Antioch

Port Costa Part 2 (The Solano)

The “downtown” of Port Costa is only about a block long. The historic buildings here only hint at the size and importance of the town over 120 years ago.

Standing in front of the massive McNear’s Warehouse you get a sense of the scale of importance of Port Costa.

The wonderful sign on McNear’s Warehouse. The railroad is both central to the sign and to the history of Port Costa.

In the distant past, that one block contained a grocery store, a barber shop, a shoemaker, a Wells Fargo office, three hotels, a department store, and eight saloons!

Now Port Costa has only one hotel and I’m not sure it’s open.

The concrete warehouse was built in 1886 by G. W. McNear. It was the first fireproof building in Contra Costa County having survived the fires of 1889, 1909, 1924, and 1941 (as well as withstanding two major earthquakes). It was built to store wheat, hay, and potatoes.

The warehouse now serves many purposes; restaurant, bar, post office, and apartments.

Port Costa was a busy railroad center and port. The railroad facilities included many spur tracks, a 70 foot turntable, an engine house, oil and water tanks, a passenger and freight depot, and many warehouses.

Map of Port Costa circa 1925, based on a John Signor illustration.

What made Port Costa tick was the railroad. At the edge of the Carquinez Strait there were two ferry boat slips where ferry boats loaded and unloaded trains, both passenger and freight, from the 10 minute crossing to Benicia. Because there was no railroad bridges spanning the strait, this was only way to cross and save time and many miles.

The train ferry Solano served for 51 years until the Benicia-Martinez Railroad Bridge was completed in 1930 for Southern Pacific, rendering the ferry obsolete.

The Chicago bound California Zephyr passing through the former location of the ferry slips on the south side of Carquinez Strait. The train will cross over to the north side just past Martinez on the Benicia-Martinez Railroad Bridge (more about this bridge in the next post).

The first train ferry to operated between Benicia and Port Costa was the Solano which was built by the Central Pacific Railroad (later Southern Pacific) in 1879. She was 425 feet long and 116 feet wide. The steam powered side-wheeler was that largest train ferry of its type. It could ferry a 24 car passenger train with its locomotive or a 48 car freight train on the four sets of tracks on the lower deck. In a 24 hour period, the Solano would make 36 to 46 crossings. She was a real workhorse.

Sketched based on a period postcard of the Solano.

The Solano’s last run was on November 1, 1930 and she was decommissioned along with her sister ship the Contra Costa.

There were many steam powered ferries that moved people and freight on the waterways of the Bay Area. Today, very few exist. The Eureka at Hyde Street Pier and the Berkeley in San Diego come to mind. Some were turned into floating hotels and gambling boats but have since burned and been destroyed. Most were scrapped, very few were preserved for posterity.

I was amazing to find out that the Solano still existed! She was not preserved and is a far cry from her proud days as the largest train ferry in the world. She is to be found about 25 miles east of Port Costa in Antioch.

In 1931 the Solano was moved upstream to be used as a breakwater for a marina in Antioch. The hull was sunk where it remains to this day.

Looking at the massive hull it appears to be a verdant island and the only giveaway that it was once a mighty train ferry is a rusted A-shaped structure projecting above the green “island”.

The A-shaped structure is the walking beam of her engine. The second walking beam has fallen over.