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Call of the Wild near Eva Picnic Stop
(Map courtesy Duncan Nanney) |
Much like its neighbors Eva and Sunset Park,
Call of the Wild acted primarily as a Southern Pacific Railroad picnic stop, though it served other purposes as well. Located in the upper Los Gatos Creek basin, it was 60.3 miles south of San Francisco and only 0.3 miles south of Eva Picnic Stop. Call of the Wild does not appear in the 1899 Station Book and likely did not enter history until sometime after Jack London's 1903
The Call of the Wild, after which the site was likely named. Although the site dates to at least the 1910s, it did not appear on timetables until the 1920s, suggesting the location was a last-ditch effort to capitalize off of a picnic stop on the increasingly unprofitable Mountain Route. It seems to have been little used during most of its existence, acting as much as a brief freight loading zone as a tourist stop. The modest orchards nearby and the road to this stop made it an ideal place of exchange.
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Call of the Wild in the 1910s
(From Highway 17: The Road to Santa Cruz) |
The name "Call of the Wild" reminds many of the famous author Jack London. For many years he lived in the upper Los Gatos Creek area just north of the town of Patchen. The name of the stop here may have either inspired the name of his book,
The Call of the Wild, but, much more likely, was probably an homage to that work. Naming the site after the author's famous book both inspired romantic visions of the place and recognized London's former residence in the area. Although the tracks never went into the "Call of the Wild" region, the Southern Pacific recognized the potential profits to be made by such a name and likely placed the stop as close to the area as possible, likely with footbridge access to the community. London often vacationed at Feely Ranch, which was apparently in the area.
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| Call of the Wild in 1940, after the line had closed. |
The original station house, shown above, was a stylized log cabin with a porch wrapping around back. It was little more than a weather shed to keep people dry in the rain, but it served its purpose. The flag hanging outside was to notify trains to stop for a passenger or a freight load. Another extant photograph, at right, shows the abandoned station after 1940. There is a new weather shed made of plywood boards instead of logs, though a porch still wraps around the back. It is likely that this was built in the late 1920s or early 1930s when the Southern Pacific attempted to make money off of the area. In the photo, power lines are visible overhead but the tracks are overgrown from a decline in use. A railroad crossing sign beside the shed suggests that a road passed immediately beside the old station. From Google Maps, this may likely have been (or rather, become) Aldercroft Heights Road at the very end, which crosses the railroad right-of-way north of Lexington Reservoir. Rick Hamman's
California Central Coast Railways notes that the flag-stop was formally closed in June 1933 alongside Clems, but this is contradicted by a SPRR timetable which notes the stop in 1937.
Citations:- Richard A. Beal, Highway 17: The Road to Santa Cruz (Pacific Group, 1991).
- Rick Hamman, Central Coast Railways (Pruett, 1980).
