Today the only way to get from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz is to drive over Highway 17. You can no longer take a passenger train. The last train ran in 1940.
On the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, you can board a train at the Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk and it will take you 6.8 miles north into the mountains to the town of Felton.
Detraining here you follow the line past the train shed and machine shop of the Roaring Camp and Big Trees Railroad and the old passenger and freight depot and then you cross Graham Hill Road and walk north on the rails toward Zayante, using the rusty rails as a guide.
The line begins to parallel Zayante Creek. The road builders used the watersheds of the Santa Cruz Mountains as a route to work up and down the summit. A good part of the Santa Cruz to Felton route parallels Santa Cruz County’s largest river, the San Lorenzo.
After a few miles you eventually come to a siding, this is the former stop of Eccles near Olympia Station Road. This was a flag stop as far back as 1901. There was once a passenger shelter (1913) and a freight platform.
The main line and siding at Eccles. The 310 foot siding was probably used to store lumber cars.
The station sign remained in place until 1942, when the station was decommissioned following the abandonment of the the railroad.
After World War II, passenger service was not resumed and the station shelter was torn down. The Eccles sign was saved and was on display at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History in downtown Santa Cruz.
Here’s where the Eccles station sign used to be at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. It’s gone, like the rails that once reached over the Santa Cruz Mountains.
One a recent visit to the museum the sign was no longer on display.
I continued north as the siding rejoined the mainline. And after about a five minute walk, the tracks end without much ceremony. There is no bumper stop to mark the end. And one tail is longer than it’s mate, 4 feet and 8 1/2 inches away.
This is the end of the line and as far north as the tracks go.
Of all the tunnels on the former South Pacific Coast Railroad there is only one that is still in use for it’s intended purpose. That is Tunnel No. 8, the Mission Hill Tunnel.
This tunnel takes the line through Mission Hill because the town of Santa Cruz did not want the railroad to run through downtown. So they had to bore through the sandstone of Mission Hill. This meant the tunnel was prone to caving in so it was reinforced with internal redwood beams.
The tunnel is built under the Mission Santa Cruz Cemetery and in the early days, steam locomotives passing though would rattle and shake up the earth and occasionally a bone or two would fall onto the line leaving a macabre find for rail crews.
In 1985 the Southern Pacific line was purchased by Norman Clark, owner of the Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad, and passenger service was revived from Felton to Santa Cruz, a round trip of 16 miles.
The Big Trees & Pacific coming off of Chestnut Street in Santa Cruz on it’s return to Felton. The railroad has some of the most street running rail of any tourist railway. The train is pulling into the right of way heading towards Tunnel No. 8. The train disappearing into Tunnel No. 8 on its way to Felton.
Just up the creek from my cabin is one of the remaining wooden trestles on the former South Pacific Coast Railroad (in 1887 the railroad became Southern Pacific). This is the Shady Gulch Trestle.
Not only does this trestle still exist but is still used for rail service on the Big Trees and Pacific Railway.
Shady Gulch Trestle with the Highway 9 concrete bridge (1930) in the foreground. The dirt road to the right is the former Eben Bennett toll road. The concrete highway bridge replaced the toll road.
The original trestle was built in 1875 to span Shady Gulch. At the time, the line was built for the narrow gauge South Pacific Coast Railroad. When Southern Pacific acquired the line they rebuilt the trestle in 1905 to accommodate standard gauge.
The trestle of today very much looks like the original narrow gauge trestle of the late 19th century, sans graffiti of course.
The afternoon Felton-bound Big Trees and Pacific crossing the Shady Gulch Trestle. This tourist train tends to stop traffic on Highway 9.
My father spend his childhood summers in the cabin in the 1930, 40s, and 50s. He would tell me of the time a freight would be climbing the grade on the trestle on their way to Felton on a foggy summer’s morning. The wet track would cause the locomotive’s driving wheels to slip. And after many slips and the hyperbolic “chuff-chuff-chuff” of the stream exhaust, the train would back down the grade, sanding the track as they reversed. The freight would make another attempt, this time slowly with the sanded rails helping the drivers grip the steel. And off they went to Felton.
There is a single one car pull off on the north side of the highway bridge. I made three attempts to sketch the trestle but was foiled by a camper van that was camped out in the spot.
Was this guy going to spend the night here? On my third attempt of the day, in late afternoon, the van was finally gone and I was able to park, set up my sketching chair, and start my sketch of the trestle.
I timed my sketching time with the Felton bound afternoon Big Trees and Pacific train.
On a historic rail sketching adventure, Grasshopper and I headed up into the Santa Cruz Mountains to sketch a portal of one of the longest rail tunnels on the former South Pacific Coast Railroad (later Southern Pacific) route.
This 28 mile route started at Vasona Junction in Los Gatos and climbed over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the beach town of Santa Cruz.
Part of this route still exists as the Big Trees and Pacific Railroad which operates a tourist train from Felton to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.
The tunnel we were looking for is the Glenwood Tunnel, also known as Tunnel No. 3. This 5,793 foot tunnel was active from 1879 to 1942. The original tunnel was built for narrow gauge but when Southern Pacific took over the line in 1887, they later converted the line to standard gauge (4 ft 8.5 in).
When the South Pacific Coast Railroad was first planned, then had to figure out how to get the road bed into the San Lorenzo Valley. To do this they had to built two one-mile long tunnels: Tunnel No. 2 (Summit Tunnel) and Tunnel No. 3 (Glenwood Tunnel).
From northbound Highway 17, we took the Laurel exit heading towards the former township of Laurel. We passed a few mountain homes and two bikers laboring up the hill as we headed down towards the former rail-bed.
We parked and headed out to a get a better look. The west portal of the Glenwood Tunnel was visible, but parts were obscured by trees and a power pole. The “private property” sign kept us at bay. Was this the best view we would get?
The not-so-great view.
I climbed up a side road, probably also private property, that parallels the rail bed, to get a better sketching vantage point. Even here, the portal was obscured by redwoods but I started a sketch anyway (which, like Tunnel No. 3, I abandoned).
Not being satisfied with the sketch I returned to where Grasshopper was sketching. His only company was a barking dog on the other side of a fence. There was a house just to our left.
A man peeked over the fence with his cup of coffee and said, “You can walk up to the tunnel if you want.”
This was the owner of the house (let’s call him “Bill”) and we had a nice conversation with him about living in the redwoods, winter storms, history, his spring-fed water system, and trains and tunnels.
We thanked Bill and walked around the chain that crossed the rail bed and headed towards the western portal of the Glenwood Tunnel. Now this was the way to sketch the tunnel (featured sketch).
Grasshopper sketching the western portal of Tunnel No. 3. Bill’s spring-fed water system can be seen on the right.Corvidsketcher in the western portal of Tunnel No. 3.
We walked into the 1909 concrete portal. The tunnel ended in about 50 feet.
In 1940, winter storms and landslides closed portions of the route permanently. Southern Pacific made the decision to abandon the line. The major tunnels were dynamited at both ends, closing the tunnels for good. The concrete portals are all that still remain.
Now that we firmly had tunnel fever, we had to find the other side of the tunnel, the eastern portal.
Tunnel No. 3 now passes under Highway 17 so you have to cross over the highway to find the other end.
The eastern portal of the Glenwood Tunnel at Glenwood Drive.
The eastern portal of the Glenwood Tunnel is much harder to get to than the western portal. To get a comparable view you would have to scrabble down a steep hillside or trespass through a stable to reach the rail bed which now seems to be a creek bed.
So we had to make due and sketch the portal from the side of Glenwood Drive, which the concrete portal now supports.
It is nice to see sea otters along the Santa Cruz coast. Laying on their backs, bashing a mollusk to death or eating a crab, recently caught, and still alive, one foot at a time, or rolling in the kelp, belly full, and settling in for a nap.
Fresh caught crab is on the menu off of West Cliff Drive.
This marine mammal was hunted to near extinction because of their pelts. Now they are protected and have prospered on the California coast.
A five year old female, branded a “terrorist” by some in the media, has grabbed the world’s attention.
This is Otter 841.
Otter 841 was born in captivity and then released to the wild. Her mother, Otter 723 was taken out of the wild because she was habituated to people and was approaching kayakers begging for food. It was apparent that Otter 723 was being fed by humans.
While in captivity they realized that Otter 723 was pregnant and she soon gave birth to our troublemaker Otter 841.
841 was released to Monterey Bay where for four years she swam under the radar.
Starting in June of 2023, 841 has become a surfboard pirate. The otter has been observed and photographed jumping up onto surfboards, dislodging it’s surprised rider, in the popular surf spots of Steamers Lane and Cowells. On one occasion, 841 took some bites out of a surfboard.
Is this Otter 841? On the otter’s left flipper is a light blue tag with a three digit identification number. Surf at your own risk! Surfers keeping an eye on the infamous otter.
The powers that be decided that 841 should no longer be in the wild and attempts were made to capture 841 employing the cunning use of a surfboard. They tried and tried again but they could not capture the piratical otter.
And as of publishing, Otter 841 still swims free off the coast in Santa Cruz.
Don’t mess with nature because nature usually wins.
One joy of sketching is to return to a previous subject but sketch it from a different perspective. Such is the case with the whales of Long Marine Lab in Santa Cruz. (Former cetaceans, that is.)
Long Marine Lab is part of the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) and is a research and educational facility for marine biology. The campus also features a small aquarium (the Seymour Marine Discovery Center) that is open to the public. The biggest draw for me is the biggest creature that ever lived on Planet Earth: the blue whale. The Discovery Center has an incredible blue whale skeleton on display flanking one side of the museum.
I had sketched the massive blue whale skeleton and the smaller gray whale skeleton before but I wanted to sketched them in a different way. For the blue, I stood directly in front and sketched it head on, as if the largest creature on Planet Earth was swimming towards me.
I have been lucky enough to see blue whales in the wild from pelagic boating trips. Most of these trips have been in Monterey Bay. I remember the first time I saw this massive cetacean on a trip out of Monterey Harbor with my father in the late 1980s. My high school biology teacher at the the time didn’t believe blue whales could be seen in Monterey Bay, until I showed him the photos.
Song sparrow using the vertebrae of the gray whale for a singing perch. Gray whale skeleton with the Seymour Marine Discovery Center on the left and Big Blue on the right.
In late May, something interesting washed up on Rio Del Mar Beach in Aptos on the shore of Monterey Bay. It was not your standard bit of driftwood, a dead marine mammal, or a piece of flotsam from Japan.
In fact the jogger who found it did not know what she found, so she took a picture of it and did what most of us seem to do nowadays: she posted the picture on social media. Someone who did know what it was saw the post and that person was Wayne Thompson, the Paleontology Advisor for the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. He identified the object as a tooth from an extinct mastodon!
When they returned to the beach the tooth was gone. So a search was begun to find where the molar tooth has gone through national and even international media. The efforts soon turned up the tooth. A local man saw the tooth on the beach and took it home. He saw that this was being sought after and he called the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History.
The tooth was put on display at the museum for three days on the first weekend in June. And that is where I saw the tooth and sketched it.
The recently found mastodon molar in a box, on display for three days at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. I sketched it on the second day.
When I first stepped into the museum, it was much busier than usual. In front of the mastodon display stood the man himself, Wayne Thompson, being interviewed by a local news station. He told the reporter that the tooth was probably washed down Aptos Creek during the record rains of 2023 and then washed up onto the beach. This was a big story. I was told that NPR would be visiting the museum on Monday.
Mastodons are related to the wooly mammoth and the modern elephant. The Pacific mastodon (Mammut pacificus) once roamed the land that became California between five million to 10,000 years ago. So the tooth was an incredible and rare find. In fact the name mastodon comes from ancient Greek meaning “breast tooth”, referring to the nipple-like appearance on the crown of the molars.
Mastodons disappeared from North and Central America about 10,500 years ago. It believed that the mastodon was driven to extinction by early human hunters.
In 1990, right after high school graduation, I headed over to Europe with my best friend Erik and his older brother Pete on a backpacking, hitchhiking, Eurorail adventure.
I was kitted out with a Eurorail Pass, a youth hostel card, and an REI black and red external framed backpack. This was the type of old school backpack you never see anymore. The pack where you would attach your sleeping bag to the bottom with bungee cords. The type of backpack that makes you look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, especially when you are wear a poncho to fend off the English rain.
I remember at SFO watching my checked pack get stuck on the roller belt and seeing the buckle of my hip belt rip off. This is the worst part of the pack to lose because you carry the weight of a pack not on your shoulders but your waist. (My dad had to send a replacement buckle to me in England).
Times have changed and materials have improved becoming lighter yet stronger. While I have used a backpack for, well, backpacking, I have favored a carry-on roller bag for airplane travel.
As the European travel guru Rick Steves notes, no one ever returns from a European trip and wishes they brought more. The same applies to my past travel experiences. I always wonder why I brought that shirt or sweater I never ended up using. I’m always fine tuning my travel kit to find the right balance.
Iceland was a time to return to backpacking. Could I do it after 30 years? I was not 18 anymore. But the packs, clothing, and packing accessories are so much better than when I first backpacked Europe three decades ago.
After some research, I decided on an Osprey pack. I have an Osprey daypack and it is one of the most comfortable packs I own. Osprey was founded in 1974 in Santa Cruz (nice local connection) and well, the osprey is a cool bird! The original business was called Santa Cruz Recreational Packs on River Street. The building now is Down Works.
The Osprey pack that I chose was the Farpoint 40 which is the company’s most popular travel backpack. This tics all the specs to fit in an overhead compartment while providing a large main compartment to hold together your life on the road. How is this done?
The Osprey Farpoint 40.
Because the main compartment has no dividers, compression packing cube are essential for organizing items and compressing them to fit. In one medium cube I can fit one pair of pants and six shirts. In a small cube I could fit one pair of thermal underwear, five pairs of socks, and five pairs of underwear.
The main compartment of the Farpoint 40 with two Thule compression packing cubes and an REI dopp kit. The large mesh pocket to the left holds a rain jacket and pants (average rainfall in Iceland ranges from 50 to 100 inches per year).
Now how does this work on a 15 day trip? Most of my clothing is made of synthetic material which means they are quick drying. So every few days I wash clothes in the sink or bathtub and then dry them on my Sea to Summit travel clothesline and they’re dry in the morning. This saves a lot of space in my bag.
And it sure feels great to travel lightly and not be encumbered by a heavy, unwieldy roller bag.
It’s always nice to the start the new year of with a life bird. So much better if the bird is a mega rarity!
This was the Eurasian chat the red-flanked bluetail (Tarsiger cyanurus).
The bird was the sixth California record and only the second chasible bird (that is if you have an ocean going vessel), the other four records are from the Farallon Islands. It was found on December 28, 2022 in a park near the Santa Cruz Lighthouse on West Cliff Drive.
I had planned to head down on New Year’s Day to Lighthouse Field State Beach in Santa Cruz with Grasshopper but on December 31, after record heavy rains, a large cypress tree at the park fell and killed a 72 year old man. The park was closed for safety concerns.
So our Plan B was to bird the San Mateo County coast and have a go at the continuing northern gannet at Pillar Point Harbor.
Highway 92 was closed because of the intense rainfall so it was Highway One down the line to Pillar Point.
We checked the breakwater for a large white bird. No gannet. Heading south, the beaches seemed devoid of gulls. The historic rains had washed away large parts of the beaches, the creeks were flowing at a high capacity turning near shore waters a muddy brown. Not a great day for birding, well not yet anyway.
We reached as far south as Pescadero State Beach, looked out at few roosting gulls (it was still too early for kittiwakes) and returned north to try again for the consolation gannet
Johnson Pier was now crowed with people buying fresh crab and cod from fishing boats in the harbor. We weaved our way out to the end of the pier to look for an out-of-place big white seabird. Grasshopper spotted the gannet, named “Morris” by locals, immediately. The gannet, the only one on the west coast, was preening and the local gulls and cormorants were giving Morris a wide berth.
The much larger northern gannet sticks out like a sore thumb.
After getting good looks and a few photos, we saw a report that the bluetail had been seen and heard earlier in the morning. So some birders where getting access to the park. After a quick ponder we knew what we had to do: head south and retrace our journey and not stop until we where parked next to Lighthouse Field State Beach.
About an hour later, we parked on a side street, geared up, and entered the park. Still unsure of the location, we knew we had to find the semicircle of birders, intently gazing into the bramble. We began to head east on the trail, dodging puddles that were not far from being ponds, when we spotted the large cypress tree that had fallen across the path in front of us.
The cypress was over 100 feet tall, the papers put the tree at 120 feet, and just beyond the tree and to the left we saw a some birders looking off to the left. The only way to get over the tree was to climb over. Other had already trampled down a path through branches that were now facing upward. Once we got to the location of the bluetail, there were already about 35 to 40 birders in attendance, with more arriving as we searched.
This bird was going to be tough because it was sulky and shy, so patience and perseverance would be needed. Good thing I’m an elementary school teacher!
The bird was being seen among the grasses and branches and the bluetail was moving quickly, not pausing for long. I saw movement a few times which I thought was the bluetail but I wanted better diagnostic looks before I added the bluetail to my list. After about 30 minutes, I finally got a good look at the tail of the bluetail, which was blue and I noted how the bird frequently jerked it’s tail downward like a flycatcher. World life bird number 1,707!
Once I got my views, I stepped aside to let others from the back start their search. I started my anchor sketch of the downed cypress tree and reflected on the tragedy of a man’s death, while not far away, birders chortled in ecstasy.
The first red-footed booby (Sula sula) I had ever seen in Santa Cruz County was perched on the pier out to the Concrete Ship at Seacliff Beach. But the booby that has recently been hanging around Santa Cruz Wharf was a much more incredible and close bird.
The booby was first seen towards the end of the wharf on November 3. At the time, local birders assumed the booby was sick because it appeared very lethargic and allowed a very close approach from viewers, including some selfies seeking tourists. A local birder had to put up yellow caution tape to keep the booby admirers at bay.
The red-footed booby is a bird of the tropics and not the foggy coast of Northern California. The common name comes from the Spanish “bobo”, meaning buffoon. This refers to the ease in catching the bird and it’s awkward gait on land. Many of these seabirds experience “island syndrome” and because of their isolation from humans, they show little to no fear of them. (Think of the now extinct dodo). This tropical visitor showed no fear to the humans walking up to it when even a gull would fly away.
On Friday afternoon, I drove out to the end of the wharf. The booby had been reported across from the Dolphin Restaurant, which is one of the last eating establishments at the end of the wharf.
I parked across the street from Stagnaros and looked up and 20 feet away was the red-footed booby perched on the wharf railing! There was also a small audience taking pictures of the wayward rarity.
The red-booby with a few of it’s admirers. They are about six feet away from the booby.
I got out of my car and snapped a few photos and then I took out my sketchbook to get a sketch in. It was easy to sketch the booby because the bird was about six feet away and seemed completely unfazed by the birder paparazzi.
The red-footed booby of Santa Cruz.
It was great to observe the booby up close with the naked eye. It was a little challenging to sketch as it was in constant motion, preening or tucking it bill into it’s feathers for a quick nap or keeping a western gull at bay.
Sula sula and a western gull.
From my observations, the booby was well and thriving. It had been seen fishing with gulls, cormorants, and pelicans in the bay so I assume it was finding plenty of fish. It landed on the wharf rail to preen and rest.
Let’s hope the world’s smallest booby stays with us throughout the winter!
A quick field sketch of the wayward booby. I used my Lamy Safari for this sketch and because the black ink was not waterproof, it bleed into the paint. For the featured sketch, I replaced the ink with Noodlers Black ink which is very waterproof.
Corvid Sketcher 