April 7, 1999

Don Quixote de la Ocean Shore

If you think itŐs hard to get to San Francisco from Half Moon Bay or Linda Mar now, you should have been around in 1900. If you were a farmer, it might take two days to get a wagon load of peas or artichokes to market. Your choice was negotiating twisted mountain roads or shipping your produce by boat. You drove your horse and wagon to a rocky cove and somehow got your stuff on board, perhaps sliding bags of produce down a chute over the waves.

The San Mateo Coastside was more remote and difficult to reach from San Francisco than Bakersfield or Los Angeles. A railroad was the obvious answer. One was planned as early as 1881.

Then, in 1905, J. Downey Harvey came along. He decided to put in a railroad along the ocean shore from San Francisco to Santa Cruz. He was rich, prominent, well connected.

His friends included J.A. Folger, the coffee millionaire, and former Lieutenant Governor W.T. Jeter, among others.

They had everything going for them. They bought up farms along the way and subdivided them into 25 foot lots for summer cottages.

The farmers on the coastside were enthusiastic. At last they were going to get produce to market much more easily. The day the railroad incorporated was a great day indeed for the coast side.

Harvey hired a great and famous landscape architect, D.B. Burnham. The tycoons planned a grand seaside city called Granada.

Unfortunately, there was an earthquake in 1906, and unfortunately for the railroad, the automobile and the truck came along as well. By 1909 the railroad was in receivership. in 1911 the railroad was being auctioned off to satisfy debts. The only bidder was a group of the bondholders. 1912 was the best year. They made a small profit. It took until 1920, and a strike, to finally put the railroad out of business. Though its been almost 80 years since the last train ran, the Ocean Shore still affects Pacifica. Our planning commission has to deal with 25 foot lots. There are still some clouded titles along the old route.

The Ocean Shore railroad corporation still exists, and I have met the owner. He is a nice guy, Mr. De Lappe, who lives in Santa Rosa and doesnŐt know much about the history of his railroad.

The best thing there is to be said about the Ocean Shore Railway is: It seemed like a good idea at the time.

With the 20-20 hindsight we are afforded by time and knowledge, we can be sure it would never have succeeded. If it hadnŐt lost track and equipment and momentum to the 1906 earthquake, if investors had not been disheartened and made poorer by the earthquake, if there hadnŐt been landslides and the nefarious actions of the Southern Pacific, itŐs likely that trucks and automobiles would still have eventually killed off this scenic wonder of a railroad. It might have taken another 20 years to die, but it would have happened, as it has since to many other railroads that had much more going for them than this delightful, farfetched, implausible, impractical, Don Quixote of a railroad.

Some recent Reactor columns may be found at Paul AzevedoŐs new website, http://www.thereactor.net/ You may reach him by e-mail at Paul@thereactor.net