and it would be more problematic with the Santa Cruz Branch (the central topic of Railroads of the Santa Cruz Coast) because there are a few freight stops that aren’t near any station. At the same time, I now have far more photographs and quite a bit more information about several of the train stations and freight stops along the lines, which means the planned revision and new book would become quite a lot larger than the existing book.

The solution to this problem was simple: add a third book of similar size to the series, Santa Cruz Trains: Companies & Customers of the Santa Cruz Lines. Arranged in a more encyclopedic format, this book will focus on those companies and other customers who had freight stops along Santa Cruz County’s (and nearby areas’) railroad lines. Not only does this fix the overstuffing problem of the first two books, but it also allows full stories to be told in one place. Near-complete histories that will be included in this book include the Santa Clara Mill & Lumber Company, the Molino Timber Company, the Loma Prieta Lumber Company, the Santa Cruz Portland Cement Company, all of the agricultural businesses in Watsonville and Pajaro, and so many others. Just like the first two books, Companies & Customers will include photographs and technical descriptions of private railroads, contextual information, and explanations of where and when these companies operated. Most importantly, this book will be cross referenced to the first two books in the series, so that people will know if there is a Companies & Customers article about a topic when they are reading Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains or Railroads of the Santa Cruz Coast. This means, however, that all three of these books need to release at about the same time, which may still be several years away (I’m giving no promises at this time).

The other problem that needed resolving was unanticipated and came directly out of Powell’s research and my own continuous dives into the obscure pre-railroad history of Santa Cruz County. Having read through Bruce MacGregor’s The Birth of California Narrow-Gauge, Rick Hamman’s California Central Coast Railways, and Jack Wagner’s The Last Whistle: Ocean Shore Railroad, I was led to believe that the pre-history of local railroads was relatively straightforward, if not uncomplicated. But while working through Powell’s books, I discovered just how complicated the pre-history truly was. At least SEVENTEEN railroad companies were incorporated between 1868 and 1907 that never built anything. About half had the stated goal of connecting Santa Cruz County to San Francisco along the coast (see my blog post about these here), while most of the remaining companies hoped to connect Santa Cruz to the Southern Pacific Railroad somewhere along its Coast Division. Only two railroads actually ever connected Santa Cruz to the Bay Area—the Santa Cruz Railroad (via Pajaro) and the South Pacific Coast Railroad (via San José). Two more, one being the infamous Ocean Shore Railroad, laid track north of Santa Cruz along the coast with stated goals of linking the city to San Francisco via Pescadero and Halfmoon Bay, but gave up before reaching their goals for various reasons.

In any case, it took little time for me to realize that a fourth ‘prequel’ book was needed to cover this history: Santa Cruz Trains: The Road to San Francisco. Unlike the other books in the series, this one will not be photo-heavy and will not focus on stations or rail traffic or any operations along Santa Cruz County’s railroad lines. Instead, it will focus on the journey it took to make the existing lines possible. How the demand for railroad connections between Santa Cruz and the Bay Area, especially San Francisco, drove company after company to incorporate and make grand sweeping promises that they would never deliver on. It will explore the personalities, both local and regional, that advocated and offered money for the railroads, and it will investigate the intricate political games that were being played between the Southern Pacific Railroad and those who wanted to create a future not dominated by one standard-gauge monopoly. Most importantly, it will examine the four proposed railroad routes out of Santa Cruz—the North Coast, the San Lorenzo Valley, Soquel Creek, and Pajaro Gap—and discuss why only two of the routes were ever constructed.

This fourth book will be the first book I write starting in 2023 since I want to write it before my academic writing quality declines (it’s been four years now since I received my PhD in History). It will also require the most research and analysis, and it will have the smallest pool of secondary sources. Indeed, about 90% of the book will be based on newspaper articles, editorials, letters to the editor, and advertisements derived from newspapers across the Central Coast. The remaining sources will be articles of incorporation, maps and plans (few of which exist), contemporary books and articles, and the small percentage of secondary source information where I can’t trace the original sources. Photos and figures will be slim, although I will likely include route plans where the route of the proposed railroads can be determined with relative accuracy from descriptions. Sections focused on the Ocean Shore Railway will have more images since construction was comparatively well photographed. The tentative outline for this book is as follows:

Brief history of early railroading in the San Francisco Bay Area (pre-1866)
Early discussions and debates in Santa Cruz County (1863-1868)
The San Lorenzo Railroad and the San Lorenzo Valley Railroad (1868-1874)
The California Central Railroad and the Santa Cruz & Watsonville Railroad (1868-1873)
Early coast railroad proposals (1863-mid-1870s)
Constructing the Santa Cruz & Felton Railroad and flume (1874-1876)
Constructing the Santa Cruz Railroad (1873-1876)
Soquel Creek railroad proposals (1868-1878)
The South Pacific Coast Railroad and the Felton & Pescadero Railroad (1874-1887)
Later coast railroad proposals (mid-1870s-1903)
The Ocean Shore Railroad and the Coast Line Railroad (1903-1912)
Later San Lorenzo Valley proposals (1887-1910s)
Later coast railroad proposals (1912-present)

I already have about 100 pages of newspaper quotes gathered, as well as several plans and photographs, so I am well on my way with this, but I don’t expect this book to be completed until 2024 at the earliest. It will take a lot more quotes and a lot of writing before I am ready to publish.

That’s it from me for 2022. I hope all of you have a happy holidays and I will be ready with a new Santa Cruz Trains blog post in early January. Cheers!