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 the first utterings of an idea in 1854 to the full-blown debate around subsidies and routes that erupted in the early 1870s. The book also includes ten articles of incorporation, such as the Santa Clara & Pajaro Valley Railroad, which connected San José and Gilroy; the never-completed San Lorenzo Railroad, which was to connect Santa Cruz with Felton until Davis & Cowell filed an injunction against it; several of Frederick A. Hihn’s optimistic railroads, including the Santa Cruz & San José Railroad and the Santa Cruz & Watsonville Railroad; and a few coastal routes that were ahead of their time.
This book is what can inarguably be described as a chonky book at 771 pages. Granted, it’s also not much larger than a pocket book, so it balances thickness with a small height and width. The idea for it emerged about a year ago as I continued researching my future core book, Santa Cruz Trains: The Road to San Francisco, which is a history of railroading in Santa Cruz from its inception in the late 1860s to the ultimate failure of the Ocean Shore Railway in the 1910s. As my collection of transcribed quotes began to reach the hundreds of pages and hundreds of thousands of words, it seemed a waste to copy all these only for a small percentage of them to be cited or quoted in a future book. There’s so much material in these quotes that explore different aspects of local railroading, especially the debates and discussions that established the main routes through the Santa Cruz Mountains, up the Pajaro River, and up the North Coast. It became very obvious in late 2024 that there was plenty of material for a book—probably multiple books—so I began to strategize and assess what I already had.
I expect this Santa Cruz Sourcebook to be the first in a series of probably three books of similar size and scope. The first one, therefore, focuses on the years prior to the first successful railroad, the Santa Cruz Railroad, the prospectus for which was published in May 1873. This allows the story of local railroading to really build as discussions and debates increase exponentially and talk shifts from the idea of a railroad to the practical implementation of one (or several!). The second book, then, will focus on the actual construction of the county’s three main railroads: the Santa Cruz Railroad, the Santa Cruz & Felton Railroad, and the South Pacific Coast Railroad, May 1873–May 1880. Once a railroad is constructed and operating, its importance to the story (and to my quote gathering) decreases to almost uselessness unless something pivotal occurs, such as the purchase of the Santa Cruz & Felton Railroad by the South Pacific Coast Railroad in 1879. The third book will inevitably focus on a longer stretch of history and a more specific topic: the pursuit of a North Coast route. Parts of this story appear (or will appear) in the first two books, but the history of county railroading after 1880 really is a story of trying to build a railroad from Santa Cruz to San Francisco via Pescadero and Halfmoon Bay. This will cover a long period until at least the early 1910s, when the idea was largely abandoned due to financial considerations and declining interest. Because of the abundance of daily newspapers by the late 1880—Santa Cruz County had four dailies for about two decades—this book will inevitably also be the least thorough in its coverage, made worse by the fact that the topic is broader than just Santa Cruz County.
In the meantime, there is this first book, The Dream of Steam, 1854–1873. This book largely draws on the weekly Santa Cruz Sentinel, Santa Cruz [County] Times (alternatively Pajaro Times), and The Pajaronian for its sources, though it does include other sources when available and relevant. Every single available issue of the above three newspapers between 1854 and 1873 has been meticulously searched for references or even inferences to railroads in the county. Most quotes with even a passing relevance have been transcribed and included in this book. As noted earlier, the core audience for this book is me, Derek Whaley, so that I can have easier access to citations for use in my future book on the subject, The Road to San Francisco. But I suspect the book will also appeal to a lot of Santa Cruz County residents, especially those who have engaged in the past decades of railroad debates and politics. This book proves one thing, if nothing else: politics around the topic of local railroads is anything but a new subject. People in the early 1870s fought hard for and against the railroad and, more importantly, the idea of the county subsidizing construction and operations. When the population of the entire county was only around 7,000 people, asking them to pay $120,000 (about $3,125,000 today) is quite a hard sell. And when the Southern Pacific Railroad arrived in Pajaro in 1871, Watsonville suddenly didn’t feel it needed a railroad and was even more reluctant to subsidize one to Santa Cruz.
I’m not going to lie and say this is an easily accessible book, because it isn’t. The language used is 150+ years old and shows. Colloquialisms sometimes make little sense, racial slurs are present throughout, insults are highfalutin, political references sometimes make little sense, and articles are excessively long and detailed. Other than simple typo corrections and rare clarifications, this books sticks to the original text, including spelling, formatting, and punctuation. That’s because this is meant to serve as a faithful quotable source for historians researching this period and topic. Indeed, each article is given a unique number and its exact source, including page and column, so researchers can choose whether to cite this sourcebook by article number or cite the original source. A sourcebook is worth little if it can’t serve as a source.
Because of the low general interest and high price of production—it is nearly 800 pages after all!—I have decided against selling this book in stores unless requested, so it will remain an Amazon exclusive product unless demand convinces me otherwise. I have also decided to keep the price as low as I can manage to make it available to as many researchers as possible. If I were to release it more widely, the price would have to go up. While a second book in the series is almost inevitable—133,000 words and 250 pages are already written after all—a third book is largely dependent on the success and usefulness of this first one. And if you buy a copy, please be sure to leave a review on Amazon to let me and other researchers know what you like (or don’t like) about it!
Happy researching!
Santa Cruz Trains Sourcebook: The Dream of Steam, 1854–1873 is available now on Amazon.com.