Liddell & San Vicente

Liddell and San Vicente Creeks according to an Ocean Shore
Railroad survey map from 1912. (UC Santa Cruz)

In 1851, George Liddell obtained a parcel of land from the Williams Brothers' Ranch Laguna property. Liddell was a recent immigrant to Santa Cruz, only arriving in the United States from England in 1850. His stay alongside the creek that forever was named after him was one year. In that year he operated a small sawmill, possibly for the Williams brothers. By 1852, he had moved into the mountains where he built a new steam-powered saw mill. Liddell died in 1864.

The lands returned to the Williams brothers and they quickly turned the mouth of the creek into a place called "Williams Landing". For sixteen years—from 1853 to 1869—a ship landing and chute system was employed off the bluff over Liddell Creek. Although the landing was abandoned in 1869, the Williams brothers continued to produce lumber, tanbark, lime, and oil on their rancho. By the late 1880s, they no longer owned the property and George E. Olive & Company purchased the landing for its own use, renaming it "Olives Landing." Olives Landing was upgraded with a longer cable chute, but the venture appears to have failed since there is little mention of the name after 1889.

It is likely that Louis Moretti purchased the land from George Olive at some point in the 1890s. In 1901, Moretti became the senior partner in the Coast Land & Dairy Company, which included five dairies running along the coast south of Davenport. In 1912, a small natural pond along Liddell Creek, known as Liddell Spring, was ceded to the City of Santa Cruz for the purpose of providing water to the city.

It was during Moretti's ownership that the Ocean Shore Railroad passed through the property. The railroad established a small freight station here, though their primary stop was further south at Yellowbank. "Liddell", as the station was named, was a simple flag stop located 9.6 miles north of the Ocean Shore Depot in Santa Cruz and 1.2 miles south of the Davenport station. There is no evidence that a freight spur, siding, or even a platform was located here, and indeed the 1912, at right, does not even mention the stop suggesting it may have disappeared by that year. During its short existence, it likely served as a picnic stop for northbound tourists wishing to dip their feet into the Pacific Ocean. The sign—and any other structures—would have been on the west side of the tracks, the east being controlled by the Southern Pacific's Coast Line Railroad. The Coast Dairies company continued to exist until 1996, but the Ocean Shore Railroad was already suffering by the mid-1910s and small unnecessary stops such as this may have been abandoned early.

The Coast Line also established a northern stop for the Coast Dairies at San Vicente Creek just south of Davenport, though they bypassed Liddell Creek. San Vicente Creek was likely named after Vicenta Rodriguez, wife of the earliest owner of Rancho San Vicente, Blas A. Excamilla. Saint Vincent, after whom she was named and from which the creek ultimately gained its name, was a Spanish fourth-century deacon and martyr of the Diocletian Persecution. Her name was the feminized variant of that name. Blas obtained the rancho in 1845 at the age of 20. It ranged from San Vicente Creek to the future site of Davenport Landing. It was sold in 1853 to Peter Tracy. The creek formed the northern boundary of the Coast Dairies property and served as the northernmost flag stop for Southern Pacific Railroad service to the dairies.

As with Liddell, there was likely one of the five dairies near the mouth of the creek and the stop allowed employees to commute while the site may also have served as a picnic stop for excursion trains. To underly its status, it never appeared in station books or timetables, emphasizing its minor status along the route. It was located roughly 10 miles north of the Southern Pacific Depot in Santa Cruz and only about 0.2 miles south of Davenport's primary passenger station just south of the cement plant. The station platform, if there was any, would have been on the east side of the tracks.

Railroad service to Liddell ceased no later than 1920, since in that year the Ocean Shore Railroad went defunct. The tracks remained until 1923 when the San Vicente Lumber Company abandoned the line. Rail service to San Vicente probably ceased around the same time, though it may have continued to as late as 1959 when the Suntan Special trains ended and passenger service to Santa Cruz County was abandoned. In the late 1990s, the entire property to San Vicente Creek was purchased by various parties and then donated to the state as the Coast Dairies State Park. The mouth of Liddell Creek has been named Bonny Doon Beach for decades, though it was likely called Liddell Beach at the turn of the century. San Vicente Creek's mouth serves as Davenport's primary beach and is usually called simply "Davenport Beach".

Citations:

• "Coast Dairies Property: A Land Use History", Coast Dairies Long-Term Resource Protection and Use Plan: Draft Exiting Conditions Report for the Coast Dairies Property, Section 1.0. <http://www.santacruzpl.org/history/articles/387/> (Accessed 18 July 2014).
• Donald Clark, Santa Cruz County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary (Scotts Valley, CA: Kestrel Press, 2008).

Yellowbank

Yellowbank Station according to an Ocean Shore Railroad
survey map from 1912. (UC Santa Cruz)

The railroad tracks in the area between Laguna Creek and Liddell Creek hug the ocean quite closely in parts. But no place was closer than the site of the Yellowbank dairy. The dairy was nestled on the bluff above Respini Creek, which was later renamed Yellow Bank Creek, on property of the old Rancho Arroyo de la Laguna. As mentioned in the article on Lagos, Rancho Laguna was originally granted to a certain Mexican settler named Gil Sanchez and then sold to the Williams brothers, early pioneers of the Davenport area. The later name of the creek was due to the yellow (and, to a lesser extent, blue) cliffs made of a certain type of mudstone and sandstone fusion unique to the area (indeed, unique to the world). The beach and the outlet of the so-named creek were also slightly yellowed during certain times of the year because of this sediment.

A Swissman named Jeremiah Respini (after which the creek originally took its name) purchased a part of the Rancho Laguna—probably from the Williams brothers in the early 1880s—and built a small dairy there. Over the next twenty-odd years, it was enlarged to become the Yellow Bank Creek Dairy, a not insignificant operation along the north coast. In 1901, the property of Respini and a neighbor, Louis Moretti, were joined together in a formal incorporation, thus founding the Coast Land & Dairy Company. The company included five separate dairies with around 800 cattle while also growing hay. Their products were sold mostly in San Francisco.

For fifteen years the company thrived under Respini's and Moretti's leadership. The company helped build the town of Davenport and it provided many of the jobs for the non-cement employees. In 1912, they sold a portion of the land to the City of Santa Cruz to provide water to the city (it still provides the city with roughly 20% of its water). But World War I began in 1914 and the two men, who were both Swiss, realized that they had to leave. Swiss men were not allowed to serve in any foreign military, and neither had apparently renounced their Swiss citizenship. Moretti, the senior of the partners, moved with his family in 1915. Respini and others moved soon after. Thus the company found itself with most of its leadership in Switzerland and the property being managed by local supervisors.

The Coast Line Railroad, when it passed through the area in 1906, ignored Yellow Banks, seeking instead to gain the advantage at Davenport. But the Ocean Shore set up a small flag-stop there—named "Yellowbank"—8.9 miles north of Santa Cruz, for waiting passengers and, possibly, waiting boxcars. A freight platform was installed on the west side of the double tracks, though no siding or spur were present. Two picnic stops were also located on the grounds, one at Team Beach and the other at Yellow Bank Beach, both serving passengers wishing to take a dip in the ocean along the windswept cliffs of the North Coast. Most of the Coast Dairies' products were shipped over this line through to the closure of the route in 1920. After this date, products were shipped via auto truck.

The dairies thrived through the 1920s but declined as the Great Depression coupled with stricter health code laws made it increasingly difficult to produce dairy products along the North Coast. The company continued to struggle for the next eighty years under distant Swiss leadership. Various attempts to make money off the land—from oil wells, to a power plant, to the UCSC campus, to a housing development—failed and then state laws came in making it even more difficult to dispose of the land. In 1996, it was finally sold to Bryan Sweeney of the Nevada & Pacific Coast Land Company, but it cost him more than he could chew. Various organizations, working together, freed him of his burden and the entire property became the core component of the new Coast Dairies State Park, one of the newest state parks in the system and one that has yet to be fully developed.

As a footnote, the large bisected beach at the mouth of Yellow Bank Creek was historically known as Yellow Bank Beach. At some point in the 1970s, visitors to the beach noticed on the stripped walls of the cliffs the visage of a black (or blue) cat. In all truth, this image probably appeared in one of the mudstone veins that named the beach to begin with. Nevertheless, the old name was quickly discontinued and the name was rechristened "Panther Beach".

Citations:

• "Coast Dairies Property: A Land Use History", Coast Dairies Long-Term Resource Protection and Use Plan: Draft Exiting Conditions Report for the Coast Dairies Property, Section 1.0. <http://www.santacruzpl.org/history/articles/387/> (Accessed 18 July 2014).
• Donald Clark, Santa Cruz County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary (Scotts Valley, CA: Kestrel Press, 2008).
• Gary Griggs, "Our Ocean Backyard: Yellow Bank Beach", Santa Cruz Sentinel, 6 September 2013 <http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/santacruz/ci_24035176/gary-griggs-our-ocean-backyard-yellow-bank-beach> (Accessed 18 July 2014).

Lagos

Lagos Station according to an Ocean Shore Railroad
survey map from 1912. (UC Santa Cruz)

The Ocean Shore Railroad maintained a few additional stops between Santa Cruz and Davenport compared to the Coast Line Railroad. One such stop was located on Laguna Creek at a place called "Lagos". Located 8 miles north of the Ocean Shore Depot off Bay Street in Santa Cruz and 2.8 miles south of Davenport, the little Lagos station appears to have had nothing noting denoting it as a stop other than a sign. Records do not mention any platform or shelter, and the importance of the stop was negligible.

The name itself means "lakes" in Spanish, probably referring to the large lagoon adjacent to the tracks. Laguna Creek formed the western border of the Rancho Arroyo de la Laguna, one of the smallest Mexican land grants in Santa Cruz County. The lagoon is the defining characteristic of the area, named in some Spanish sources as Laguna de Palu. During the time of the Ocean Shore Railroad, the lagoon was much larger than it is today.

Property information regarding Lagos is not well documented. The original grantee was Gil Sanchez, the tithe collector of the Santa Cruz mission who petitioned for the property in 1836 and was finally granted it in 1840. Sanchez did not live on the property, though he did build a house there. Like most other ranchos in Santa Cruz County, the property served as a cattle ranch. Sanchez visited the place often but when his horses were stolen in 1847, Sanchez decided to sell the rancho. It went first to  James G.F. Dunleavy and immediately after to James and Squire Williams.

Unlike Sanchez, the Williams brothers lived on the property and operated operated a lumber mill and lime kiln within the rancho. Two other brothers, John and Isaac, also worked there, though they were not owners initially. In 1852, after statehood, the Williamses filed their claim on the property with the California government, which was confirmed in 1855. Problems arose in the 1870s, though, when it was discovered that the "square league" of the property had overstretched to include much of the land between San Vicente Creek and Laguna Creek, and a bit beyond. A patent for the entirety of the land was only approved in 1881, after James had already died.

In 1853, the Williams brothers built a pier at the mouth of Liddell Creek named Williams Landing to help ship their products. This was the  Squire remained on the property until 1882 when it appears to have been abandoned as an industrial center. By 1905, when the Ocean Shore Railroad built its route across the creek, the property was owned by a man named Dennis Cook. Cook appears to have found a small stretch of land that was unclaimed between Rancho Refugio and Rancho Arroyo de la Laguna after the 1881 supreme court decision regarding the Williamses land. He claimed squatters rights on the land, which was designated as tidal overflow and unusable land by the state government. Though he lost his case in 1882, later evidence suggests that he remained on the land all the same and eventually found a legal avenue that allowed him to claim it. Much like its neighbors to the north and south, Lagos likely was a dairy farm in the 1900s and 1910s when the propriety was serviced by the OSRR. No siding or spur was recorded here. Immediately north of Lagos, the Coast Land & Dairy Company, successors to the Williams brothers, owned a large stretch of property reaching all the way to Yellowbank, the next stop on the line.

Today, the entire property is within the Coast Dairies State Park property, located at the end of Laguna Road (the former County Road) via a parking lot. There is a trail opposite the parking lot that crosses the tracks on the north side of Laguna Creek. The original stop, though, was on the south side of the creek just out of a low cut. Multiple trails head down to the large and relatively obscure Laguna Creek Beach. Beware, this is also one of the lesser discussed nude beaches in the county.

Citations:

• Donald Clark, Santa Cruz County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary (Scotts Valley, CA: Kestrel Press, 2008).
• Leon Rowland, Santa Cruz: The Early Years (Santa Cruz, CA: Paper Vision Press, 1980).
• Paul Tutwiler, "Notes on the History of Williams Mill and Williams Landing in Bonny Doon, California", Santa Cruz Public Libraries. http://www.santacruzpl.org/history/articles/1284/#ranchoarroyo. Accessed 11 July 2014.

Enright & Majors

Enright Station according to the Ocean Shore
Railroad survey map, 1912 (UC Santa Cruz)

The mouth of Majors Creek, roughly 6.9 miles north of the Southern Pacific depot in Santa Cruz, served multiple functions in 1905 when the Ocean Shore and Coast Line railroads drove their right-of-ways through the area. First, there's the present-day Scaroni Road which, back in the 1900s, was the primary county road. The current bluff fill was all but a dream to early highway engineers. Second, it was a small dairy community similar to Wilder three miles to the south. But third and most importantly for this study, the northern bluff above the creek served as a railroad stop for, first, the Ocean Shore, and then later, the Coast Line railroads.

The location and creek were named after Joseph L. Majors and his family. Originally, the creek was named Coja Creek or Eagle Glen. Majors was an early settler to Santa Cruz County having possibly come over with Isaac Graham and other early American pioneers in 1835. Like so many other early Santa Cruz non-Californios, Majors married Maria de los Angeles Castro, one of the wealthiest women in the area. Her Rancho Refugio granted Majors political status in the county, where he eventually became alcalde (mayor) in 1841. Majors also managed to gain Rancho San Augustín and Rancho Zayante, making him extremely wealthy. Majors himself did little along the North Coast, but his son, Joseph Robert Joaquin Majors, and his grandsons, Thomas Ladd and Joseph, operated ranches alongside the early county road in Rancho Refugio for the Enright family.

The Majors boys worked for Joseph D. Enright and the stop was likewise named "Enright" by the Ocean Shore Railroad. The original property owner, James Enright, purchased the land from the Castro family in the 1870s. Joseph D., his son, then inherited the property in 1894. Why the land was noted as being owned by "M.D." Enright is unknown but it was probably a typo referring to Joseph. Joseph's farm was noted as being one of the best dairy ranches in the county, encompassing one thousand acres of land. The land also included a small mine, probably digging for bitumen which was somewhat rich in the area. The Enright station was a short freight platform found on the west side of the Ocean Shore tracks with the Coast Line tracks continuing north without halting. For the Ocean Shore, the stop was 7.5 north of their Santa Cruz Station and just 0.5 miles south of their next stop, Lagos. There was no documented siding or spur there as of 1912. At some point after 1912, the Enright family sold at least a portion of their property to the Majors, though the name of the stop remained Enright for the Ocean Shore. The Enright family today lives in Watsonville.

Things changed with the closure of the Ocean Shore Railroad in 1920. Although the tracks remained in place and ownership transferred to the San Vicente Lumber Company, service to the stop was halted along the old right-of-way. Picking up the slack, the Southern Pacific Railroad took control of the line and renamed the stop "Majors" after the creek and the current owners of the land. The stop remained strictly for freight, at least officially, and it never appeared in employee timetables, only station books. The stop remained small with little more than a freestanding sign to note its existence to passing tourists.

Railroad service to Majors ceased at an unknown date but it was after 1941 when this researcher's collection of timetables ends. A small portion of the Enright property became Coast Dairies State Park while the remainder is private property. The Coast Road, or rather the original county road, turns into the property to briefly parallel the tracks at Majors. The beach below at the mouth of Majors Creek was originally named Majors Beach but has since been named Red, White & Blue Beach, accessible from Scaroni Road.

Citations:

• Donald Clark, Santa Cruz County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary (Scotts Valley, CA: Kestrel Press, 2008).