Historic Sights in Felton

Felton

The Town of Felton | The Track to Santa Cruz and the History of Railroading | A Day at Roaring Camp

The Town of Felton

Probably Felton’s most historic and graceful building, the old Church is now a branch of the County Library. The library will be moving out, and a comunity group is seeking a new role for the structure.


The Felton Covered Bridge, the eastern entrance.	Inside the covered bridge.
The covered bridge was once Felton’s only road link with Santa Cruz. The current route of Highway 9 wasn’t a road until much later. The bridge remained in use until the 1930’s when a concrete span was built to carry Graham Hill road across the San Lorenzo River.

This inconsequential intersection of privately maintained roads in Felton marks the Southwestern Boundary of the Mexican land grant for the Rancho Zayante. This Rancho may have been the only one of the Mexican Land grants in the area that was improperly claimed. John Majors, who had acquired Mexican citizenship, applied for and received the grant in 1841. He later divulged that he had done so on behalf of Isaac Graham and his partners. Graham’s reputation would probably have precluded him from achieving Mexian citizenship, his personal prejudices prevented him from applying.

The Rancho included all of what is now downtown Felton and Graham established the infamous “Roaring Camp” (so named because of the rowdy noise generated there) on the hill that bears his name.

Hihn Street in Felton runs away from the San Lorenzo River and Highway 9. As it crosses Hillside Road, the land begins to slope up the flank of Ben Lomond Mountain. The land on the downhill side of Hillside lay within Rancho Zayante. Frederick A. Hihn acquired the land on the uphill side and put a Lime Kiln there. The kiln is gone now, replaced by a quiet neighborhood.

Kirby and Gushee Streets in Felton.

Edward Stanly, Isaac Graham’s lawyer, acquired Rancho Zayante on Graham’s death. Stanly laid out the town and gave it its name in 1868. Felton was named for John Brooks Felton, (1827-77) who was mayor of Oakland, a UC Regent and twice unsuccessful candidate for US Senate. Gushee was the real estate agent who sold lots on Stanly’s behalf.

We wonder if Kirby Street might have been named for Georgiana Bruce Kirby, one of the county’s first feminists. She was friends with Susan B. Anthony and other noted members of the movement.

Her journal includes this quote, dated Jan. 26, 1860, “My thoughts in those days ran on the freedom of women-on what slaves we are and have been to the decisions of men. A hundred years hence it will be looked on with astonishment that a woman is prevented by public opinion from having a child unless she finds someone whom she wishes to accept as master for life.&quo;

A troubled crossing?

Zayante (in addition to Aptos and Soquel) is one of three names still in use that can be traced back to Indian origins. How ironic that this road intersects one named for Isaac Graham, one of the more intolerant and belligerent figures in the county’s history.

There are reports that Graham Hill road near this intersection is one of the most accident-prone stretches of pavement in the county.

The Track Between Santa Cruz and Roaring Camp
And the History of Railroading in the Monterey Bay Region

Railroads liberated the Monterey Bay region from the slow, expensive, difficult necessity of freight transportation by sea. In 1870 schooner and stagecoach were the only transportation options. Less than twenty years later the entire region had been railroadedÑin every sense of the word. Farmers and whole towns found themselves hostage to the Southern Pacific. Freight rates were whatever the station agent read off the rate sheet. In the few cases where serious competition was mounted, the SP dropped rates until the competition went broke--then bought their track at the bankruptcy auction.

Railroads enabled the logging industry to accelerate its output, and its deforestation of the region’s redwood-covered hills. Prior to the arrival of railroads, logs were hauled out of the hills in trains of redwood trunks, chained end to end, pulled by teams of oxen. Loggers built roads of skids to reduce friction. As the log trains moved toward the mill, one man had to grease the skids th logs slid upon. Narrow gauge railroads, like the one in this photograph, in combination with the steam-powered winch, changed all that.

Narrow gauge railroads are able to negotiate sharper turns and steeper grades than the wider, standard gauge, and so are better suited to hauling loads down mountain canyons. The last of the areas forests to be invaded by rail was Aptos canyon, the contemporary Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. Here, the SP went into the logging business. Incredibly they ran standard gauge rail line up the canyon. Since the larger trains couldn’t follow the land’s contours, they had the Chinese rail workers cut new ones. Those cuts, and some remaining railroad ties, can still be seen along some of the hiking trails in the park.

By the early twentieth century virtually every tree that could be cut and sawn profitably had been removed. Only a few groves including those Big Basin and Henry Cowell Redwoods State Parks were preserved. The only operating narrow gauge railroad in the region, the Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad in Felton, runs on land once owned by the region’s first major logger, Isaac Graham. Ironically, that land, where Graham located his notorious Roaring Camp, was never logged either.

The region’s first passenger lines were also narrow gauge, as the lines were faster and cheaper to construct. When enough track was laid (and bought up by SP)that one could buy a ticket from Santa Cruz to San Francisco a round trip was reduced from five days by stage to just one.

Where’s the Chinese stuff?

With the exception of two short sections of tunnel, Chinese immigrants laid every foot of track in the Monterey Bay region during the 1800s. They dug or blasted all of the grade cuts, sustained injury and even death on the job, and were, in general, hated by local residents. Sentinel editor Duncan McPherson described them, in print, as “rat-eating, entrail-sucking Celestials.” An 1879 referendum on Chinese immigration saw 99.9% of ballots cast “against.” (No that’s not a typo).

By the time Chinese began to arrive here, they were barred from achieving citizensip. Except in Monterey, almost no Chinese families settled here. They were the state’s first migrant labor pool. Local Chinatowns burned and were never rebuilt, as the male workers ultimately were driven back to China, or died. The visible record of their presence in the region has been wiped uncannily clean. The gray box, above, is included here to represent that absence of evidence.

A graphic representation of how small towns of the Monterey Bay region felt as the Southern Pacific completed its monopoly on rail transportation in 1886.

Prof. Sandy Lydon and the members of his last History 25B class pose on the tracks up to Felton, with the official flag of the County of Santa Cruz. This is near Encinal St, in the Potrero ("pasture"), north of Harvey West Park. The tracks run through the photo from right to left.

	Impression in the concrete footing of the trestle on the Felton-to-Santa Cruz rail line.
Walking the largest trestle on the Felton-to-Santa Cruz rail line. The trestle was rebuilt in 1942 after the damaging winter rains of 1941 damaged it forced the closure of the line north of Felton to San Jose.


A hiker checks in via cell phone while walking over a bridge built to support technology of an entirely different era. The steel girders overhead bear the year 1909.	Great place for a wreck? Inspiration point has wrecked a lot more than cars with ugly paint jobs. On May 23, 1880 one of the very first passenger trains from San Jose, carrying tourists headed for the beach, derailed here, killing 15 people. By 1915 automobiles carrying tourists over the Glenwood Highway (later Highway 17) had replaced the train. But even at its worst, Highway 17 had few accidents per capita than the trains of the late 19th century.	Tree hugging in the Big Trees Grove. This is one of the few old growth redwood groves that was never logged. Almost as soon as the first tourist trains from San Jose started running to the beach in Santa Cruz, these trees were a major attraction along the route. At the same time the last and most inaccessible canyons were being clearcut. As the conservation movement gained popularity, Teddy Roosevelt visited this grove.


Kid stuff? A boy enjoys a locomotive-turned playground attraction. This relic of the 19th century’s most powerful technology sits in Dennis the Menace Park in Monterey.	Big Trees & Pacific freight train. The Clarks’Roaring Camp Railroad bought rights to the track between Felton and Santa Cruz from SP after another storm—the gully washer of 1982— damaged the line again. They now run this freight train, and a passenger train to the Beach Boardwalk.

A Day at Roaring Camp
And a Ride on the Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad

The Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad streaking through the redwood forest. When trains like this one first ran through this stand of old growth, reaching out to touch one of the big trees was a great attraction.

The Roaring Camp Covered Bridge is a 1969 reconstruction of a 100 year old design. It is one of three covered bridges in the San Lorenzo Valley. The other two are authentic 19th century historic structures.

"Sonora," one of the narrow gauge steam locomotives at the Roaring Camp & Big Trees Railroad

Engineer waters a steam locomotive.

Georgiana Clark, Owner of Roaring Camp.

Georgiana’s late husband Norman had the dream to re-create an 1880Õs logging railroad as tourist/historical attraction. He bought land in 1958, which had been Isaac GrahamÕs. There may have been a saloon on the land, whence the name Roaring Camp. Clark laid track in the 1960Õs. Until 1976, the mountain train ran over an elaborate trestle system. The soaring trestle burned in an arson fire during the drought of 1976.

In 1996 a skeleton was found during routine brush clearing in Roaring Camp, on the slopes of Graham Hill. Found on the corpse were: a gold watch, glasses, fully loaded Colt revolver in the right hand, a “pumpkin seed bottle” which had held morphine or Laudanum. A .44 bullet had shattered the lower left of rib cage. The dead person had been lying in wait for someone else, who appeared behind them, and got off the first, fatal shot. Inspection by anthropologists yielded a surprise: the person, as indicated by bone structure, was a woman.

But SAAANDY, Who’s Driving the Train?

Prof. (of History, not Mechanical Engineering) Lydon, waves a last goodbye to his students. The students were, as ever, right behind Sandy in the passenger cars.

We believe Sandy was shouting something to his wife about the location of their wills.

Prof. Sandy Lydon, about to take the controls of a narrow gauge steam locomotive. The real engineer, at right, had just warned the class about what happens when one of these explodes.

Careening around a tight bend in the Redwood forest, Lydon finally admits “I dunno how it works!”