Movie Night XXIX: The Santa Cruz Mountains Come Down

Winter was a hard time for the railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The region can get a lot of rain, often at biblical levels. The area's unstable geology also ensures that the mountains really want to get to the beach as soon as possible. Every season will have some mudslides, washed away roads, and hillsides moving in ways that hillsides aren't supposed to move. However, in the bad years - the year of the Santa Cruz line's closure in 1940, the winter of 1982, and several other instances - the Santa Cruz Mountains won't get back to normal for months... if ever.

This winter has been a wet winter - worse than most, but luckily not quite to the level of 1982 or 1940. The recent fires in the Santa Cruz Mountains don't help for ground or tree cover though. As a reminder of how bad this winter was, and how much the Santa Cruz Mountains don't want to continue being mountains, we can look at this "Tour de Disaster video by Larry Rairden. Larry biked around the Santa Cruz Mountains last month to check out the damage, and his photos and videos highlight last year's damage and hint at why the Los Gatos-Santa Cruz branch of the SP isn't around any more.

When you're watched that, check out this video from a PG&E lineman watching a full sized redwood tree and hillside moving in ways neither should move.

Read more about Larry's adventures in the San Jose Mercury News's article about his adventures.

Rebuilding Glenwood

A string of maintenance-of-way gondolas heads uphill.

Like I mentioned last time, long-suffering Glenwood got some serious rework recently. I had some good reasons to finally return to Glenwood. The ProRail invitational was going to be in San Jose in April (before COVID-19), and the visitors from around the US deserved to see the layout at its best. I needed a distraction from work, and wanted some projects that could fill a weekend.

I also had several years of pent-up frustration waiting to be unleashed. Glenwood’s also an old part of my layout; I laid the track on the upper level about two years into the layout, and roughed in some scenery. The model doesn’t accurately capture the real location. It’s not up to my later standards for prototype scenes. It's not eye-catching enough to be a focal point for the layout. Glenwood’s also in a darker corner of the layout, and in a location that’s not central to model railroad operations, so it’s never gotten a lot of scrutiny. Glenwood deserved better.

But being generically dissatisfied is one thing; I need a list of things to fix. Let’s run through the problems at Glenwood.

Glenwood before the rework.

Problems with Glenwood:

• The road’s unrealistic, just badly-levelled Sculptamold on foam scenery, with sheer drops and no shoulders.
• The building just above the tracks isn’t prototypical; although there was a small house there, the building on stilts doesn’t match the location, nor does it look realistic for the 1920’s. It also draws attention away from the prototype portions of the scene, hiding that great curve into the cut and tunnel.
• I'd built a station building, but it’s a coarse plastic model. There’s none of the maintenance of way buildings or outbuildings seen on the maps.
• The grassy hillside doesn’t quite match reality; prototype photos show more trees. The grassy hillside doesn't hide the unprototypical terrain, and misses the chance for trees as a view block to frame the scene.

So my plans? Tear out the hillside, improve the tunnel entrance, make the scene more realistic overall, and detail the station area.

Redoing Scenery

Step one was ripping out a bunch of bad scenery - taking out the hillside, the cut, and the house-on-stilts.

Before any of that, I took a pass at a bunch of other unfinished business. The turnout in front of the tunnel was a frequent derailment site. I ripped out the track, leveled it out with spackle, and relaid the track. The old Tortoise switch machine was a problem; it stuck out too far below the bottom of the deck, and was difficult to adjust. I swapped it out for one of the tiny MP-5 switch machines. I also took this opportunity to check on the track in the tunnel, pulling up even more track, using spackle to again ensure the roadbed was as level as possible, laid the track better, and sealed in the tunnel so that stray light didn’t ruin the illusion of a tunnel through a mountain.

With the track done, I hit the rough scenery.

The new hillside started out with the focal point: the road climbing over the hill and curving around the top of the tunnel portal. This road’s actually the Glenwood Highway, the first paved road across the Santa Cruz Mountains, and first state highway over the mountains. The Glenwood Highway, built between 1912 and 1921, split off from the current Highway 17 on the ridge between Glenwood and Laurel, dropped down into the Bean Creek canyon, then headed through Glenwood towards Scotts Valley. The concrete road, 15 to 17 feet wide, had banked curves and oiled shoulders. It was the height of modern highway design. When the Glenwood Highway was widened in 1939, the town wasn’t big enough for the highway and the railroad; the SP lost that battle, and the depot was torn down to encourage more space for cars. The current route of Highway 17 later won out, but the jazz-era Glenwood Highway still remains if you drive through Glenwood today.

Road during rework.

Road after rework.

Old photos show the key details of the Glenwood Highway: precise curves and straightaways, the odd slalom around the top of the tunnel portal, and an even descent. I followed an approach I’d used elsewhere. I’d started by roughing out scenery to match the rough slope I wanted, and tore out as much of the old road as I could. As I’ve done elsewhere, I used 1/16” styrene sheet for the roadway, scribed with expansion lines. I cut the styrene at the workbench so I made sure curves were accurate and straightaways were smooth. I glued the sheet to the scenery with Liquid Nails contact cement, and used weights and straight lumber to keep the road flat until it dried. Once the road was glued in place, I used Sculptamold and spackle to finish the fills and shoulders.

Time for detailing the scene.

SP 84 heading out of Glenwood tunnel towards Santa Cruz.

SP 31 coming out of tunnel.

This photo of train 84 coming out of the tunnel shows that the bottom of the canyon had a bunch of pine trees in the 1920's. I'd always intended to capture scenes like this: the conifers in the canyon, oak trees higher up, and the privacy screen of trees between the highway and the railroad tracks. Rearranging the hillside and roadway helped this a bit. Filling in undergrowth and deciduous trees is easy; I've been using either Supertrees or Woodland Scenics Fine-Leaf Foilage. The redwoods and other conifers were more of a problem. I'd covered the hillside around Wrights with Woodland Scenics conifers, but I'd found these slow and tedious to build. I'd started trying to do the same at Glenwood, but eventually figured out that gluing tufts of sponge to the plastic armatures was not how I wanted to spend my hobby hours. Luckily, I'd gone to a model railroad train show right before COVID-19 struck. Grand Central Gems out of San Diego was there with their pre-made trees; I bought a few bags of tall pines, and loved how quickly I managed to get the scene finished. I bought a couple more bags later, quickly filling the hillside. I've always been cheap and unwilling to buy pre-made trees, but spending less than a locomotive to get this scene finished was worth it. With enough trees, it was also easy to give the look of separate areas of fields separated by tree lines. Static grass and a barbed wire fence made of wood posts and fishing line completed the scene.

Turntable:

In the earliest track plans for the Vasona Branch, I’d sketched in a location for the pit for the former South Pacific Coast turntable. Glenwood had been a key spot for narrow gauge lumber traffic; many short trains would carry lumber up to Glenwood; from here, a single engine could pull a longer train through the summit tunnel and down to the Santa Clara Valley. One of Bruce MacGregor’s South Pacific Coast books mentioned the filled-in turntable, so I added it to the track plan as an interesting bit of history. I’d cut a half-moon hole in the homesite for the turntable at a convenient location when I first laid track.

In the last episode, I mentioned finding the valuation maps and spotting the actual location. There were actually two turntables. The one at north end of town that apparently was filled in and tracked over during standard gauge times. The other turntable was at the far end of the siding, hanging over creek edge. Neither matched my guess when I'd first sketched the track plan.

I’d already cut the notch in the layout for the turntable in… oh, 2005, and wasn’t up to moving it. Stories claim the turntable was mostly filled in, but I took the existing hole, added stained balsa wood around to support it, added some debris on the bottom, and called it a day. It'll be a good location to throw whatever clutter I happen to have kicking around.

Glenwood Station:

I scratch built the Glenwood depot using some existing plans, and inference from photos. Gary Cavaglia published plans for the Glenwood depot in the March/April 2003 Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette. His drawing laid out the original narrow gauge depot building from the 1870's. That building contained a waiting room and tiny baggage area, and was completely sided in shiplap siding. All the photos from the times I model show a different structure. Apparently, the station was extended some time before standard gauging. The 1920's station extended the office portion of the station, built on a long addition for baggage and freight, and added a large raised freight platform matching SP's standard station designs. The station, however, kept many of the details seen in other SPC depots in Alviso, Agnews, Alma, and Wrights: similar doors, roof supports, and roof peak decorations.

Cavaglia’s drawings of the depot gave me the rough shape: walls were 12 feet tall; the gable peaked at 17 feet, and end walls were 14 feet wide. The drawings also laid out the rough sides of the passenger section. During the reconstruction, a door moved; I assumed the windows stayed in the same location. Using these measurements and various expectations (doors 30” wide, windows three feet off the ground) I could infer other measurements. The waiting room originally had two windows with a door between; later photos show a solid wall and a door to the right. Apparently, the reconstruction kept windows in the same locations but blocked up the original door location.

The later extension to the freight side of the depot was board-and-batten which made guessing at lengths easier - the battens appeared to be spaced 12” apart, so I could make guesses about the overall length of the extension. I sized the freight dock to the space available on the layout, rather than the size of the prototype’s.

SketchUp model of Glenwood Station

I sketched the whole model in SketchUp because I could do so quickly - I already had 3d models for the SP-style windows, so putting together the rough shape was fast. Once I had a rough model, I could compare it to photos and confirm that it looked about right. I could have done the same with pencil sketches or with a cardboard model.

I built the model using sheet styrene, window and door castings from my hobby stash, and vacuum-formed shingle material from Plastruct. I was lucky that all the supplies were already in my hobby stash, for I started the model just as the Covid-19 shelter-in-place started here in Silicon Valley. Like many of the SP stations I built, I used the Grandt Line 5031 windows (12 pane double-hung windows) to match the main windows, and the narrower Grandt Line 5029 windows for the sides of the operator’s bay. (I use those windows a lot, so my box-of-windows-for-projects usually has some on-hand.) I scratchbuilt the freight doors from styrene sheet. It doesn’t take a lot of styrene to be able to knock off one of these models; I usually keep a couple sheets of board-and-batten material, a couple sheets of shiplap, and then strip styrene in 1x4, 6x6, 2x6, and 2x8 dimensions, and that’s all that’s needed for most buildings. I also keep large sheets of 1/16” sheet styrene from TAP Plastics because it’s cheap and useful for bases or backing support. I also had some very beefy .156 x .250 sticks of styrene; these turned out to be really handy for building up a base for the loading dock. I could have done the same with Plexiglas, but that would have required shopping, and also required using power tools in the garage. Building from styrene let me build quickly with just a #11 X-acto knife, a square, and a straightedge.

Overall, scratch building a model like this is quick - probably a week of evenings including design and painting. The worst part is cutting out the window openings. If you haven’t tried scratch building, find some simple building, get $25 in plastic from your favorite hobby store, and start cutting!

Maintenance of Way Buildings

Who was around in Glenwood? Even with the large station, Glenwood never attracted the business one would expect; it didn’t become a wine center, didn’t have a major lumber industry, never attracted farmers. The August 1916 Southern Pacific payroll on ancestry.com showed Campbell station had an agent, warehouseman, and clerk, and apparently had a part time “fruit checker”. Wrights had an agent and warehouseman in their little hamlet. Meanwhile, Glenwood’s large station only had Alfred Feldt, operator, making $80 a month. Feldt eventually moved to San Lucas; in 1920, Edom N. Davis had the agent role. The abandonment proceedings in 1939 declared that only 196 people lived in the Glenwood area.

The section gang was a big chunk of that population during the teens and twenties. 1916 payroll records show six laborers and a foreman in Glenwood, reminding us that the section housing and work sheds deserve to be prominent. The August 1916 records show similar section crews at Campbell, Los Gatos, Wright, and Santa Cruz. The 1916 crew included V. Simoni as foreman, P. Simoni as watchman (perhaps for the tunnel), and G. Simi, M. Mariani, J. Jilla, A. Scarponei, U. Balleroni, and G. Berlacgua on the crew. The 1920 census showed a similar crowd: Benjamin Capp, Vigellio Elli, Toni Gianti, G. Luciano, Joseph Menta, Sam Chientilli, and Angelo Fideli. The railroad apparently was a good gig for the new immigrants. A separate continent of Mexican workers listed their occupation as wood choppers in the same census pages. Valuation maps don't show housing for the workers, but a few 1920's photos show what appear to be bunk cars on the siding next to the tunnel. Twenty years later, a Vernon Sappers photo of the Felton depot in 1935 shows maintenance of way bunk cars on the siding behind the Felton station, suggesting the maintenance of way workers moved closer to the bright lights of civilization.

I'd hoped on hinting at the folks who worked in Glenwood. I've got some bunk car models (care of Jason Hill of Owl Mountain Models fame), but I hoped I could include the section house where the foreman lived. Unfortunately, I'd started figuring out a location too late - I already had the station and an Atlas water tank in their rough locations. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out an arrangement that didn't appear too crowded. Instead, I added a tool house built from a A&LW Lines laser-cut kit, and an outhouse next to a privacy fence.

Scenery improved? Check. Unrealistic buildings removed? Check. Prototype station in place? Check. Tons of trees? Check. Glenwood was always a place I modeled because I wanted to capture the real look - the curve into the tunnel, the redwoods, and the interaction of the new highway and the old railroad. It’s now got that look I intended.

End of the Line, From the Editorial Pages

Eighty years ago, the last trains went along the Los Gatos-Santa Cruz line. It’s hard to remember with this bone-dry February, but January and February are usually the wet months here in California. Some of those years are wetter than average. Some years, we’ll get a couple good storms; we’ll hear about Highway 17 being closed for a day or two. Some years, storms can wash out the road to Big Sur or Half Moon Bay, and limit access for days or weeks. Some years, the rain comes down at biblical scale.

We’ve all heard the stories about how the Los Gatos line closed. There was a big storm in late February 1940 that washed out the railroad in several places. The SP didn’t want to keep the line open. The ICC abandonment decision highlighted just how little business was on the line, and how little traffic was being carried across the Santa Cruz mountains. Away goes the railroad, away goes the route between Los Gatos and Santa Cruz, away go the tunnels and bridges. Stories in various books hint at how the summit tunnel was either blown up by the army for demolition training or to get rid of a nuisance.

At best, those books cover the story in a paragraph or so. We don’t really know if the army blew up the tunnels to protect us against Japanese saboteurs, or Red Lectroids of Planet 10; we don’t know how bad the storm was. We don't know if the people of Santa Cruz fought the decision, and how bad the damage was. Luckily, here in the 21st century, we can rely on materials beyond what’s in the books in the hobby shop or sources at our local library. The University of California, Riverside’s California Digital Newspaper Collection now has copies of the Santa Cruz Sentinel from the 1940’s, so with a little bit of searching, we can easily learn more about what was really happened.

Although MacGregor’s “South Pacific Coast” quotes March 4 as the day of the last train, it looks like the storm - and the last train - was actually February 27, 1940. And this wasn’t a small storm, from descriptions the next day.

From the February 28, 1940 Santa Cruz Sentinel:

“One of the greatest river floods in the history of Santa Cruz - and undoubtedly the most destructive - smashed its way through the San Lorenzo Valley yesterday, bearing logs, branches, dead animals, furniture, and debris from ruined summer homes and bridges. With county damage conservatively estimated at $500,000, there were at least 100 Santa Cruzans rendered temporarily homeless by the swirling yellow flood.
“Fed by a cloudburst which brought 11.57 inches of ran to Ben Lomond in 24 hours, the muddy river first jumped its banks here at 2 a.m. and reached its peak about 6 o’clock last night…. An all-time record for high water was believed set with a 25 foot rise at Paradise Park.
“The thundering flood swept out 100-foot River Glen Bridge at Boulder Creek, then hurtled downstream, taking out the Zayante, Cooper, and Ocean street bridges on its path to the sea. Simultaneously slides tore out telephone connections with Boulder Creek and choked the San Lorenzo drive. Severely hit were Paradise Park [the Masonic summer cabin neighborhood on the site of the former California Powder Works], a number of resorts and auto courts on the outskirts of the city, outer River Street and the entire Ocean-Barson street where some two score families were forced to flee.
…
Old-timers were divided as to whether or not the flood was the greatest in history. Former Mayor Fred Swanton said it outclassed the big waters of 1898 and 1907, but redoubtable Ernest Otto swore he had seen bigger floods - the time, for instance, when driftwood was carried to the very doors of Hackley Hall. He did not deny, however, that this was the most destructive because of greater business and residential development.

…

For most of the day Santa Cruz was virtually isolated. All Peerless stages were forced to cancel their runs over the Los Gatos highway, and the Southern Pacific routed trains by way of Watsonville Junction. The Watsonville roads by way of Chittenden and Hecker passes were closed, as was the Ocean Shore route. For a time the only road out of the city was by way of Hunter’s hill and Salinas.”

That 11 inches of rainfall in Ben Lomond is a heck of a lot of rain; it's only been equalled forty years later on January 4, 1982. If you’re a Bay Area kid of a certain age, you probably remember the winter of 1981-1982. The San Lorenzo flooded. Brookdale Lodge’s dining room, with the creek running through it, went on a rampage in 1982, replaying the flood in 1940 that “smashed gaping holes in the rear and front of the dining room by mid-day (S.C. Sentinel, 28 Feb 1940). Ten people died near Ben Lomond when a huge section of hillside broke loose and tore through a cluster of houses in the redwoods. The same storm blocked blocked highway 101 and the Waldo Grade in Marin County for days, and flooded San Anselmo. I remember teachers living in Marin couldn’t make it to my high school for days. The 1982 storm was big enough that the USGS even wrote a report about it.

So yeah, the horrible storm of 1982 gives us an idea how extreme 1940 would have been. Thank goodness neither year coincided with the great Santa Cruz vampire infestation of 1986, though at least there would have been plenty of material for stakes on the beach.

Santa Cruz wasn’t the only place suffering from that storm. The February 28, 1940 issue of the Santa Cruz Sentinel also highlighted similar problems around California. The governor declared flood emergencies in the Sacramento Valley. The Napa river flooded town. “300 persons in a federal migrant camp [in Winters] were marooned after two feet of water swept through their temporary shelters.”

The news wasn’t any better the next day. The February 29, 1940 Santa Cruz Sentinel showed photos of the damage: logs and deadwood on all the beaches and riverside, ropes and pulleys carrying groceries across the river between Lompico and Zayante. The Old San Jose road was blocked. William Turver’s 1500 hens broke loose after their chicken house was destroyed by flood waters, “found roosting on the roofs of sheds and houses yesterday.” Boulder Creek’s water supply was lost when the pipe to the main supply tank broke. 35 homes at Paradise Park summer cabins were damaged by floodwaters, with another 10 destroyed outright. A covered bridge at Paradise Park survived, but a mattress in a nearby tree hinted at the heights of the flood waters.

There were also stories from abroad. Pescadero flooded. Marysville flooded. Shops on Hearst Ave. on Berkeley’s north side had a foot of mud dumped on their floors.

A. L. Andrews, the Santa Cruz general traffic agent for the SP, announced it would be a week before traffic could be resumed over the mountains, with significant slides at Rincon Hill (on the Santa Cruz side) and several larger slides on the Los Gatos side. Meanwhile, Southern Pacific had other worries: Gerber and Tehama flooded, and rail traffic between California and Oregon had been halted by slides and washouts.

Friday, March 1 leads off with “Santa Cruz Not Alone in Watery Disaster”, with pictures of flooding at Marysville. The Los Gatos road was “open but muddy”, with “delays at the bottleneck near Los Gatos were from 10 minutes to half an hour.” The railroad was still a week from opening.

The Railroad Isn’t Coming Back

There’s nothing else about the railroad until March 7. Below a headline about the Queen Elizabeth steamship outrunning U-boats, we find:

“S.P. Surveys Mountain Line
Deny Closing of Historic Run; May Rebuild Stretch
San Francisco, March 6 (AP) - The Southern Pacific headquarters here said today railroad engineers were surveying the Los Gatos-Santa Cruz line to determine whether to make temporary repairs - as has been done previously in slide and washout areas in that sector - or to rebuild the stretch in a manner to forestall future tie-ups.
Train service between Los Gatos and Santa Cruz was disrupted in last week’s storm. The San Jose - Los Gatos line is open, and buses now carry passengers from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz. Buses also operate the S.P.’s Watsonville Junction to Santa Cruz.
The rail line office here said there was no indication that the Los Gatos-Santa Cruz strip would be abandoned. They said the engineers’ report probably wold be completed next week.
TWO LOSE JOBS HERE
Previous to the San Francisco notification above, reports were current in Santa Cruz that the mountain line might be discontinued indefinitely owing to the lack of year-around business and cost of repairs between Olympia and Los Gatos. [The precision of those endpoints makes me suspect the rumors were awfully correct.]
An informed source said it would cost between $50,000 and $75,000 to repair trouble caused by the recent storm. Near Glenwood a large section of earth sank from beneath the tracks.
Meantime, the two maintenance men at the local S. P. yard were notified that their jobs here had ended. They are Charles F. Berlin of 531 Mission street, employed here for some 13 years, and Malcolm Henderson of 75 1/2 Washington. Berlin is day engine watchman, and Henderson has had the night shift.
It was also reported that the engine pits, used for maintenance, have been filled in.
The mountain line has been closed for eight days and Greyhound buses are leaving at 7:05 am and 6:10 pm to connect with the regular train at Los Gatos. Buses take passengers from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz, arriving at 11:25 am and 6:50 pm.
The maintenance crew left the city yesterday after repairing the mountain road as far as Olympia where some 250 cars of sand for “traction” use are taken out monthly. Freight is not affected by the temporary shutoff of the mountain service, since most of this goes by way of Watsonville Junction.
Historic Old Line
The historic mountain route opened as a narrow gauge railways in the late seventies and was then known as the Dumbarton road. It was then routed to San Jose, and at Santa Clara it went up the west side of the bay by way of Alviso, Newark, Alvarado, and Agnew, across on a drawbridge to Alameda, where passengers transferred to ferry for San Francisco.
Later when the Southern Pacific took it over and widened it to broad gauge, it went up the east side of the bay and through the Mission district. In those days there were three trains daily and special additions on week-ends. They generally carried from three to eight coaches in contrast to the slight traffic of recent years. They stopped regularly at stations at Felton, Glenwood, Laurel, Wrights, Alma, and Los Gatos, Eblis, Rincon, Big Trees, Mount Hermon, Olympia, and Zayante. Most of these stations have long since vanished, although the train would stop when and if passengers requested.

Meanwhile, the San Lorenzo Valley Chamber of Commerce, rightfully worried that the S.P. had decided to drown the line, set up its own committee to talk with the S.P.

Everyone held their breath while waiting for the SP to make its decision. The March 19 paper quoted shippers complaining about rates: shipments from Seattle cost 30 cents per 100 lbs to San Jose, but cost 37 cents to Santa Cruz (with no details on exactly what was being shipped.) The local businessmen argued for a better rate.

The true “beginning of the end” occurredd on March 26: “S. P. May Abandon Historic Rail Line”:

S. P. May Abandon Historic Rail Line
Younger Heatedly Hits Long Neglect
Officials Reverse Recent Story; Now Say Storm Damage, Loss Each Year Is Mounting
Santa Cruz was stunned yesterday by announcement that Southern Pacific has placed before the Interstate Commerce Commission a request to eliminate passenger train service between this city and Los Gatos.
That this city was unprepared for the announcement may be attrabuted [sic] to the fact that the Southern Pacific officials, interviewed 10 days ago in San Francisco by an Associated Press correspondent for the Sentinel said abandonment of train service between Santa Cruz and Los Gatos was not being considered.
F. C. Lathrop, general passenger agent, and J. J. Jordan, superintendent of the coast division, flanked by other officials, hurried down from San Francisco to explain in the wake of an early morning release from the company’s publicity department.
On short notice the chamber of commerce called a special luncheon meeting of directors at the St. George hotel, where the railroad representatives fenced with the opposition of Donald Younger and Adriel Fried.
Would Save $50,000
Lathrop told the luncheon gathering of 40 that abandonment of the 15 mile branch line from Los Gatos to Olympia would save the company $50,000 a year in out-of-pocket losses, that bus service will be improved in substitution for loss of trains, that freight service will be continued between Olympia and Santa Cruz, and that the Suntan and tourist specials will be routed into Santa Cruz via Watsonville.
Mayor C. D. Hinkle said he preferred to hear a thorough analysis of Southern Pacific’s problems “before offering any criticism.”
Mrs. Rose Rostron, supervisor of Branciforte district, expressed the opinion that Santa Cruz would be stepping backwards by loss of the service, suggesting that most travelers preferred the train to busses.
Donald Younger spurred debate with the charge that the Southern Pacific has reduced its service gradually through the years with a view towards eventual abandonment. “You have done everything to discourage passenger traffic over the mountains from Los Gatos,” he said. “The line into Santa Cruz has been badly mismanaged. While we have tried to provide you with more freight in exchange for promised improvement in passenger service, you have not given us your share of co-operation. You are giving us your figures and this is a stacked meeting. The chamber of commerce should appoint a committee to make a thorough investigation prior to the hearing before the railroad commission. It is the history of the Southern Pacific that you have made progress only when forced to.
Might Save State Money
He charged the Southern Pacific had not been fair in withholding announcement of their intentions at a time when the state was spending a huge sum to erect a viaduct above the company’s tracks between the Oaks sanitarium and Los Gatos. If it had been know that the line was to be abandoned, he claimed, the highway department could have saved the expense of the span.”
“I think you have been a little severe in your charges,” answered Lathrop. “As far as the figures are concerned, you can get all the information you want from the railroad commission. We are seeking to adjust our operations and our service to changed transportation conditions and changed habits and demands of the public. In certain new phases of transportation we are making some notable progress in providing service that the public generally welcomes and by its patronage will make profitable to the railroad. We have been earning only 18 cents per train mile on passenger trains in and out of Santa Cruz as compared with a cost of $1.50 per train mile. On average no more than six persons have been riding each train on the Santa Cruz line. It would cost us about $50,000 to put the line into shape following damage by recent storms. Phases of railroad service that have long been unprofitable are a drag on the efforts of the railroad to provide fast enough modern freight and passenger service generally over the system.”
He promised that the “improved bus service” to connect with Los Gatos, in substitution for the train, would save 30 minutes time between this city and San Francisco.
Stodgy and Stuffy
Adriel Fried criticized the company’s “stodgy” trains and “stuffy station” at Watsonville Junction where Santa Cruz passengers connect with southbound trains, and insisted that the company is being badly managed. He demanded figures on freight out of Santa Cruz. C. M. Briggs, assistant general freight agent, said he was not prepared to give those figures, but would have them available at the railroad commission hearing.
“It is regrettable to come to a meeting of this kind and be insulted,” said J. J. Jordan, the rail company’s superintendent. “You will get all the information you want before the railroad commission.”

“You say we haven’t been progressive. Don’t you realize that the automobile has taken away 68% of the railroad’s business! We are trying our best to meet this transition.”
Earl Harris maintained that the company had not lived up to its word, made two years ago, to spend money on improving the line over the mountain and bring additional Eastern tourist specials into Santa Cruz.
Jordan replied that the company did spend $50,000 to improve the line.
Hits Tourist Business
James P. Leonard expressed fear that a bus connection with Santa Cruz would decrease passenger traffic to the Big Trees. “The minute a passenger agent mentions a tail-end connection by bus, you will find a strong sales resistance on the part of a prospective visitor,” Leonard said.
Lathrop said the railroad company had borrowed $22,000,000 from the RFC, and that government would insist upon a profit on all branches. He expressed belied that Santa Cruz would not be affected “one iota” by the abandonment, “inasmuch as this community does not even use the line.”
Drum Baikie was chairman of the lunch meeting.
Decision as to the chamber of commerce’s attitude will be reached at a director’s meeting next Monday.
Other Southern Pacific officials attending the luncheon were E. C. Pearce, assistant superintendent; Roy Ioas, supervisor train service; G. I. Goldsmith, assistant mail and express traffic manager; Stanley Moore, special representative passenger department; E. A. Teubner, division freight and passenger agent.
Operating Costs High
Both operating costs and maintenance costs of the line south of Los Gatos have been extremely heavy since it was acquired by the company in 1887 and changed from narrow to broad gauge in 1907, Southern Pacific officials stated. Operation is expensive due to the excessive curvature of the winding route through the mountains and grades which range from 2.5 to 2.9 per cent, making it necessary to use helper engines on trains carrying more than five cars northbound and seven cars southbound.
Maintenance of the line is relatively even more costly due particularly to recurring annual storm and flood damage. Company officials stated there is an annual expense of $48,000 per year for maintenance and storm damage repair to two and one-half miles of tunnels, to other track structures, to track, and to sub-grade in the area marked for abandonment.
The section of track which it is proposed to abandon does not include a nine-mile section from Santa Cruz to Olympia. This nine-mile section will be maintained to provide freight service from the Olympia sand pits.

The Abandonment Hearing

The first hearing on abandonment took place in Santa Cruz City Hall on Friday, April 26. The SP now claimed it would take precisely $46,220 to fix the line. The editorial on Sunday, April 28, 1940 quoted how it went:

Those who attended the railroad commission hearing Friday on Southern Pacific’s petition to temporarily discontinue passenger service on the Los Gatos-Santa Cruz line may be surprised to learn that Judge Harry Bias, who represented this community, had only two days in which to prepare his case.
He was not contacted in the manner until Wednesday afternoon, and in the brief period between that time and opening of the hearing Friday morning at 10 he studied railroad company exhibits and hurriedly assembled such information as was available through services of the chamber of commerce.
What is more, his services were gratis.
Ordinarily, in a hearing of this type the applicant, with its army of auditors, “experts”, and imposing array of cold figures, holds an advantage over the opposition of lay critics.
Judge Bias, especially effective in cross-examination, disclosed not of the handicaps which are usually imposed by hurried mobilization of opposition. He turned in one of the neatest jobs we have witnessed in many years.
Item by item, he went to the core of the subject in cross-examination of Southern Pacific representatives.
He established these major points:
Southern Pacific had planned abandonment of service for some years and seized the storm condition last February as an opportune time to take action.
Revenue from freight and special trains had not been computed by the company in arriving at the reported loss on the line of $28,578 for 1939.
Nothing of substantial nature has been done in the past 25 years to improve facilities on the regularly scheduled passenger trains operating between San Francisco and Santa Cruz.
The company has not kept pace of competition.
Facilities on the train coaches are below normal in comparison with modern transportation equipment.
In concluding his remarks Judge Bias expressed the opinion that “if the railroad company had deliberately planned to discontinue its train service on this line it could not have done a better job of discouraging public patronage."
A few of our citizens have been lulled into an attitude of non-resistance by Southern Pacific’s reported losses on this line. What we in Santa Cruz should consider of prime importance are the tremendous losses to this community as the result of what conspicuously appear to be mismanagement of an important travel artery entering this town.
We feel that the Southern Pacific has not fulfilled the obligations of its franchise. Santa Cruz, in our opinion, has suffered huge losses due to adverse operation of passenger trains entering this community. This is the finest recreation area within short distance of the San Francisco bay area of 1,000,000 population. The trip over the mountains from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz has scenic value worthy of extensive exploration by a railroad company.
Holding a monopoly these many years, Southern Pacific has not felt the pressure of rail competition on this line. It has provided comparative discomforts with little regard for a public attitude. Instead of improving its roadbeds and equipment to meet the competition of highways and buses, Southern Pacific has blamed the public solely for its loss of business. One can motor to San Francisco in a comfortable automobile on a comfortable highway in one-half the time required by the antiquated train. Many people, we believe, would prefer to leave their automobiles hat home and travel by train if Southern Pacific had shown the same enterprise on the Santa Cruz line that it had demonstrated elsewhere in attempting to meet competition.
Women in long bloomer bathing suits, bewhiskered men on “gay-ninety” bikes, and horse and buggy delegations, would not look out of place in creating the arrival of one of the regularly scheduled trains at the local SP depot.
Let us view the losses from a different perspective. This public utility, by its monopolistic operations, has denied Santa Cruz the kind of transportation facilities which are considered average in other parts of the United States. We have lost the benefits that might have come through alert, progressive management of a rail line.
“Comfort” is something we read about in the Southern Pacific ads; also we are urged “Next Time Try the Train”.
By schedule and type of equipment, SP has caused its Santa Cruz trains to try the public’s patience.

The Friendly Southern Pacific attempts damage control.

The Santa Cruz abandonment wasn’t following the path of the Boulder Creek, or Almaden, or Le Franc; the town was pissed off, and wasn’t about to roll over. The SP decided to highlight all the nice things they could do for the town. June 22, 1940, the SP argued its case. As before, they didn’t talk about closing the line, but just “closing passenger service” and replacing it with a bus. How you got to Los Gatos didn’t matter; they’d make sure the bus was attractive. The SP also attempted to assuage all the concerns. They’d continue to promote the Suntan Specials, and continue to keep the fares the same. They’d put up posters extolling Santa Cruz in stations, and highlight the destination in timetables and tourist brochures. They’d show movies of Big Trees, and make sure Santa Cruz had a central role at the SP exhibit at the 1939 World Fare in San Francisco. To comfort James Leonard, they’d continue to take tourist trains up to Big Trees. They’d lower the tariff for lumber, and wouldn’t raise rates for other commodities, and wouldn’t passenger fares. (Don’t hold your breath folks; the fares will go up in two years, regardlesss of the agreements.

You won't have a railroad, but at least you'll be in the movies!

Meanwhile, the old route rotted in the forest. There were reports of signals getting stolen later that summer. On October 31, the ICC decided: the line was to be abandoned.

Tearing Up the Line

We’ve all seen pictures of the abandonment: trains going through the canyons removing rails, bridges, and anything else salvageable. The rumors about the tunnel were less mercenary. One said the tunnels were blown up by the army to avoid saboteurs hiding in them. Another claimed the SP didn’t want the tunnels around as a nuisance. In reality, the tunnels were collapsed for the lumber. From the April 19, 1942 Santa Cruz Sentinel, courtesy of a reference in Derek Whaley’s “Santa Cruz Trains” book:


Glenwood and Wrights Tunnels Gone
The first two tunnels by which our erstwhile Los Gatos Railroad line bored through the hills are gone. Timbers which bolstered the mile-and-a-quarter Wrights tunnel have been taken out, the tunnel is caved in, its ends are closed. Another week will see the end of the mile-and-an-eighth Glenwood tunnel.
H. A. Christie, professional railroad wrecker and gambler on earth formations, bought from the Southern Pacific the right to salvage what timbers he could.
He has been trucking them down the old right-of-way to end -of-line near Felton and shipping them out.
Rock was well broken by earthquake of 1906
So dangerous is the work of yanking the ten-by-fourteen inch timbers out (by use of a team) and the resultant fall of rock that Mr. Christie’s premium on insurance against accident or death to his employees equals 34 percent of his payroll.
When the fall of rock buries unsalvaged timbers he leaves them and resumes work farther along. While working in the Wrights tunnel part of his equipment was buried - and abandoned.
The wrenching given the sand rock by the earthquake of 1906 (after which the tunnels were enlarged for the broad guage [sic] line) turned the sand rock nearly to sand.
COUNTY WANTS TIMBERS AT SCHWANN’S LAGOON BRIDGE
Because of the peril of the work the Southern Pacific sells the salvaging privileges and buys back what timbers it wants. Mr. Christie is under contract to sell back to the railroad 800,000 board feet of what he reclaims.
The timbers taken from the Wrights tunnel amounted to a little more than half a million board feet. Should there be an excess over the railroad’s requirements the county is a bidder for timbers for the proposed new Schwan’s Lagoon bridge in Twin Lakes. Timbers at the salvage price will save about a thousand dollars.

As those timbers got pulled out, the chances of the line ever opening again died completely - the Los Gatos - Santa Cruz line was no more. The storm was the last straw, but the abandonment probably would have happened any day. The salvaging and destruction of the line didn’t have saboteurs or crazy army demolition folks but a dedicated salvager with a brave team of mules. The storm also had effects beyond the route, shutting down Santa Cruz as a place for engine service. A year later, the Sentinel remarked on the boiler house being taken down to send its materials to Sacramento, and the inspection pits at the roundhouse were getting filled in. Santa Cruz would never be a big railroad town again.

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Key details to remember for the model?

• The Olympia sand pits were shipping 250 carloads of sand a month, with the SP one of the customers.
• Passenger trains from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz required a helper for more than 5 cars... just like my model!
• Santa Cruz was originating trains up to 1940, and had the roundhouse and personnel up until then.
• If the model trains ever don't run, just say "oh, the line's open" and point at a passing bus.

This Train Ain't Bound for Glory

Model railroads are most fun when there’s action, and that means we want to model prototypes with lots of trains moving around. I chose the Vasona Branch over other SP branches because I assumed the canneries and dried fruit packing houses along the tracks could generate that action. However, I also wanted to include the photogenic locations in the Santa Cruz mountains: redwoods, oak, chaparral, and creeks in narrow canyons. I knew that industry was sparse up in Los Gatos Canyon, but just how sparse?

There aren’t a lot of sources to tell us how busy the railroad was. Maybe we’ll find a quote in a newspaper about last year’s revenue, or maybe we’ll find some railroad paperwork or photos that suggest train length. But that sort of information is rare; I’ve never had that sort of information for the Vasona Branch, but I’ve always been curious.

Luckily, there is one potential source. When railroads wanted to shut down a branch line, they’d need to ask permission from the Interstate Commerce Commission to make sure they weren’t leaving customers in the lurch. The ICC decisions on abandonments give us at least a small view into an under-performing branch.

I’d always been curious about the abandonment proceedings, but assumed the details would be in a dusty book in a university library’s off-site storage. I’d asked around when I was visiting the California State Railroad Museum last week, but the likely books were stored off-site. Some poking around showed that some local libraries might also have some of the ICC decisions, but none of the places were easy to access. I knew rough dates of abandonments, and web sites like abandonedrails.com even provided the ICC “docket number” to help with searches - the abandonment of the Los Gatos - Olympia portion of the line in 1940 was ICC docket #12815.

It’s also the 21st century, so there’s a good chance some of those documents are on-line. So I tried a few searches with different keywords in different permutations: “interstate commerce commission”, “abandonment”, “los gatos”, “South Pacific Coast”.

Pay dirt. The abandonment decisions for SP’s Boulder Creek branch (1933), Le Franc to New Almaden (1933 also), Los Gatos to Olympia (1940), and Campbell to Le Franc all turned out to be on-line, with links below. None of these are particularly compelling reading: no stories of murders, or heroic rescues, or amusing encounters with grizzly bears, but just some dry stories: “This railroad no longer has a reason for being there, the folks living nearby don’t need it, and the railroad doesn’t want to run it.” They’re also not full of railfan facts such as locomotives and engineers. However, they still give us a sense of what the railroad was like.

From the Southern Pacific Company Abandonment of theSanta Cruz branch from Los Gatos to Olympia:

“The line proposed to be abandoned is an intermediate segment of the branch connecting San Jose… with Santa Cruz. It was built by the South Pacific Railroad in 1870-1880 and acquired by the applicant in 1937. The main track is laid with 90 pound rail. The aggregate curvature is about 3,598 degrees, with a total length exceeding 8 miles. There are approximately 13,137 feet of timber-lined and masonry-lined tunnels… Motive power is limited to the consolidated type of locomotive…. the line serves an area mainly devoted to summer homes and resorts; there are no industries except for a limited amount of fruit growing, which is not dependent on the railroad for transportation.”

But then we start getting some of the color. “As protection against embankment slides and washouts, a pilot was sent ahead of the early morning train.” As model railroaders, having a pilot train running to watch for redwoods across the track would be quite the thing for operation. Saturday excursion runs generated most of the passenger numbers, so I should run more Sunshine Specials to Santa Cruz.

And then there’s the traffic numbers. I knew that the Santa Cruz Mountains were quiet in the 1930’s, but oh how quiet! There were only six carloads of outgoing freight between 1935 and 1939. Each year, there were only 40-70 cars inbound (except for 1939, when 392 carloads came in for Highway 17 construction.) Most of the traffic was through service: thousands of passengers, mostly for the Sunshine Special excursions. The line also carried 500-1500 carloads of sand from Olympia and “oiled crushed rock” (aka asphaltic rock) from near Davenport each year. Even with the mountainous route, shipping via Los Gatos Canyon was faster and less expensive than going the long way through Watsonville and Gilroy. The Southern Pacific admitted the costs were higher on the new route, but they'd be able to handle more cars per train. The shippers were disappointed at the loss of the short route to San Francisco, but resigned to pay an extra 0.25 cents to 1.5 cents per hundred pounds to ship their product via Watsonville. That’s all model railroad scale: about five loaded cars a day across the railroad, and one car a day ending up on the railroad.

The reports also list population, highlighting how much the Santa Cruz mountains had depopulated. Only around 1300 people were living along the line in 1939, with 500 at Alma, 150 at Aldercroft Heights, 40 at Call of the Wild, 50 at Wrights, 35 at Laurel, 196 at Glenwood, and a huge 240 at Zayante. The numbers are probably larger now, but the land’s still pretty empty.

If you go and compare those freight numbers to San Jose, it’s easy to see why the SP dumped the Los Gatos canyon line. Compare with San Jose proper. A 1940 labor law case argued that several of the dried fruit packers tried to sponsor their own union to avoid the Longshoremen’s Union getting into their business. In between stories of companies directing favored employees to organize “the right way”, there’s details about fruit volume. J.S. Roberts, on my layout, generated 1,750 tons of fruit in 1939- as much as the Los Gatos - Olympia section carried in a full year. Abinante and Nola and Hamlin Fruit generated similar traffic. Sunsweet and Del Monte would have generated 300 cars a year each in dried fruit from San Jose. It’s not hard to see how SP made its money.

For me as the modeler, these facts stress how I should keep the Santa Cruz Mountains quiet: occasional freights full of sand-laden gondola, but otherwise no sizable industries generating traffic, and a bunch of rusty sidings that may not see a train again.

Oh, and I need to model that pilot train checking the line.

Raw numbers for the Los Gatos - Olympia service:

Passenger Traffic: 


Year	Local Passengers	Through Passengers
1935	81	5,482
1936	120	4,842
1937	129	4410
1938	135	4427
1939	26	3389

Freight Traffic:




Year	Local	LCL	Bridge Traffic
1935	39 carloads / 1984 tons	20 tons	14 carloads / 229 tons
1936	31 carloads / 1557 tons	8 tons	0 tons
1937	69 carloads / 3758 tons	22 tons	416 carloads / 21,075 tons
1938	36 carloads / 1451 tons	26 tons	01,133 carloads / 64,426 tons
1939	392 carloads / 21225 tons	37 tons	1,517 carloads / 92, 554 tons

Only 6 carloads of freight originated on the line from 1935-1939. Six.

That was fun; let’s check another!

Here’s the abandonment report for theBoulder Creek to Felton branch, torn up in 1933. “The marketable timber supply in the territory has become exhausted, there is no other manufacturing industry in the territory, farming is of no importance.” Rock and stone were the main freight being shipped, but only around 100 loaded cars or so were coming off the branch. “The only inbound carload traffic of regular nature is an occasional car of coal.” The report lists that service had declined to a weekly freight, with cars, buses, and trucks taking away business that had been for the railroad.

Or the New Almaden branch. The New Almaden mines had been shut down for years; the only traffic from the line between 1931 and 1933 was “137 tons of tomato juice”. “ The weekly mixed freight just encouraged the locals to jump in the car to get around.

Or the Le Franc branch: surrounded by orchards and vineyards, but the locals all deliver their produce by truck. From 1933-1936, the SP handled less than twenty carloads a year, and handled it all with a yard locomotive.

Again, none of these documents contain essential facts for our model railroads, but they do tell a bit about how the railroad declined, and who remained to use it during its last years. When visitors come by, we can point at a tank car, look sad, and say “137 tons of tomato juice - that’s the only thing that railroad shipped in its last year.”

Pro tips for finding similar documents: try several searches, and poke through a couple pages of search results. Use quotes around groups of words such as “Interstate Commerce Commission”. If you find a book with other railroad-related legal reports, check the index or start using keywords, and you might find some interesting gems. Abandonment reports sometimes turn up in the “Finance Reports” volume, though that wasn't true for all the cases here. If you decide not to practice your Google searching skills, check for a university library with ICC reports, or visit a county law library that has access to HeimOnline - that database apparently has all the government publications. Santa Clara County's law library provides free access if you visit.

Before the Cannery, the Winery

One of the big themes in the Santa Clara Valley has been the changes in industry, both in the recent and distant past. If you’re looking at modern Silicon Valley, you’ll find that the seeds of Google and Apple were planted back in the 1920’s when vacuum tube makers located out here to get far away from the patent holders on the east coast. Vacuum tubes led to high-power radio and microwave; high power radio’s material scientists had all the skills to make semiconductors, semiconductors led to microprocessors, which led to personal computers, software, and eventually to hipster chicken day care. (Making Silicon Valley gives a nice overview of Silicon Valley's early history, if you're curious.)

For the agricultural Santa Clara Valley, we see a similar progression. The cattle ranches of the Mexican-era ranchos became wheat fields as the anglo farmers exported huge amounts of wheat to Europe. The wheat fields turned into vineyards. Various setbacks turned the vineyards into orchards; the orchards brought the canneries, which in turn replaced the orchards with manufacturing, can-making, and other industry. If you wander around, you’ll find signs of that past, whether a cannery now holding a microbrewery in San Jose, a grain shed in an empty field in Tres Pinos , or a remnant of a former winery in the middle of suburban Sunnyvale. Each economic or technical change created a new set of successful businesses, but caused hardship for the folks stuck on whatever was the previous boom.

I also run across those reminders of change in historical research. When I was tracking down the history of the Hunt Brothers cannery in Los Gatos, I found a reference that the new cannery was using buildings left over from the “Delpech Winery”. The name was new, but some research turned up two familiar stories: an immgrant making wine just like in the Old Country, and the fall of the wine industry and rising of the fruit industry in the Santa Clara Valley.

Amedee and Germaine Delpech

The immigrant in question was Amedee Delpech, an immigrant from Lot in southern France. Amedee came to California in 1876. It's unclear what Delpech did upon arriving, but I can suspect the common story: he worked for several years, saved up a bank-roll, then either bought or leased land for his own farm. All the good land in the Valley was already taken, so Delpech, like the new Italian, Portuguese, or Yugoslav immigrants, was pushed up into the marginal foothill lands. In Delpech’s case, he landed on a small amount of acreage at Patchen, at the summit of the hill between Los Gatos and Santa Cruz. Hints from land sales suggest his farm was on Summit Road, just west of the current Highway 17.

Amedee planted his land in grapes, and quickly set to work making wines and brandies. In 1888, Delpech presented his wines at the 6th Annual Viticultural Convention in San Francisco, offering up a Sauvignon Vert, White Pinot, as well as mission and peach brandies, all from the 1886 and 1887 vintage. (His nearby neighbor, E. Meyer in Wrights, was meanwhile making some lighter red wines -Carignan, Ploussard, and a Zinfandel-Mataro blend.) For the 1892 and 1896 voter registration, he listed his occupation quite solidly as winemaker. By 1903, he'd moved up in the world; a city directory listed him as a “Wine Manufacturer.”

Possible location of the Delpech vineyard at 22231 Summit Road. Perhaps that's even the Delpech barn?

It was an odd time to be in the wine business; although Santa Clara County had been a center for wine-growing, the trade had been in decline since the 1880s thanks to a glut of wine on the market and the plague of phylloxera. The disease hit the Santa Clara Valley just before Delpech decided on the Los Gatos expansion. Cupertino, for example, had been a center for vineyards. (Vineyards were preferred over fruit because it only took three years, rather than five, to start getting marketable crops.) Between 1895 and 1905, phylloxera hit Cupertino and decimated the vines. By the end, half the vineyards were gone, often replaced with fruit trees. The effect was also seen in the wineries. The California Wine Company along the narrow gauge railroad at San Fernando Street became Griffin and Skelley's dried fruit plant in the early 20th century. Zicovich’s Winery, a competitor in the wine and brandy trade, burned down in 1899 during the Great San Carlos Street Just West of the Railroad Tracks fire. There's no indication it was rebuilt.

The boom-and-bust of wineries can be seen ins the statistics. Wine grapes occupied less than 1,500 acres in 1876, but took 12,000 acres in the 1890's and at the turn of the century. Phyloxxera cut grapes to 6,000 acres in 1904, and although it recovered a bit, there were only 7,500 acres of grapes in Santa Clara County through the 1940's. (Ernest P. Peninou, A Statistical History of Wine Grape Acreage in California, 1856-1992).

Gustav Hueter's Mountain Springs Ranch. See if you can spot the rolling tree stumps! From Los Gatos Public Library, Linda Ward collection.

Delpech also apparently continued to expand his vineyards. In 1899, he managed to annoy his downhill neighbor by rolling tree stumps onto his property. The neighbor, Gustav Hueter, the San Francisco varnish king, appeared to be a bit high-strung, suing his downhill neighbors over water rights in Sheppard Gulch creek, and spending more on the lawsuit against Delpech than he claimed in damages. Delpech, in his defense, declared that his workers brought the errant stumps back:

In the Superior Court defendant Delpesch contended that although some of the rolling stumps had invaded the premises of Heuter they had done no harm except to bend over two madrone and three tanbark trees, and furthermore it was claimed that when a hired man of Delpesch had learned that some of the stumps had gone beyond their legitimate moorings they hitched onto them and hauled them up the hill again where they were blocked up to prevent their rolling tendencies.

If you ever thought the early landowner's life in the Santa Cruz Mountains was easy, just imagine trying to haul a bunch of huge redwood tree stumps back up a hill before your cranky downhill neighbor got annoyed. Almost makes wrestling a bear sound fun.

Hueter turns up in a couple other news stories, including one about some drunken yahoos shooting up the stuffed bear he placed at the entrance to his property on the Old Santa Cruz Highway. Then, in 1905, 65 year old Hueter was shot and killed by his thirty-three year old wife after he threatened her during a fight. The grand jury discovered that Kate Hueter had been overly friendly with the Los Gatos doctor which had spurred the row. Hueter had been in the process of contracting for oil drilling on his property to see if the Moody Gulch oil strikes might be repeated on his land. Hueter's land is now the Redwood Estates development.

By 1898, Amedee, was beginning to appear quite successful. His wife Germaine, and daughter Marguerite, had moved to San Jose, living in the Liberte Hotel (San Pedro and Post), then at 312 El Dorado (now Post) St - just about the time his daughter, Margaret, would have been starting school. They also had a small lot near the railroad tracks in Alma, bought in 1900, and another lot in San Jose downtown. Amedee was also active in politics, serving as a delegate for James G. Maguire for governor in the 1898 State Democratic Convention.

1900 was also the time for Amedee to try to grab at the gold ring of business. That year, he started building a winery in Los Gatos, at the intersection of the Saratoga Road and Santa Cruz Ave, with Jacob Lenzen and son designing the building, and Z. O. Field building the structure. The winery itself was incorporated in early 1903 as the “Los Gatos Winery”, with A. Berryman, P. J. Arnerich, J. J. Stanfield, and J. Bazus as directors - all proud burghers of Los Gatos business.

But even as the winery was built, its future fell into doubt. Amedee Delpech died suddenly in August, 1903:

"Amedee Delpech the well known winemaker of Los Gatos died at his home in that city on Wednesday from an attack of pneumonia.  The remains were forwarded to San Francisco today and the funeral will take place in that city on Friday at 2 o'clock under the auspices of the I. O. O. F. of which he was a member.  He was a native of France and was 52 years of age."

His friends in the Franco-American Lodge of the I.O.O.F. described him more explicitly in an obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Prominent Vineyardist Dead
Amedee Delpech, one of the best-known vineyardists and wine men of this county, died at his home near Los Gatos today. He was a native of France, aged 52 years. The funeral will be held in San Francisco tomorrow under the auspices of the Franco-American Lodge, I. O. O. F., of which he was a member.

His wife, Germaine, had the task of settling the estate; a sequence of real estate sales showed up in newspapers for the next couple years, selling the property at Patchen to Joseph McKiernan in 1904, and selling the downtown San Jose land in 1906. She later moved to San Francisco, “four children and one child still living.” Germaine ran a candy store for a bit, worked as a dress maker, and held a couple other jobs. In 1928, she lived in the Marina district.

The new winery itself spent a few years in limbo. At first, there was talk about the Los Gatos Cannery using the building for dried fruit packing in the 1906 season. The Los Gatos Fruit Growers’ Union, associated with George Hooke, claimed to have secured a lease for the 100 x 150 foot building, “half of which will be floored immediately and a model packing house will be arranged. Whether the union will pack its own fruit or not will depend on the prices offered in the bins by packers.” (August 27, 1906 San Jose Mercury News.) Another article claimed that quite substantial work was already in progress. After that, little can be found on the Los Gatos Fruit Grower’s Union.

That same year, George Hooke, the owner of the Los Gatos Canneries, decided he didn’t have enough excitement in his life, and decided growing a new cannery would be more fun than running the old one. Hooke sold the Los Gatos Canneries to the Hunt Brothers Packing Company, and left to manage new canneries in Watsonville and Sunnyvale. The Hunt Brothers needed to modernize the very victorian plant in the middle of Los Gatos’s downtown; by the next spring, Hunt decided that the best solution would be to build a modern plant, and saw the Delpech cannery as the perfect location - a huge space, easy rail access, and an existing building ready for reuse. Hunts also brought in their own people; Hooke had claimed Hunts would keep the existing management in place, but the manager and other staff were replaced within a year by Hunt veterans.

Hunt Brothers Making Extensive Improvements for New Canning Plant” - April 16, 1907 San Jose Mercury News.
“Very few people realize the vastness of the improvements that are underway at the Hunt Brothers big cannery at the corner of Santa Cruz Avenue and the Saratoga Road. The immense winery building that was erected by the late A. Delpech has been ceiled overhead, and a floor three feet above the ground, and ventilator and light shafts installed at convenient distances. At the north of the main building boilers are being installed, and when that is completed a suitable building will enclose it. The southwest corner of the lot has been covered with a high one story building that will be used as a receiving room, and as the fruit is processed it will finally be placed in the large warehouse alongside the track, the foundations of which are already laid. This building will be eighty feet wide by a length of two hundred and twenty five feet, and on the east side of it for the whole length is the spur track adjoining the main track of the Southern Pacific Company... Their superintendent C. C. Van Eaton has made his home here permanently. All the operations of moving from the old plant, which they purchased from the Los Gatos Canneries, has been made under his personal supervision. He brings with him skillful assistants in several departments who have been with him a number of years."

And with that, Delpech’s dream of a winery in Los Gatos instead helped the canning industry expand - the industry that chased the vineyards out of the Santa Clara Valley. Delpech’s would eventually see wine again; after Hunt Brothers closed their doors in the early 1930’s, the building was sold to Paul Masson (then owned by Seagrams), who used the former cannery for storage.

Delpech's winery and the Hunt buildings were torn down in the late 1950s; a strip mall took over the land in the late 1960's. If you go to the site of the old Delpech winery today, you’ll find a rather nice little wine-bar where you can enjoy some very good wines, and wonder what Amedee Delpech would have thought.

Amedee Delpech's story isn't that uncommon. There are shades of it in my great-grandfather's own story - immigrant comes to the United States, buys his own (marginal) land, and makes a home, vineyard, and farm. Delpech's story also matches Paul Masson, another French immigrant. Masson, who came to work for Charles LeFranc in his Almaden vineyards, later created his own winery that became world famous - probably just the ending Amedee Delpech was hoping for.

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Photo of Amedee and Germaine Delpech courtesy of Sandy Herve. Mountain Springs Ranch photo from Los Gatos Public Library; they have several other photos of the Heuter property.