California

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Montgomery at the Hiller

After sketching in Evergreen, I headed north up the Peninsula to San Carlos. My destination: the Hiller Aviation Museum.

I was here to see and sketch three gliders and look at a plaque. The three gliders are replicas of the Gull, Santa Clara, and Evergreen, all designed by John J. Montgomery. Two are suspended from the ceiling and the Evergreen sits in a dark corner with a dubious mannequin, representing John Montgomery, sitting at the controls.

The odd mannequin of John Montgomery really looks like he’s three sheets to the wind!

The plaque sits off to the left of the replica of the Evergreen and mannequin. I have seen a plaque like this before, last fall in Roanoke, Virginia and also at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento.

The plaque in Roanoke honored the engineering achievements of Norfolk and Western’s J-Class No. 611. The plaque at the Hiller, by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, designates the glider as an International Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. The plaque reads:

Montgomery Glider

1883

This replica represents the first heavier-than-air craft to achieve controlled, piloted flight. The glider’s design was based on the pioneering aerodynamic theories and experimental procedures of John Joseph Montgomery (1858-1911), who designed, built, and flew it. This glider was way ahead of its time, incorporating a single parabolic, cambered wing, with stabilizing and control surfaces at the rear of the fuselage, with his glider’s success, Montgomery demonstrated aerodynamic principles and designs fundamental to modern aircraft.

The plaques placement is a bit unfortunate because it actually refers to the Gull, which hangs above and not the Evergreen (the curator I talked to admitted that this part of the museum has been neglected).

John Montgomery was a true Californian, born in Yuba City. He was many things in the Golden State: inventor, pilot, engineer, physicist, and a professor at Santa Clara University.

He studied the soaring flight of hawks, eagles, pelicans, turkey vultures, and gulls around San Diego Bay and further inland and then tried to design his gliders influenced by nature’s own design. He referred to birds as, “tutors in the art of flying”. Montgomery put this understanding the flight of birds with creating a heavier than air glider this way, “It has always seemed to me that the secret of aerial navigation lay in the discovery of the principle of bird’s flight.”

In 1883 the flying professor made pioneering flights near the Mexican border at Otay Mesa. His flights lasted up to 600 feet. He had not yet learned how to design a glider that could soar upwards like a turkey vulture.

Here he flew the Gull, the replica now hangs in the Hiller Aviation Museum.

So I did a loose sketch of the Gull.

I chose to sketched the Gull loosely with another mannequin of Montgomery (as a younger man) perched uncomfortably on the glider’s “saddle”. I left out all the other aircraft around it and used my artistic license to add the setting: Otay Mesa.
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Professor John Montgomery and Evergreen

Previously I had written about aviation history above the skies of Aptos on the Monterey Bay. The man who designed the glider was a Professor John L. Montgomery.

Montgomery had a long history of flight development in California. He is overshadowed by aviation developments in Europe and on the East Coast. And his accomplishments are eclipsed by the Wright Brothers, who must have had a better PR man.

There are a few reasons for this. Montgomery had trouble securing patients for his flight inventions and being far away on the west coast and far from the national media in New York and Boston meant that his exploits didn’t get the same coverage as the Wrights. Even though he flew a glider 20 years before the famous Wright Brothers.

I wanted to visit and sketch the hillside where be flew his last glider. This is in the Evergreen neighborhood of East San Jose. The hillside is now named Montgomery Hill in his honor and is behind present day, Evergreen Valley College.

I arrived at the collage early on Sunday morning, free parking! My plan was to walk up to the observatory and sketch Montgomery Hill.

The Observatory at Evergreen Valley College.

I positioned myself so I could sketch the dome of the observatory in the foreground and the hill that stretched off into the distance (featured sketch right).

The hill before me was where Montgomery did many test flights with the glider her designed. The glider was named after this area: Evergreen.

A 1911 photograph of Montgomery flying the Evergreen, shortly before his death. The location is now called Montgomery Hill.

In was on this hill on October 31, 1911, that Professor Montgomery crashed his glider Evergreen, and died of his injuries. He was 53 years old.

Montgomery Hill, the sight of Montgomery’s last flight.

John J. Montgomery is starting to get the recognition in aviation history that he so rightly deserves. In the Evergreen neighborhood at the intersection of San Felipe and Yerba Buena, there is a 30 foot wing that stretches up to the sky (featured sketch).

This Public art is titled “Soaring Flight” (2008) by artist Kent Roberts.

On an interesting side note, sculptor Kent Roberts (1947-2019) was a Bay Area artist. Before attending the San Francisco Art Institute, he served as an officer in the US Navy aboard an aircraft carrier. The ship’s name: the USS Kitty Hawk.

Uncanny.

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Sunset Reservoir

I live a hop, slip but not even a jump from San Francisco’s largest reservoir: Sunset Reservoir.

This terminal reservoir was completed in 1960 and has an impressive capacity of 270 acres. To put this into context the sides of the reservoir are four blocks north and south and two blocks east and west. The surface area is 11 acres.

The reservoir is covered and fenced off. Over half of the reservoir is blanketed in 25,000 solar panels. The Sunset Reservoir Solar Project started in December 2010 and has tripled San Francisco’s solar generation capacity.

The irony is that the Sunset is the foggiest part of the city.

Some of the 25,000 solar panels of Sunset Reservoir.

While the reservoir itself is not a sight to behold, the northwest corner (featured sketch) affords some of the best views in the Sunset. Along the embankment are walking paths and at the northwest corner are a line of benches.

The bench-view to the north. I can almost see the Farallons. These paths are popular with dog walkers.

Here you can look out to the west towards the Pacific Ocean and on a clear day, you can see the Farallon Islands perched on the horizon like a large, gray battleship.

The views to the north as just as stunning taking in Golden Gate Park, the Richmond District, the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin Headlands, and Mt. Tam. On really clear days you can see outer Pt. Reyes.

Looking north down 27th Avenue towards the Golden Gate from one of the walking paths.
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The Sand Wraith

An endangered plover that is rarely seen on the west coast was being seen at the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern San Mateo County.

Grasshopper Sparrow had seen the piping plover a week before and this Saturday morning was my first opportunity to add a rare Bay Area lifer to my list so I picked up Grasshopper a 7:30 and headed to the ponds east of the vast Meta headquarters.

After a circuitous route around the entrance to the Dumbarton Bridge, we found the muddy parking lot and the trailhead that led to the Ravenswood Ponds.

There were already two cars in the parking lot, the more eyes the better! Within about a five minute ramble we came upon the pond where Charadrius melodus had been seen. Two birders already had scopes focused on the sandbars in the middle of the pond. They had not seen the piping, yet.

We scanned the ponds for about three hours (finding a pale plover amongst hundreds takes time and patience). In that time more eyes with scopes began to arrive.

At times the flock, consisting of western and least sandpipers, dunlin, and semipalmated plovers, would land near the watchers on the mudflats. We would quickly scan the birds for a sandy pale plover with orangish legs that was loosely associating with the semipalms, before the flock would erupt in flight.

Watching the shorebirds fly as one, with flashes of white as the birds twisted and turned as one was an absolute joy!

But the pale stubby-nosed, orange-legged plover was proving to be elusive. It seemed that I had tried to turn every semipalmated plover in my scope-view into a piping, with no luck.

Yup, a rare plover brings the birders out on a clear Saturday morning.

As we were nearing our third hour of Plover Watch 2024, a birder to our left called out, “I got the bird!”

What followed was a play by play of the piping’s location and movement; “Do you see the five wigeon in the far channel? Just to the right below the two pylons? The plover is moving to the right. Passing near the green shrubbery. Now it’s facing us, right near the two ruddy ducks now. It’s now going left just past the two semipalms.”

I was following the plover commentary with my scope, looking for the five wigeon and the shrubbery and the ruddy ducks when I finally came upon a pale plover with a pale broken breast-band.

Lifer!!

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Tanforan Siding

The former racetrack at Tanforan is bordered on one side by the former Southern Pacific mainline (currently used by the passenger service Caltrain).

Heading south, the line joins the wider rail network at Santa Clara and San Jose and on to all points on the National railroad compass.

The rails are still very much in use as a northbound Caltrain heads to San Francisco. The train is being pushed by locomotive EMD F40PH-2 No 905 “Sunnyvale”. These diesel-electric locomotives will soon be replaced by electric train sets.

Tanforan was, therefore, connected to the nation through the siding track that brought cars from Tanforan Park proper, to points north (San Francisco) and south (San Jose).

The Tanforan Siding heading towards the former racetrack (now Tanforan Shopping Center). This is the track that connected the siding near the backstretch with the rest of the rail network.

In 1938 the famous thoroughbred racehorse Seabiscuit boarded a special horse baggage car at the Tanforan Siding and he was shipped across the country to the East Coast on his first attempt to beat War Admiral. Large crowds came to see Seabiscuit off at the siding. The first meeting of these racing heavyweights did not happen.

Tanforan does have a dark past. In 1942, the racetrack became the Tanforan Assembly Center (the only assembly center in the San Francisco Bay Area). After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued executive order 9066. As a result Japanese Americans where rounded up and about 8,000 men, woman, and children where brought to Tanforan Racetrack now newly christened the Tanforan Assembly Center (one of twelve assembly centers on the West Coast).

Two-thirds of the detainees were U. S. Citizens, born and raised in the United States.

The Tanforan Memorial outside the San Bruno BART Station. The sculpture is based on a 1942 Dorothea Lange photograph of a family on their way to Tanforan. The memorial was dedicated on August 27, 2022.

The first internees arrived on April 28, 1942. They were housed in barracks and horse stalls that reeked of manure and urine. Some families spent about eight months here before being transported, over rail, to the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah where they remained until the end of the war.

By the fall, the detainees were being sent on a two day rail journey to the Topaz War Relocation Center. On September 9, 1942, the first group of 214 detainees entered the siding that Seabiscuit travelled on a few years earlier and entered the mainline for their trip to the wastes of northeastern Utah. On October 13, 308 detainees, the last to leave Tanforan, entered the siding and then on to Utah.

The Tanforan Assembly Center was now closed.

The site of the former track and assembly center is now a shopping mall.

In 2022 the mall was bought by a developer and there are plans to raze the mall and build a massive biotech campus.

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Fort Humboldt

Who knew that the Northern California town of Eureka had some Civil War and presidential history?

Such is the case when a young captain who served at the fort for five months. He was a loner and spent his free time in local taverns and riding in the countryside. It is said that he developed a taste for whisky while at Fort Humboldt. His name was Ulysses S. Grant.

Of course he went on to become a Civil War hero where he commanded the Union Army. It was Grant that Robert E. Lee surrendered to at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865.

Grant later served as the 18th president from 1869-1877 serving two terms.

There are not many original buildings left at Fort Humboldt but here is where the commissary once stood. Grant served as the fort’s quartermaster, probably at the commissary.

There is not much left of the fort on the bluff above Humboldt Bay and the fort hospital is the only remaining structure of the fort period (from 1853-1870). I pulled up my sketching chair and sketched the hospital building on the left of my spread. On the right is one of the largest steam donkeys ever made.

The state park has some nice relics of the lumber era that put Humboldt County on the economic map.

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Frog Woman Rock

An imposing landmark on Highway 101, just south of Hopland is Frog Woman Rock (formerly known as Squaw Rock).

This was a barrier to the progress of the railroad that was following the Russian River on it’s West Bank. They could not go around the monolith so they had to tunnel through it.

This became the 1,270 foot Tunnel No. 8 on the Northwestern Pacific Railroad (NWP). While this monolith was a new delay to the railroad’s northern progress, the local Pomo people knew this location very well.

Frog Woman Rock with Highway 101 in the foreground.

To them it was know as Bi-tsin’ ma-ca Ka-be, Frog Woman Rock.

There are various legends of how the rock got its name. One Pomo story, filtered through early settlers, is that the rock was a sort of “Lover’s Leap” featuring in a lover revenge quarrel of the scorned Sotuka. Other say Sotuka is the wife of Coyote the trickster and the Pomo people avoided the rock. While others believe when the railroad tunnels through Frog Woman Rock, it released evil spirits.

Whatever the “truth” behind the legend of the rock, it was always be hidden in the past.

In 2024, Frog Woman Rock was designated California Historical Landmark No. 549. The plaque reads:

Since time immemorial, this monolith has been revered by Pomo people as the home of Frog Woman, the consort of coyote, and a special being in her own right. For native people it is a place of sacred power and a reminder of the connection we still have with our spirituality and natural environment. The presence of this great rock on the local landscape is a solemn witness that will forever be a local symbol of our indigenous collective conscience, strength, and perseverance.

The abandoned NWP train station at Hopland, six miles north of Frog Woman Rock, with rusted rail leading north (to the right) to Willits and Eureka.
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Loleta

Just north of the Victorian town of Ferndale is the small Humboldt County town of Lotleta (population 783).

The name of the town is shrouded in a bit of mystery but the name is supposedly the Wiyot word for “pleasant place at the end of the tide water” or according to Wikipedia, “Go f___ yourself “ or “Let’s have intercourse”. So many varied derivations! Take your pick.

A pre-trip sketch from a vintage photograph. Parts of Loleta have changed very little over the ages.

Through the center of town runs the rusted rails of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad (NWP). Dairy was a very big in this part of Northern Californian economy and this area supplied San Francisco with dairy products. The railroad played a big part in transporting dairy to markets south.

There is a “hiking trail”, much overgrown, along the rails to the abandoned Loleta Tunnel (Tunnel No. 40). I was about to set off on an adventure!

I think this is where the hiking trail begins to the Loleta Tunnel (hard to tell from the sign). In the background is the NWP line. At the grade crossing, the sign reads, “ TRACKS OUT OF SERVICE”.

I set out on the hiking “trail”or the “ING RAIL” which was following the route north of the Northwestern Pacific right of way. In many places the rails were swallowed up in mud or vegetation or both. The Loleta Tunnel was about a mile from “downtown” Loleta. Near the tunnel was a washed out trestle over a small ravine, leaving the NWP rail suspended in midair. Perhaps this is a just metaphor for the hopes of restoring rail to this part of California.

The suspended trestle.

I did not attempt to cross the trestle (or lack of a trestle) but a path had been worn down one side of the ravine and up the other. From here is was a short but muddy slog to the south portal of the Loleta Tunnel.

The Loleta Tunnel runs under Highway 101. This is the much decorated south portal.

Before I headed up to Loleta I did two historic sepia sketches based on period photographs when steam locomotives rumbled through the small town (featured sketch). Parts of Loleta are very recognizable to this day.

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Seabiscuit’s Last Pasture

Just south of Willits on an unassuming county road is Ridgewood Ranch.

First established as a ranch in the 1850s, the ranch was given the name Ridgewood Ranch by its second owner, Rench Angle in 1859. Angle increased the size of the ranch by buying up surrounding land for $3.25 an acre.

The next owner of note, and the reason for my visit, was multimillionaire Charles S. Howard, who bought the ranch in 1919.

Howard came to San Francisco with 21 cents in his pocket. He worked his way up to become one of Buick’s best salesmen of all time. He ran many Buick dealerships in the west at the rise of the age of the automobile.

On the streets of San Francisco, cars began to replace horses as the motive power of the day. This is ironic because of a purchase he made in August of 1936 for the sum of $8,000.

This was the famous thoroughbred Seabiscuit which won many races in the 1930s, lifting a nation in the depths of the Great Depression. He was voted American Horse of the Year in 1938.

The all-time money winner was retired from racing in 1940. Seabiscuit spent the last years of this retired life here at Ridgewood Ranch. He died May 17, 1947 from a probable cardiac arrest.

Seabiscuit is buried near an oak tree at Ridgewood Ranch. Only the Howard family knows the exact location. Seabiscuit’s final resting place is a closely guarded secret.

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Schellville

Schellville is not really a town, just an intersection of a two lane highway and a country road in incorporated Sonoma County. But this is a very important railroad junction.

This is the last bastion of the once great Northwestern Pacific Railroad (NWP).

Schellville was an important rail junction on the NWP and there is a two mile rail yard south of the former train station.

The Schellville Depot has seen better days, just like the rest of the former Northwestern Pacific system. Now it is used for storage.

This was NWP’s only outlet to the greater Southern Pacific rail network. All passenger and freight traffic from Eureka in Humboldt County south to Willits, Santa Rosa, Petaluma and San Rafael in Marin County, had to pass through Schellville.

At one point, post World War II, 11,000 cars a month passed through the junction at Schellville. Many cars went on, under Southern Pacific steam, to the division point at Roseville.

Over the years, declining passenger and freight service, landslides, and the severe winter floods of 1964, sent NWP on a downward decline. The railroad was operated by Southern Pacific and once SP merged with Union Pacific in the mid-1990s, NWP changed hands many times, holding on to it’s diminished existence.

It seemed that the entire fleet of four locomotives where fenced in near the station. This motley collection were painted in the livery of other railroads.

NWP No. 1501 painted in the Southern Pacific “bloody nose” livery.

From the Y track at the station I headed north along the line, vineyards flanking either side of the rusted rails. I crossed a short trestle and before me stood a railroad graveyard, a mothballed fleet of NWP and SP diesels and rolling stock.

The mothball fleet is mainly Southern Pacific locomotives and a mix other other rolling stock. The locomotive on point is Northwestern Pacific EMD GP 9 No. 1922, faded and being returned to nature.
At the end of the diesels is Southern Pacific caboose 1971. The locomotive coupled to the caboose is the former Bessemer and Lake Erie F7 numbers 718 A and 716 B.

While these locomotives had seen better days I was surprised to see a Southern Pacific Steam Locomotive on a siding across 8th Street.

At first I couldn’t believe my eyes. Could this be one of a handful of operable SP steam locomotives? I could barely make out the road number.

It was P-8 Class No. 2572 a 4-6-2 “Pacific” type built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1921.

2472 was retired in 1957 and donated to the city of San Mateo and put on public display at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds.

In 1976 a group decided to restore the SP workhorse to working order. The group, the Golden Gate Railroad Museum, had 2472 ready for Railfair 91 in Sacramento which feature another Southern Pacific legend, 4449.

For many years 2472 operated steam excursions in Niles Canyon but was moved to Schellville on March 1, 2020.