Photograph courtesy of the Los Gatos Museum Association
Local citizens donned their Sunday best during this 1900 celebration of passenger train service in the Los Gatos area.
Train exhibit chugs into Forbes Mill
By Shari Kaplan
When residents of present-day Santa Clara Valley take a day trip with their sweethearts or families, they usually rely on their own vehicles--especially SUVs, minivans and luxury sedans.
All of these would have been luxuries to late-18th to mid-19th century denizens of what was once known as the Valley of Heart's Delight. For these residents of old-time Los Gatos, Saratoga, Campbell and New Almaden--many of whom worked six days a week at farms, orchards, dairies or lumberyards--day trips were a luxury to begin with.
When they did have the time and money for a break--mostly on Sundays--they relied on steam trains to take them to a destination still popular today: "over the hill" to Santa Cruz. During the week, the same train tracks allowed the workers' various businesses to ship goods throughout the Bay Area and beyond.
This period of local history is the subject of Riding the Picnic Trains, a new multimedia exhibit up through Sept. 2, at the Forbes Mill Museum of Regional History, 75 Church St. in Los Gatos. Longtime railroad buff and local historian William "Bill" Wulf contributed more than 100 photographs and postcards to the exhibit, which were enlarged and reproduced.
Although the exhibit covers the history of local railroad companies over the course of two centuries, the spotlight is on the South Pacific Coast Railroad. Also called the SPC, this narrow gauge line spanned 80 miles, from Alameda to Santa Cruz, and made a total of 31 stops.
"There was a local movement by local farmers and fruit growers to secure the right of way and get a route through here," says Laura Bajuk, curator of the exhibit and executive director of the Los Gatos Museum Association.
That movement began in 1875, with the Santa Clara Valley Company, but funds ran out in 1876, before tracks were laid. The SPC had its beginnings that same year, thanks to two benefactors who believed in helping the "little man."
James "Slippery Jim" Fair and Alfred "Hog" Davis, both made wealthy by the Comstock Lode in Nevada, bought the Santa Clara Valley Company and established the SPC, which became the most successful narrow gauge railroad in California history, according to Bajuk.
"The Southern Pacific Railroad was charging what the market would bear--basically screwing the farmers," Bajuk says of the larger and better known standard gauge line. "The South Pacific Coast Railroad made business profitable; if you were a small farmer or orchardist in Saratoga or Los Gatos, you could afford to ship your goods."
Another reason the SPC was valuable to the Santa Clara Valley was because it allowed people to ride to Santa Cruz on Sundays. This was a big deal, Bajuk adds, because the only other transit options were walking, horseback riding (neither practical for getting through the mountains) or taking a horse-and-carriage (a rough and often slow ride).
"Los Gatos was this tiny little wide spot in the road, as was Saratoga and most of the towns around here," Bajuk says. "The Sunday excursion trains brought a huge influx of people, some of whom would stop to have a soda or look around. That really helped open up the area, and Saratoga was just a carriage ride away."
Indeed, some people even made that their destination, as evidenced by several photographs of prim parties picnicking in Saratoga's Congress Springs Park, located at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Near the photos is an amusingly antiquated treatise on proper Victorian picnic etiquette. Among the exhibit's many other photographs are shots of almost every SPC Railroad station this side of San Jose, plus other scenes of trains, places and people.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
