Pescadero Memories

Story by John Vonderlin

Email John: benloudman@sbcglobal.net

Hi June,

This post is a continuation about the events precipitated by my noticing a 1908 picture of the Palmer Gulch trestle in Dr. Stanger’s book, “Sawmills in the Redwoods” In the photo, the trestle of the Ocean Shore Railroad (OSRR), is shown entering a deep cut as it heads south along the bluffs just north of San Gregorio Beach. Because the remnants of the trackbed from the end-of-the-line Tunitas station to the canyon the trestle spanned manifest no cuts I’m aware of, I was surprised by what the picture showed. Today the remnants that still exist are just a series of flat ledge sections with washouts between them.

With a second visit recently, I discovered there had been a massive cliff collapse of the promontory that formed the cut, sometime before 1972. This picture I took illustrates that collapse today.

It didn’t look much different nearly forty years ago as shown in CCRP Picture #7218039 at the California Coastal Records Project website. My feeling is that sometime after 1908, the Ocean Shore Railroad construction initiated or accelerated the natural processes involved in coastal erosion, and a huge chunk of cliff-side fell into the ocean, leaving a barren scar for over a hundred yards south, even to this day.

Satisfied that I had my answer, we started hiking back to the car when I decided to do some cliff-climbing to bolster my belief that the track route had swung inland at the nude beach parking lot and avoided the steep but fragile bluffs just north of San Gregorio beach and nicely lined up with the best spot for the trestle to cross the San Gregorio Creek. That being about where Highway 1 crosses the creek. I had settled on this belief after finding no track remnant along the cliffs south of the path that leads to the beach from the nude beach. Instead you see a highly eroded stretch, ending in a sheer cliff from which I’m shooting the picture below

When, during my first visit, I had located several deep, seemingly manmade ditches, near the intersection of Highway 1 and 84, that were in a straight line between the likely spot the trestle would have crossed the creek and the track’s path if it had taken an inward turn, or so it seemed obvious in my mind. Though several parallel ditches or channels were there, instead of one giant one as at Pomponio Beach, and, as I’ve posted about before, I just assumed that was the stage they were at when the Ocean Shore Railroad’s financial house of cards collapsed. An old newspaper article mentioned there were work gangs at numerous spots along the gap between Scott Creek and Tunitas, with 80% of the grading complete when work was halted.

The reason I made the precarious climb to this one section  was that I was bothered by the fact that, if you examine what I assume are the remnants of the trackbed south of Tunitas on California Coastal Records Project (CCRP) (Pictures #6217 -6221) you see trees often growing on them. Obviously, it makes sense that a flat area would provide a more hospitable site for tree growth then a steep cliff. As you are connecting the dots of track remnants heading south, it bothered me that the trees seemed to continue beyond where I thought the track had turned inland. You can see that on CCRP by looking at Pictures #6219 to 6221. South of there the line of trees disappears. It was in that essentially treeless section that I began exploring.

By climbing up the steep sand dune piled against the cliff, and clawing my way across the steep slope made ball-bearing-slippery by the loose sand, I found myself on a flat projection, nearly invisible from the beach. I had a revelation. This IS a track remnant. Nature does not usually create flat ledges in sand dunes and this was too perfectly flat for anything but a manmade feature. Looking north I thought I could see another short ledge segment across a huge sandslide that filled the gap. Here’s a picture of what it looks like looking from the ledge towards the point I had shot the previous shot from the clifftop. I’ve marked the point I made that shot with parentheses.

Realizing I had been wrong, I was able to return yesterday to look once again for any sign of a cut that would have connected this track remnant to grading leading to the trestle over San Gregorio Creek. I was embarrassed to see it was incredibly obvious. I’m hoping I hadn’t noticed it because I was still blind in my left eye at the time I had missed it. But, it is so easy to see, even that isn’t a very good excuse.

It’s huge, but not anywhere as near finished as the Pomponio cut. Here are a few pictures of it from the parking lot 

and from the top of the cut. Such a huge cut couldn’t have been made by erosion, because there is no watershed to supply water to erode it, as one of the rangers concurred when I pointed it out. Climbing to the head of the partially excavated cut, I saw it would have perfectly lined up with a trestle across San Gregorio Creek, as you can see in these photos.

And when I walked further uphill, following the line of the cut if it had continued to the clifftop, I found myself looking directly down at the ledge I had just explored. Angelo, [Misthos], you are “The Man.” I’ve marked the ledge in this last picture.

I believe it is the last bluffside remnant of the OSRR trackbed as it headed south from Tunitas. But, I may be proved wrong again.

The only loose end left to tie up was, what were those strange, obviously manmade, parallel ditches just to the north and west of the intersection of Highway 84 and Highway 1 that I had thought were the beginning of the sluice cuts? I think the answer to that is provided by looking at the CCRP picture of the area from 1972. (Picture # 7218036.

It shows, not far to the north from the head of the cuts, that there is a fair sized lake, impounded by a low earthen dam, and with a much smaller pond/wetland area below that. Though the cuts probably weren’t caused by overflow from the lake, but rather were constructed, I’m sure they are related to the lake. Note that in Picture #197218039 from 1972, the hillside below the lake, and above the parking lot, shows lines that run perpendicular to the cuts, east and west across the hillside. I remember walking in a three- foot- wide ditch  on my first visit there, just where the bare sand forms one of those lines in the 1972 photo. I had thought it was an erosion control ditch of modern construction when I saw it on my first trip. I now think it was built for some kind of irrigation for farming at some point in time.

I’m afraid I’ve got to admit, just as at the end of the Pescadero Creek Hole-in-the-Wall series of postings I made last year, there’s still plenty I can learn from oldtimers, who have clear memories of what they saw long ago. Oldtimers 2, Young Shmart Feller 0. Enjoy. John