field sketching

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;

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.

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.

Sketching Out My Back Door

With the tenets upstairs moved out for Italy I used the opportunity to sketch the view from the empty upstairs east facing bedroom.

Now this isn’t exactly sketching out my back door but the sketching above my back door. With the altitude gain I could see the landmark that dominates the view: Sutro Tower.

Sutro Tower was erected between 1971 and 1973. For 45 years the 977 foot tall radio and television transmission tower was the tallest structure in San Francisco before it was usurped by the Salesforce Tower (1,070 feet) in 2018.

In the foreground are the houses that border my backyard, in the middle ground are the houses of the Golden Gate Heights.

I used my Stillman & Birn panoramic watercolor journal to sketch in the scene. I used a thick pen (Micron 10) and rendered the scene in a continuous-line.

My sketch was loose and not exactly to scale but that what makes continuous-line sketching so exciting and vibrant.

The Sanchez Mud Pit

One of our most popular field trips in fourth grade is to Pacifica’s Sanchez Adobe and its infamous mud pit.

The adobe building was built by Francisco Sanchez in 1842-43 and is the oldest building in San Mateo County.

As the former Alcade of San Francisco and Commandante of the Militia he was gifted 8,926 acres of land by the government of Mexico, which is now the city of Pacifica.

Since Don Sanchez, the building has changed hands and has assumed many guises including a hotel, a speakeasy, an artichoke storage warehouse, and now California Historic Landmark No. 391.

Try explaining a Speakeasy to a fourth grader!

When I take fourth graders to Sanchez Adobe we first learn about the layers of history at the site: Native California, Spanish Missions, the Mexican and then the American eras. After our truncated tour of history the real fun begins.

One of the reasons this is such a popular trip for my nine and ten year olds is because it is the best kind of social studies: hands-on history.

My students rotate between three activities: roping a steer and grinding cornmeal, candle making, and forming adobe bricks.

The activity that long remains in the memory is making bricks in the mud pit.

The mud pit at Sanchez Adobe has been the setting of many memories over the years.

Students take off their shoes and socks and then gather around the pit. They raise their right hand (no your other right hand) and take an oath to promise not to get mud on any other person but themselves.

Now it’s time to enter the pit, students walk in a clockwise circle to mush up the mud for brick making. At first they are tentative and a bit scared of the cold mud. Was that a worm I just stepped on? And then they acclimate and it becomes hard to get students to leave the mud pit and wash up!

Now they use their hands to scoop up mud and put it in a rectangular wooden mold to form the “bricks”.

In some years I become one in the minority: a teacher that enters the mud pit.

Wearing my Sanchez Adobe brown boots.

Sketching Notes

I returned to Sanchez Abode on a February Saturday morning and I had the place entirely to myself. We had already had our field trip in January.

It was odd to be here without the sounds of students having fun while learning. The local black phoebes entertained me as I sat on my sketching stump near the mud pit.

For my panoramic sketch the mud pit was my anchor with wooden cart and adobe building in the background.

This was a true plein air sketch that would make urban sketchers proud. I used my small travel palette with half pans of watercolor and my Escoda travel brushes.

Bishop Peak

One SLO goal on my three day weekend visit was to summit Bishop Peak, and at 1,546 feet tall, it’s the tallest of the Nine Sisters.

The Nine Sisters, aka the Morros, are volcanic peaks stretching from Morro Bay to San Luis Obispo. Bishop Peak, named after the shape of the summit rocks, is a much sought after destination for hikers and climbers.

With forecasts for the day in the high 70s, I got an early start, hitting the trailhead at Highland Drive at 7:30 AM.

The trail marker lists the Summit Trail as a black diamond. This is not for the weak kneed and out of shape (which could describe me). I duly noted the 911 sign, giving me my location.

One change in my fairly recent hiking gear is trekking poles. I once ridiculed them as useless pieces of hiking chic. But as I grew older I now see them as an essential part of my hiking get up, so much so that I keep a pair in the trunk of my car at all times. They give me more points of contact, improve balance, and take pressure off the knees. And in a pinch I recommend they could fend off a mountain lion or bear. All of which is very necessary on the over 1,200 feet elevation gain thought uneven boulder terrain that is the Summit hike.

The first part of the hike led me to the base of the peak, past a cattle pond. At the top I could see a few hikers that had already summited. They must have gotten a much earlier start and hiked under headlamps. Cal Poly student no doubt.

I passed a climbing wall to my right and my climb to the peak really began in earnest when I reached the first of many switchbacks.

The first of many switchbacks to the summit.

There was a dad with his two teenage sons who passed me. They had far less gear and no trekking poles!! I used them as a pacer, a reminder of my much slower pace, as I saw them on the switchbacks above mine. I would see their heads always moving forward above the chaparral. They were getting farther and farther ahead.

I soon started passing hikers coming down from the summit who had gone up to watch the sunrise. They had far less gear, water, and some were not even wearing hiking shoes. One group of girls had forgotten their headlamps so they had to use their phone light instead. Ah youth!

I was glad to have full sunlight and the views kept getting better and better the higher I climbed.

After hiking an hour, I could see the reddish rocks of the summit. The rocks that give the peak it’s name.

As I got closer to the summit there seemed to be a few false summits and the trail branched off in different directions, hemmed in by brush. One final scramble and I was greeted by a much appreciated bench. It was 8:35 and I had reached the top!

The much appreciated “End of Trail” bench at the summit.

I drank some water, had some trail mix, and unpacked my panoramic sketchbook. It was sketch time.

After my sketch, it was time to descend, which I figured would be much easier than the climb up. It was five minutes to nine.

On my way down I passed about 30 people on their way up, including two large families with toddlers. The summit was soon to be one crowded place. Another great reason for an early start.

At the end of my descent, I turned left at the cattle pond and walked out on the Felsman Loop Trail toward a sketching bench.

The view before me was an acknowledged Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, the 16.6 mile portion of railroad that climbs the Cuesta Grade and the series of tunnels near the summit. From my vantage point, Stenner Creek Trestle was before me and the line snakes around in the famous Horseshoe Curve.

I sketched the beautiful green Californian curvaceous hills. This was a great time to be here!