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Stations: Orby
Orby served as the Coast Line Railway’s primary team track south of Davenport, where rolling stock could park along its 2,600-foot-long (52 carlengths) siding that ran from a point slightly east of...
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Railroads: Dougherty Extension Railroad
The Santa Clara Valley Mill & Lumber Company’s mill had run out of timber. Since 1879, the company had been processing timber harvested from the headwaters of Zayante Creek 5.4 miles north of...
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Railroads: Failed Saratoga and New Almaden Railroads
The Bay Area was in the midst of railroad fever in the 1880s, with the South Pacific Coast Railroad driving interest in other niche lines to various locales, and Southern Pacific exploring potentially...
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Stations: Molino
The Southern Pacific Railroad did not employ the most creative naming scheme on its Loma Prieta Branch. Three stations have Spanish names, three are descriptive, and one is named after a property...
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Railroad: Southern Pacific's Pajaro Branch
Santa Cruz County had much to be thankful for on Thanksgiving Day, November 30, 1871. Following years of debate, investment, and disappointment, the county was finally connected to the rest of the...
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Stations: Brookdale
Few communities in the Santa Cruz Mountains are more shrouded in mystery and confusion than Brookdale. The village began life as Clear Creek, a descriptive name applied to the fast-running mountain...
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Stations: New Brighton
Much like Robroy to the east, New Brighton served as a resort flag stop throughout its entire existence, catering specifically to a hotel and campground situated on a coastal terrace roughly midway...
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Bridges: North Coast Fills
The greatest engineering feat in Santa Cruz County’s history still survives to this day, though most people think little of it if they notice it at all. From October 1905 to June 1907, the quarrelsome...
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Company: White and DeHart Company
Logging operations in the hills above Watsonville were a slower affair than similar harvesting efforts in the San Lorenzo Valley and along Aptos Creek and its tributaries. Yet that did not dissuade...
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Companies: Coast Drum and Box Company
In the decade after the closure of the San Vicente Lumber Company plant at the northwestern boundary of the City of Santa Cruz, several small agricultural-oriented businesses sprang up along the...
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Stations: Yellow Bank
Nine miles north of Santa Cruz, the coastal terrace narrows to such a point that the mountains of the Coast Range nearly fall into the Pacific Ocean. Here there is little room for agricultural fields,...
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Curiosities: Stagecoach Lines
Before the arrival of the railroad to the Monterey Bay, people used other modes of transportation to traverse the Santa Cruz Mountains and reach San Francisco. For some, the primary methods were...
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Companies: Maywood Manufacturing Company
Everett W. Eyer liked the name of his hometown so much that he brought it with him to Santa Cruz. In 1931, he began producing commercial-grade unfinished furniture from a small workshop in the south...
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Stations: Monte Vista
The Loma Prieta Branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad is the only line in the Santa Cruz Mountains where the terminus was substantially moved. Yet both of its terminal stations were given the same...
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Curiosities: Coastal Shipping
Santa Cruz County did not always have rail services. Before 1876, travel to the remote northern cove of the Monterey Bay was difficult, with roads sometimes impassible and seas too rough to travel....
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Stations: Watsonville Junction
Along the northern edge of Rancho Bolsa de San Cayetano, the gently meandering Pajaro River flows ever closer to the sea, leaving on both sides a vast, silted floodplain that provided the foundations...
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Stations: Nuga
Out on the fringe of Watsonville Slough, 0.5 miles from the nearest road, the Santa Cruz Railroad Company established its least known and most remote stop, a place that the Southern Pacific Railroad...
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Sources: Family History
The family history and genealogy industry is booming, with people now able to even analyse the DNA of their pets. In the United States and other former colonies with large populations descended from...
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Curiosities: Santa Cruz County's Borders
What is Santa Cruz County? It is perhaps a strange question since it seems easy to answer: Santa Cruz County is an administrative division on the California coast surrounded by Monterey, San Benito,...
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Bridges: Live Oak Area
The Santa Cruz Railroad had a goal—indeed a requirement—if it wanted to earn its first subsidy payment in 1874: it had to build 5 miles of operable railroad beginning in Santa Cruz and heading east....
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