California

Port Costa: Part 1

The first Saturday morning in June found me trackside in Port Costa sketching some California history.

I parked near the historic McNear’s Warehouse (more about this in another post) and walked west along the double parallel tracks looking for a sketching spot along the beach that spoke to me.

I had to be very aware here because my path is on the main line with a lot of passenger and freight traffic.

After about a five minute walk I found a short path down from the railbed to the shoreline with a nice sketching log to perch on and a great view before me.

Before me were many wooden pylons breaking above the tide. So what’s the deal with a bunch of sticks?

Bunch of sticks!

The pylons were what remains of the railroad, storage warehouses, and ferry complex and spoke of a very busy past at Port Costa.

Engineers had a challenge fitting warehouses, ferry slips, and railroad maintenance buildings and tracks into the narrow strip of land between the shoreline and the steep hills on the southern edge of the Carquinez Strait. The solution was to build out into the water.

The pylons are the only evidence of the Central/Southern Pacific Railroad complex.

Of course any chapter of historical wooden structures involve one common element: fire. The complex burned and wood rot took what remained.

Before there where any rail bridges crossing the strait they had to use ferry boats that travelled a mile from Benicia to Port Costa, a trip that took about ten minutes.

Instead of unloading trains of their passengers or freight and reloading them onto boats for the short crossing, the trains themselves were loaded onto train ferry boats (locomotives and all) on four separate tracks.

I started my sketch at mile marker 3/4 at 8:15 AM. I was keeping my eyes and ears on the double tracks to my left, especially as the clock approached 9 because the eastbound California Zephyr was due to pass Port Costa at about that time.

From previous posts it’s plain, I love the California Zephyr. I have traveled on the longest AMTRAK route four times and it was always a great experience.

In that 45 minutes, four trains passed (three passenger and one freight). This is a busy part of the high iron!

At 8:30 a mixed consist freight pulled into the “hole” to let two Capital Corridors pass.

A westbound freight waiting at mile post 3/4 for two passenger trains to pass.

The freight was stopped long enough for me to climb aboard and there were a few good rides on the consist but I resisted the urge to abandon teaching to take up the hobo life.

After the passenger trains passed, the UP freight got the high ball and the hiss of the brakes being released told me that the freight was about to move. The cars creaked to life and the train took up slack and resumed its westward journey.

California Zephyr Train No. 6 passing the remains of the train and ferry complex at Port Costa.
Final destination, Chicago, Illinois. Just to the right of the end of the Zephyr is the town of Port Costa. More about this historic town in my next post.

The Mystery Spot

Sketching and researching the history of local roadside attractions of the past such as Lost World and Santa’s Village, made me want to sketch a historic tourist attraction that is still alive and well.

If you’ve never been to the Mystery Spot it highly likely that you have seen the bright yellow bumper stickers on cars in the Golden State.

This car’s owner either really loves the Mystery Spot, uses bumper stickers to hold the car together, or is an employee shamelessly promoting their employer; probably all three.

While my family visited the Boardwalk and even Lost World and Santa’s Village, we didn’t make our way up Branciforte into the redwoods. Perhaps the Mystery Spot was just too strange.

I first visited the quirky attraction as an adult and am still trying to decide if it was really worth the time and expense. It some sense it reminded me of the title of a Shakespearean comedy.

You know you are near with billboards leading the way. I love the funky banana slug which I added to my sketch.

The Mystery Spot was first discovered in 1939 by George Prather and was opened to the public a year later. Since the attraction has garnered enough visitors to keep it open for over 85 years, 365 days a year. But what exactly is the Mystery Spot?

The main attraction to this roadside attraction is that it is a “gravity hill” (the first in California), meaning that the area appears to defy gravity.

In 1941 Prather built a “crazy house” where guides now lead tours to highlight the Mystery Spot’s bewildering effects.

Is this real or just a visual illusion? Spoiler alert: the house is slanted at a 20 degree angle.

The Mystery Spot was designated a California Historical Landmark (# 1055) in August of 2014.

An old billboard, which I assume was located 1 1/2 miles from the Spot. Most contemporary visitors would not know what Life, “You Asked For It”, or even a magazine are!

I arrived on a Saturday afternoon and the parking lot was almost full, proving that this is still a very popular attraction. Now I needed to avoid the crowds and find a good sketching angle.

I took the hiking trail which gave me some elevation and a nice perspective to sketch the entrance (featured sketch).

Lost Trees of Scotts Valley

The Santa Cruz County town of Scotts Valley is bisected by Highway 17. The highway sees a lot traffic as travelers from the Bay Area head to the seaside town of Santa Cruz.

The Santa Cruz area already has it’s attractions, the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and the Mystery Spot being some of the most visited. Scotts Valley needed to capture some of those tourist dollars.

Two attractions were build on either side of the highway. Both attractions are now gone and there is little evidence that they ever existed. But I was going to sketch the only trees left in Scotts Valley that were part of the attraction called The Tree Circus.

The genesis of the Tree Circus was a Swedish-American named Axel Erlandson. In the early 1900s Erlandson’s family moved from Minnesota to California’s Central Valley.

While there, Erlandson began grafting and shaping trees in various shapes. He primarily used sycamores and box elder for his arboreal sculptures.

A plaque featuring some of Erlandson’s trees.

Erlandson was looking for a location for his wooden oddities and he opened The Tree Circus in 1947 in Scotts Valley on the western side of Highway 17. The advertising slogan he used was, “See the World’s Strangest Trees Here.” At the time admission was just 25-cents. The attraction was featured many times in Ripley’s “Believe it or Not!” and other publications such as Life magazine.

Some murals shows Scotts Valley’s roadside attractions of the past.

In 1940, Highway 17 opened, bypassing the old stage road, Scotts Valley Drive, where the Tree Circus was located.

In 1963 Erlandson sold the property to Larry and Peggy Thompson. Erlandson died a year later.

Erlandson’s final resting place at Oakwood Cemetery in Santa Cruz.

The Thompsons added 30 fiberglass dinosaurs, created a stream through the property, and renamed the grove of Erlandson’s tree “The Enchanted Forest”.

The new attraction was named “Lost World”. I remember visiting the park as a kid during this time. From Highway 17 you could see the large T. Rex and triceratops.

The attendance slowed and Lost World was eventually closed and sold in 1977.

The trees were saved and bought by Michael Bonfante, owner of a local supermarket chain, who replanted them in his new amusement park in Gilroy called Bonfante Gardens (now called Gilroy Gardens).

On Saturday I arrived at the Tree Circus Center, sounds like a perfect place to find remnants of Erlandson’s art. The only business open at this hour was a hair salon.

I did know I owned a sporting goods store in Scotts Valley!

Before me was two sycamores leaning towards each other in an unnatural way. This is all that remains in Scotts Valley of the Erlandson’s Tree Circus.

Two lone sycamores.

Evidence of Santa’s Village is even harder to find. There is nothing left of the former Christmas themed amusement park (yes it was open all year long), which I also attended as a child.

It open in 1957 and remained in business until 1979. There is now a row of houses on the property. But the exit from Highway 17 homeowners take to get to their houses is telling;

Small Shacks: Beach Cottage

For this Small Shacks sketch I headed to Capitola on Monterey Bay.

My subject was a small one room shack built in 1907. It was in Santa Cruz right next to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk in “Cottage City”. The Beach Cottage was used as a home away from home for summer beach visitors who were escaping the hot summer heat of Central Valley summers.

The interior of the Beach Cottage.

The cottage could be rented for a dollar a day and a family would enjoy their seaside vacations for weeks or months.

This cottage provided a pleasant abode to vacationers for over 30 years. In 1941, the cottage was sold to make room for a parking lot and moved to Capitola, where it remained in a backyard on Oak Avenue.

In 2004 the cottage was moved to the Capitola Museum and restored to its present condition.

The historic blue “Historic Landmark” plaque on the beach cottage.

Moffett Hanger 1 Reborn

The last time I sketched Hanger 1 at Moffett Field near Sunnyvale, the side panels had been removed leaving the skeletal supports. The massive hangar was in the process of being restored.

The hangar was built in 1933 to house the dirigible USS Macon. It covers eight acres of floor space. It is one of the largest freestanding structures in the world.

The hangar size comparison with the RMS Titanic at the Moffett Field Museum.

After Moffett was decommissioned as a Naval Airbase, the hangar sat unused. Eventually Google agreed to restore the hanger to the tune of $33 million. This would be my first time sketching the hanger reborn.

To enter the former Naval base you have to show an id at the front gate. This morning it was manned by four policemen. I was a little early for the opening of the Moffett Field Museum but I figured I would get a sketch in of Hangar 1 with the P-3 Orion in the foreground.

The newly restored Hangar 1 and the aircraft of my youth: the P-3 Orion.

I picked a spot in the shade and set up my sketching chair. I planned to sketch and paint the scene before me.

Hanger 1 and the distinctive MAD boom or stinger tail of the P-3A.

For this sketch I first penciled in the shapes in my panoramic sketchbook and then laid in washes. When the washes dried, I tied the scene together with pen work.

Around this time I noticed some movement behind me over my right shoulder. I turned to see a young police officer approaching me.

Oh no, here we go!

He asked me what I was doing and I told him that I was drawing the refurbished hangar and the P-3. He said he saw me photographing the airplane and (in his head), I might be photographing classified equipment on a military plane (that wasn’t there) on the tarmac.

The young officer was soon joined by three other squad cars. This was clearly the most exciting thing that has happened all week!

At this point a more senior officer took over the questioning. Perhaps to see if I had any dangerous weapons about me like a mechanical pencil or a soft eraser.

I told him that I was drawing the hangar and the Orion (at which point he complemented my work) and that I grew up in Sunnyvale and the P-3 was the plane that flew past my bedroom window. With this explanation and the evidence of my field sketch, I think he realized I was not a threat to National Security and perhaps his young officer had overreacted a bit.

The officers retreated to their vehicles and talked shop as if they were reluctant to leave me to my sketch. They eventually left, I finish my sketch, and then headed over to the museum.

This is one massive building. The structure is so large it generates its own weather system inside usually in the form of fog.

When I visited the museum I related my encounter with the police to a docent who was retired Navy and was also very opinionated. He said their behavior was chicken sh*t and that was one reason he left the Navy.

I talked to another docent at the museum about what Google planned to do with the new and improved hangar and no one seems to know. Mysterious.

What Time is It?

After work I headed to do a San Francisco neighborhood to sketch a portal to the past.

I was in the Ingleside neighborhood and my sketching subject was a large timepiece.

This timepiece was dedicated on October 10, 1913. The irony is that this massive sun dial is in an area of San Francisco known for fog.

I see by the sun dial that it is almost 4. The skies were uncommonly sunny.

I sat on a bench and started to sketch.

The sundial was built as the centerpiece of the Ingleside neighborhood that was being developed in the early twentieth century.

The area was formerly a racetrack first opened in 1895 for horse racing. Horse racing at the track proved to be so popular that Southern Pacific Railroad built a branch line to the entrance of the track.

From this Google map, the oval of the race track is still intact. The sundial on the western side of the oval.

The track later featured early auto races. Businesses slowly declined and the last race at the track was held on December 30, 1905.

The site was later developed as the Ingleside neighborhood.

The Bigfoot Discovery Museum

In 2026, the Bigfoot Discovery Museum in Felton, California is about as hard to find as the Sasquatch itself.

I always love curious roadside attractions and it seems when you combine a highway (Highway 9) with coast redwoods, you are bound to find a Bigfoot museum.

The museum was founded by Stanford grad Michael Rugg in 2004. At the age of four, Rugg saw Bigfoot and claimed to have locked eyes with the mysterious being. He later worked in Silicon Valley during the dot com boom and the eventual bust. After the bust he opened the museum.

A friend and I visited the museum, just up the highway from my cabin, about 15 years ago.

The museum contains a curious mix of artifacts including plaster foot casts, Harry and the Hendersons memorabilia, a picture of Chewbacca, supposed Bigfoot scat, and a section about the famous Patterson-Gimlin film.

The famous frame 352 of the Patterson-Gimlin Film. Should the fact the it was filmed at Bluff Creek be an inside joke? The jury is still out if this is indeed a hoax.

My friend thought the museum was creepy and we didn’t stay long. In truth you could see the entire small museum in less than 15 minutes.

This museum is very reminiscent of many private museums on highways; they are a mixture of hard science (cryptozoology), cheesy gift shop, and the really ridiculous.

The cheesy, ridiculous side seems to undermine the main purpose of the museum: proving the existence of Bigfoot.

In 2025, there was a fire in a cabin behind the museum but the museum and its collection was spared. Maybe the blaze was set by Sasquatch, to destroy evidence of his existence.

After 20 years in business in the San Lorenzo Valley (not really known as a hotspot for Bigfoot sightings) the museum closed with Rugg’s retirement.

An odd carved bear has replaced the wooden Bigfoot carvings. The statues were definitely cheesy including an adult with a young one on its shoulders.

By the time I sketched the former museum, the only evidence left that this was a building dedicated to the search for hidden life was the mural painted on the side of the red barn.

I would firmly put this mural in the cheesy, ridiculous column.

Stagnero Bros, Santa Cruz Wharf

Sometimes sketching is a form of time traveling; A way to time travel to your own past.

On a March Saturday morning, before the sun was above the horizon, I found myself at the end of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf.

Before me was a long building that looked more like a seagoing vessel than a restaurant. My panoramic sketchbook was open and I started my continuous line sketch as the day was coming to life.

The building is designed in the Streamline Moderne style. The aerodynamic lines makes it look like an art deco ship. The bar upstairs looks like the pilot house.

This is Stagnero Bros, a Santa Cruz institution.

In my youth I spend much time with my dad and brother on the wharf watching the sea lions, inspecting what fisherman were reeling in, looking at the fish on ice at Stagneros, and eating burgers at Nelson’s.

A lot has changed in those 40 odd years. Nelson’s is gone and so are my father and brother and I don’t eat burgers anymore.

But the business on the wharf has been going since 1937.

The Stagnero’s was founded by Italian immigrants from a small fishing village in the province of Genoa.

Matteo Stagnero worked various jobs including fishing in the waters of the bay before opening a seafood market and cocktail room on the wharf in 1937.

The restaurant and seafood market has expanded since then with it’s latest Streamline Moderne building.

There should be a warning: DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUNRISE.

I love sketching the curved lines and portholes of this style of architecture. This style also lends itself nicely to a continuous line sketch.

Stagnero Bros is now the last building and business on the wharf after about 150 feet of the wharf, containing a restaurant and restroom, collapsed into the bay during a storm in December of 2024.

The restaurant and fish market has some cinematic pedigree as well. It was featured in the highest grossing Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact, of “Go ahead, make my day” fame. Sudden Impact (1983), was the only film in the series directed by it’s star, Clint Eastwood.

Three scenes were filmed here. It was at the fish market that two of the baddies are employed that Harry dispatches at the Boardwalk during the climactic ending. Perhaps this is why no mention of the film is to found on the restaurant’s website.

When the filming took place in the spring of 1983, the restaurant looked a bit different. Since then, the restaurant was remodeled in its neo-Streamline Moderne style but I have not found information on when the renovation took place.

I have always loved the Stagnero’s logo. That orange fish breaching the waves with a smile on its fish lips always puts a smile on my lips especially when I pass one of their delivery trucks in the Bay Area.
The California sea-lions still love the wharf, even though it’s shorter.

Alpine Meadows: March 31, 1982

With the recent February 17, 2026 avalanche at Castle Peak that took the lives of nine skiers, it reminds me of another tragic avalanche that gripped the nation in 1982.

I was 11 years old at the time and an avid skier. I remember the news coverage of this event, it was a story of tragedy, strength, and hope.

This was the avalanche at the ski resort at Alpine Meadows on March 31, 1982.

I wouldn’t call this natural occurrence a “natural disaster”, it just becomes a disaster when human lives are caught up in it because avalanches are perfectly natural and are often created by human activity.

An early spring storm brought loads of snow to the Lake Tahoe region; seven to eight feet.

The ski patrol at Alpine Meadow were in charge of avalanche control (as if there is such a thing) and the mountain had an extensive program that used hand thrown dynamite charges, a 75 mm recoilless rifle, and a howitzer cannon to prompt the build up of snow to reach its angle of repose.

The steep slopes at Alpine Meadows, from the peaks down to the base area, is an avalanche machine. The resort is graded a Class A, the highest hazard designation for avalanches and Alpine Meadows is one of the most avalanche prone ski resorts in the country.

The mountain manager knew of the potential dangers and closed the mountain to skiers on Wednesday the 31 and told employees not to show up for work that day.

The only people on site were the mountain manager, Bernie Kingery and assisting him with monitoring the avalanche control was Beth Morrow. A few others were around the resort helping in the effort to clear snow and avalanche control.

In the afternoon of the 31st lift operator Anna Conrad and her boyfriend returned to the Summit Terminal building from Conrad’s cabin. She wanted to pick up her snow pants in the locker room on the second floor.

The Summit Terminal was a three story modified A-frame that housed the ski school, lift operations, trail crew, and the ski patrol office. It was also the nerve center when monitoring avalanche control. As the name implies, the Summit Chairlift (the resorts longest lift) departed from the building and rose up to the top of Ward Peak.

At 3:45 PM, the tons of snow on the ridges that had been building up began to move downhill. Seconds later the avalanche, traveling at almost 200 miles per hour, took out the Summit Terminal and crashed through the lodge and filled the parking lot with 12 feet of snow.

In a blink of an eye the avalanche created a path of destruction that claimed seven lives. This disaster remains the most devastating avalanche at a ski resort in North America.

The news coverage of the event remains in my mind’s eye as the search for survivors in the wreckage of the Summit Terminal building and underneath the snow continued.

As the days after the 31st passed it seemed less and less likely there would be any survivors. Rescue was turning into recovery.

Rescue and recovery effort were hampered by the continued snowstorm and the fears that the snow build up would cause another avalanche.

Miraculously on the fifth day they found a survivor trapped in an air space created by a fallen locker and a bench. This was lift operator Anna Conrad.

In the weeks after the avalanche I remember the interviews shown on the local newscasts that Conrad gave from her hospital bed at Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee.

Sketch Notes and References

While researching the events of March 31, 1982, I created a spread with a map of Alpine Meadows and the path of the avalanche. I also sketched the ruins of the Summit Terminal building after the avalanche.

I used two main references in my research of the Alpine Meadows avalanche: the gripping book, A Wall of White by Jennifer Woodlief (2009) and the award winning documentary Buried: The 1982 Alpine Meadows Avalanche (2022) directed by Stephan Siig and Jared Drake.