About a year after Leon Trousset painted the panoramic view of Santa Cruz now proudly displayed at Santa Cruz MAH, an anonymous artist created a new “birds eye” view of our town. This 1877 effort, with a viewpoint similar to the 1870 view previously examined in this blog, was published in Europe. Like the earlier “birds eye”, it’s now reproduced for online viewing at Bancroft Library’s OAC website. You can also find it on the back end-covers of Bruce MacGregor’s fine book, The Birth of California Narrow Gauge (2003). As you might expect, not a whole lot changed in the approximately one year elapsed between the Trousset painting and this newer view, but there are one or two new things for us to find. Also, the “birds eye” perspective shows many features not visible from Trousset’s riverside hilltop. A word of caution, however – this less-meticulous 1877 effort contains many inaccuracies. I’ll try to point them out as we go along, but I’ll probably miss some, so post a comment if you have questions.
Compare the 1870, 1876 and 1877 images and you’ll see the most noticeable change – in the area of today’s Municipal Wharf. In 1870, there were two wharves and no railroad tracks. By 1876, the “railroad” wharf and the Santa Cruz RR tracks were added. One year later, in 1877, there’s a fourth wharf – the “cross” wharf that connected the still-new “railroad” wharf on the left with the older “powder” wharf on the right. By 1885, both the powder wharf and the cross wharf were gone.
Another railroad peculiarity (mentioned in a follow-up comment to the last post) is visible in the 1877 view. To recap the track-laying chronology: the Santa Cruz and Felton RR built the railroad wharf and tracks leading out onto it in 1875, initially traveling down Pacific Avenue. In the following year, the Santa Cruz RR completed its own line into town, connecting with the rerouted SC&F line coming through the new Mission Hill tunnel. In the 1877 view, you can see that the Santa Cruz RR tracks (left-right) cross the Santa Cruz Felton RR tracks at a right angle, right at the entrance to the railroad wharf.
Because the SCR route along the beach made it impossible to turn directly onto the wharf, SCR trains traveling west had to continue past the wharf to where the two lines merged (also visible), then switch tracks and back up onto the wharf. Another option was to continue up Rincon Street (today’s Chestnut) to the SCR yard, where there was a turntable. A third possibility is that the SCR may not have been allowed to use the SC&F wharf at all – a situation that probably wouldn’t have changed until the SC, SC&F and SPC railroads were all acquired by Southern Pacific in the 1880s.
There’s another drawing that clearly shows both the crossing of the rail lines and the curving “cross” wharf, in W. W. Elliott’s Santa Cruz County Illustrations: with Historical Sketch (1879). The 1997 indexed edition, published by Santa Cruz MAH, is especially useful. In that edition, the rail/wharf drawing is found on page f70.
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A question: the 1877 view shows two separate rail lines going out onto the railroad wharf: one for trains and another for streetcars. The Elliott drawing shows only one rail line - which one is accurate? I tend to believe that the 1877 view is correct. The streetcar track would have been the original SC&F line coming down Pacific, which was taken over by the Pacific Avenue Street Railroad after completion of the tunnel. The separate railroad line shown is the newer one coming from Rincon Street.
Other oddities: when adding watercolors to the 1877 drawing (printed from a woodcut?), the artist got carried away with the blue, making it appear that – after passing the railroad wharf - the SCR tracks run in the waters of Santa Cruz Creek. Also, the woodcut artist failed to notice that the creek comes from Neary Lagoon (the 1870 view shows the creek more accurately. Now, of course, the creek no longer reaches the beach at all). A warehouse apparently sits atop another of the railroad lines, and the horsecar track wanders off into a field and disappears.
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At far left in the 1877 view is the Davis & Cowell wharf, with its tram line emerging from the warehouse on the bluff above. This is accurate: barrels of Davis and Cowell lime were brought down Bay Street on huge wagons to the warehouse, where they were transferred to tram cars for the ride down the steeply-sloping wharf to waiting ships. If the 1870 view is accurate, the tram line was added after that date, and the top section of the wharf realigned to accommodate the tram tracks (compare the images).
The 1870 image shows what may be Elihu Anthony’s original 1849 bridge (first bridge in Santa Cruz), built to convey Bay Street/West Cliff across Santa Cruz Creek from the end of Pacific Ave. to the first wharf (the 1849 “potato chute”, also built by Anthony and rebuilt by Davis & Jordan/Cowell). The 1877 view shows that the Anthony bridge was replaced by a much taller trestle, built in 1875-6 to allow trains to pass under. That span was replaced, in turn, by the current wood truss design in 1918.
One more note: the only still-existing structure shown (although not positioned accurately or drawn very well) in the 1877 view is the two-story S. J. Lynch house, built that year near the west end of the railroad trestle. The handsome early-Victorian house is preserved as the West Cliff Inn.
