Images

Image

Diamond Springs Creamery, Loleta

I love sketching old abandoned historic buildings. And if they were featured in sci-fi horror cult film, even better.

The Diamond Springs Creamery was built in 1893 in Loleta, California. Which is about 20 miles south of Eureka. The location of the plant would make sense because it is in the middle of California Coastal cow country and on the route of the Northwestern Pacific mainline, bringing dairy to points south including San Francisco.

The dairy plant is very large, perhaps three blocks by six blocks. A good portion of the town must have worked at the plant making Loleta a real company town.

Now the brick building is falling apart with broken windows and covered in graffiti. It was in operation for over one hundred years, stopping production in 2007 and finally being abandoned in 2010. It is now surrounded by a fence with many “No Trespassing” signs on display. This must be to keep graffiti artists and film geeks at bay.

The slowly crumbling milk plant.

In 1982, Loleta filled in for the fictional town of Santa Mira and the creamery stood in for the Silver Shamrock Novelties factory in the film Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

While the film made a profit, it was the lowest grossing film in the Halloween franchise. It probably shouldn’t have been called Halloween III because it gave the false expectations that it was going to star a man in a doctored Captain Kirk mask with a large knife. This film does feature masks but not Michael Myers.

Screen shot of the creamery plant decked out as Silver Shamrock Novelties from Halloween III: Season of the Witch.
Another angle of the creamery. The structure on top once displayed the Silver Shamrock logo.
Image

Eel River Canyon

One of the biggest challenges of building a railroad from Willits to Eureka is the Eel River Canyon. And the Northwestern Pacific Railroad (NWP) definitely had their hands full with this engineering challenge.

Parts of the NWP mainline is still in use as the Skunk Train pulled onto the mainline at the Willits Depot. Unfortunately the Skunk is heading in the opposite direction of Eel River Canyon. (For very good reasons).

13 miles north of Willits the Northwestern Pacific (NWP) line crosses Highway 101 and begins to parallel Outlet Creek.

The rusted rails of the NWP heading north towards Eel River Canyon.

Just north of Willits I turned left onto Highway 162 (Covelo Road). I wanted to follow the railroad as far north up the Eel River Canyon that I could. I figured I would get as far as Dos Rios before I ran out of road.

There were some key sites in the Eel River Canyon that I wanted to see: Cain Rock and Island Mountain but these were so far off Highway 101 on long and windy roads (some on private roads that seemed very inaccessible). I wanted to avoid trespassing in Mendocino or Humboldt Counties! (Think shotgun!)

One of my sketching destinations was the train trestle over Outlet Creek near the confluence of the creek with the Eel River.

I pulled over just as I crossed the Eel River and set up my sketching chair to add the trestle in my Beta panoramic book (featured sketch). The field sketch is on the left side and as the pictures moves to the right, the color turns to sepia and a steam locomotive pulling a passenger consist, is heading down canyon towards the trestle. The spread is a look back in time.

After the sketch I continued to follow the line towards Dos Rios on Highway 162. I came upon a tunnel, NWP Tunnel 14.

Tunnel 14 in the Eel River Canyon.
This photo shows one of the problems with keeping the line open, both then and now. Here a landslide has covered a large section of the track. Think how expensive it would be to stabilize the hillside and reopen the line. This is one of many slides along the canyon.
Image

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.
Image

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.

Image

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.

Image

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.

Image

NWP Black Point Bridge

An important bridge that kept Northwestern Pacific Railroad connected with the mainline rail network is the Black Point Bridge.

The 50 foot rail bridge at Black Point is a steel swinging truss bridge that turns perpendicular to the rail line to allow boat traffic on the Petaluma River to pass downstream to San Pablo Bay.

In the days of heavier rail traffic, the bridge was aligned with the railroad but now with fewer freight traffic, the bridge is open to allow river traffic to pass.

The Black Point Bridge, which spans the Petaluma River which is the boundary between Marin and Sonoma Counties, was built in 1911 and then rebuilt in 2011.

The Highway 37 bridge over the Petaluma River. The Black Point Bridge is just downstream from here.

Atop the bride is the Operator’s House where the bridge operator lived. He was in charge of opening and closing the bridge in the days when all the freight north to Eureka, had to cross this vital span to take freight to the rail junction at Schellville and beyond to the wider rail system. The bridge is now operated remotely.

On either side of the steel span, a wooden trestle reaches out into the river.

The marina at Port Sonoma has seen better days. The boat slips are now empty and the reeds are slowly taking over.

I parked in the overgrown parking lot, walked past the abandoned marina, and then headed down the river trail to find a good vantage point to sketch the bridge.

I parked my sketching chair near the outlet of the marina, took a sip of joe, and started to sketch (featured sketch).

A sketcher’s view and beautiful weather for a morning sketch.
Image

NWP Depot: Petaluma

One of the nicest Northeastern Pacific rail depots still in existence, is to be found in the Sonoma County city of Petaluma.

This 1914 depot is designed in the Mission Revival style by Southern Pacific Railroad architect, D. J. Patterson. The passenger station originally cost $7,000 to build. The new station replaced the 1871 wooden stations. Patterson also designed the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio station. He also designed the Willits Station for the Northwestern Pacific, north of Petaluma.

This was a busy station with 14 passenger trains stopping at Petaluma daily. The construction of the Golden Gate Bridge cut into the passenger numbers and the last passenger train departed from this station in 1958.

That was until almost 60 years later in June 29, 2017 that a passenger train stopped In Petaluma.

The spot now housed the Petaluma Visitor’s Center but passenger service still lives in the form of SMART trains that travel from Santa Rosa to the ferry terminal at Larkspur.

A southbound SMART train pulls into the Downtown Petaluma station.
Image

Seabiscuit in the Bay Area

I’m not really into horse racing and a few of the racing tracks in the Bay Area are now closed. Golden Gate Fields will become a caption to a photo like Tanforan and Bay Meadows before. The recent reports of horse deaths have put a pall over the sport in days of waning interest in horse racing.

What I am into is California history and there is no denying the story of a thoroughbred horse named Seabiscuit with a deep California connections is a great story.

I know Seabiscuit from a statue at the entrance to Tanforan Mall. Seems such an odd place for a horse and rider sculpture but when you know that from 1899 to 1964 the location used to be a racetrack. Tanforan Racetrack featured many of the best thoroughbreds in racing history. The grandstands burned down by suspected arson and then leveled to make way for a mall which opened in 1971.

Tanforan also has a more dubious history as a processing center for Japanese Americans during 1942, then known as the Tanforan Assembly Center. Around 7,800 Japanese Americans were rounded up here and lived in horse stalls for about eight months. They were then sent on to other interment centers across the west.

The plaque under the statue reads: “Seabiscuit Born 1933, Sired by Hark Tack- out of Swing On, Owner- Charles S Howard, jockeys Red Pollard-George Woolf, World Champion Money Winner to 1938.”

Seabiscuit was stabled at Tanforan for a time and ran races here. In 1939 the horse left Tanforan by train when Seabiscuit journeyed east to race War Admiral.

Another bit of Seabiscuit history can be found just north of Tanforan in the sleepy town of Colma. At the Cypress Lawn Memorial Park rests Charles S. Howard.

Howard was Seabiscuit’s owner. The multimillionaire was responsible for Seabiscuit’s success by finding the perfect combination of horse, trainer (Tom Smith), and jockey (Red Pollard).

Image

The First Battle of Manassas/ Bull Run

Manassas/ Bull Run is about 40 minutes to Reagan National Airport so I couldn’t resist the urge to visit the site of the first major land battle of the Civil War.

When I arrived from Winchester, it was still raining.

The focal point of the first battle was Henry Hill, named after the widow Judith Henry, who lived on a farmstead during the battle. She refused to leave and was killed in the battle when her house was hit by artillery fire.

On the crown of Henry Hill is the grave of Judith Henry, perhaps the first civilian killed during the Civil War.
The stone house is one the few structures that still stands from the two battles at Manassas. It was used as a field hospital during both battles and upstairs solider carved their names into the wood.
The Union cannon position on Henry Hill looking towards the woods where the Rebels charged their position. It was the first time the northerners heard the bone-chilling Rebel Yell.

One Confederate commander made his name at the first Battle of Manassas on Henry Hill and his name was Thomas J. Jackson. Jackson held his Virginian troops at the brow of Henry Hill and General Barnard Bee of South Carolina, in a attempt to rally his own troops, supposedly said, “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!” or it could have also been, “Look at Jackson standing there like a damned stone wall!” Whatever Bee really said is lost in history because a Union bullet silenced him forever soon after his remarks. And the Commander is forever known as Stone wall Jackson.

A quick field sketch of the Stonewall Jackson Monument at Manassas.