On June 20, 1903, the Santa Rosa Street Railway, the Union Street Railway of Santa Rosa, the Petaluma Street Railroad, and the Central Street Railway were consolidated to form the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway. The four consolidated horse car lines built between 1888 and 1891 were to be replaced by an electric railroad operated in conjunction with the Steamer Gold which had been providing ferry service between Petaluma and San Francisco since 1883. A first-spike ceremony was held on April 5, 1904, at the Steamer Gold landing at the foot of Copeland Street. The electric line was completed to Sebastopol in October, and extended along Sebastopol road toward the western edge of Santa Rosa.[4]
The construction crew needed to cross the north–south steam railroad to reach downtown Santa Rosa. The steam railroad had operated a parallel branch line from Santa Rosa to Sebastopol since 1890, and would not consent to the crossing allowing a new competitor to offer direct service downtown. By November the steam railroad stationed guards at the proposed crossing site to prevent cutting of its rails. Trolley service began to the west side of the crossing on December 1, 1904. Rails were laid on the east side of the steam railroad tracks, and an electric wire was strung overhead in preparation for installing the crossing. A threatened boycott of the steam railroad by 92 Santa Rosa merchants had no effect.[4]
A crossing was prefabricated in Sebastopol and loaded on a flat car pushed to the crossing location, but when the interurban crew arrived to install the crossing on January 3, 1905, they found a pair of steam locomotives on either side of the crossing fitted with steam nozzles to spray hot water on anyone approaching the crossing site. The interurban construction crew retreated.
The following day the regularly scheduled interurban car #57 arrived secretly carrying the construction crew. Before the steam railway could respond, the crew laid a temporary track across and over the steam rails and had a team of horses pull trolley #57 across to serve downtown Santa Rosa. The steam railroad then obtained a temporary injunction from a San Francisco judge prohibiting installation of the crossing. For a few weeks, passengers from Sebastopol were required to depart their arriving trolley and walk over the steam railroad to reboard trolley #57 for the remainder of the trip.
The injunction was dissolved in late February and the interurban construction crew assembled again to install the crossing on March 1, 1905. The steam railroad appeared to be unaware of the status of their injunction, and so their locomotives again discouraged the construction crew with hot water. A special steam railroad train arrived with 150 San Francisco waterfront thugs hired to discourage the interurban crew. The steam railroad also had a flat car loaded with gravel on hand for their men to fill in the excavation as soon as the interurban crew tried to dig out the crossing site. Tempers flared and several hundred Santa Rosa citizens assembled to watch the entertainment. Santa Rosa police ultimately restored order, and the crossing was installed that evening.[5][6]
With the main line from Petaluma to Santa Rosa in operation, a branch line extended service from Sebastopol to Forestville on July 15, 1905. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake cancelled plans for additional extensions to Tomales, Dillon Beach, Geyserville, Healdsburg, Sonoma, Napa, and a closer San Francisco ferry connection on Point Pedro near San Rafael; and completion of a branch line from Liberty to Two Rock was delayed until July 28, 1913. Economic recovery from the quake allowed purchase of the steamer Resolute in 1912, and it was rebuilt as Petaluma to allow two daily ferry connections in 1914. Steamer Gold burned on November 29, 1920, but was replaced by the steamer Fort Bragg (renamed Gold).[4]
Decline
Passenger service on the Two Rock branch was discontinued on September 30, 1925, after monthly passenger revenues on the branch dropped from $400 to $27.[4] A new passenger and freight depot was built in Santa Rosa in 1927.[7] The Santa Rosa line was dismantled from McDonald Avenue to Olive Street in 1931.[8] The Petaluma & Santa Rosa was purchased by Northwestern Pacific Railroad (NWP) in 1932 and all trolley passenger service ended on July 1 of that year. Ferry passenger service was discontinued in 1935, but both ferries continued to carry freight until Gold was scrapped in 1940. Petaluma made the last ferry trip on August 24, 1950.[4] The Santa Rosa line was dismantled from Olive Street to Stop 45 junction with the NWP Sebastopol branch in 1946 and from Stop 45 to Leddy junction with the NWP branch in 1947.[9] Electric operation ended when Motor #1008 brought a carload of horses to Liberty on January 24, 1947. Diesel locomotives replaced the electric motors which were burned at Sacramento on March 15, 1947.[4] The Two Rock branch was dismantled in 1952, and the Forestville line was shortened by 1-mile (1.6km) to Ross in 1961. Southern Pacific Railroad diesel locomotives replaced the last Petaluma and Santa Rosa diesel in 1966. The Forestville line was shortened by another mile to the Sebastopol Apple Growers' Union (SAGU) plant in 1969. Eight miles of track were abandoned between Denman and Turner in 1973, and four more miles of track were abandoned between Turner and Alten in 1978. Sonoma County supervisors directed the parks department to acquire portions of the abandoned right-of-way as the line from Santa Rosa to Sebastopol was abandoned between 1984 and 1989. NWP continued using the southern end of the line to serve local industries in Petaluma.[10]
1 2 3 4 5 6 Ellison, Robert; Sievers, Walt (1952). "Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad Company". The Western Railroader. Francis A. Guido. 15 (148): 3–14.
Sonoma County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, its population was 488,863. Its seat of government and largest city is Santa Rosa. It is to the north of Marin County and the south of Mendocino County. It is west of Napa and Lake Counties.
Sebastopol is a city in Sonoma County, in California with a recorded population of 7,521, per the 2020 U.S. Census.
The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a privately owned mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, and buses and was the largest electric railway system in the world in the 1920s. Organized around the city centers of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, it connected cities in Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County and Riverside County.
The Interurban is a type of electric railway, with streetcar-like electric self-propelled rail cars which run within and between cities or towns. They were very prevalent in North America between 1900 and 1925 and were used primarily for passenger travel between cities and their surrounding suburban and rural communities. The concept spread to countries such as Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Poland. Interurban as a term encompassed the companies, their infrastructure, their cars that ran on the rails, and their service. In the United States, the early 1900s interurban was a valuable economic institution. Most roads between towns and many town streets were unpaved. Transportation and haulage was by horse-drawn carriages and carts. The interurban provided reliable transportation, particularly in winter weather, between the town and countryside. In 1915, 15,500 miles (24,900 km) of interurban railways were operating in the United States and, for a few years, interurban railways, including the numerous manufacturers of cars and equipment, were the fifth-largest industry in the country. By 1930, most interurbans in North America were gone with a few surviving into the 1950s.
The “Northwestern Pacific Railroad” was a 271 mile mainline railroad between the national railroad interchange at Schellville and the northernmost point at Eureka, with branches from Ignacio into Marin County. The railroad has gone through a history of different ownership and operators but has maintained a generic name of reference as “The Northwestern Pacific.” Currently, only a 62-mile (100 km) stretch of mainline is operated by Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART), which operates both commuter and freight trains with plans for extension north to Cloverdale, on the “South End.” The “North End,” from Willits to Eureka is saved by 2018 legislation to be converted into the Great Redwood Trail.
The Western Railway Museum, in Solano County, California is located on Highway 12 between Rio Vista and Suisun. The museum is built along the former mainline of the Sacramento Northern Railway. Their collection focuses on trolleys, as it is primarily a museum of interurban transit equipment.
The Central California Traction Company is a Class III short-line railroad operating in the northern San Joaquin Valley, in San Joaquin County, California. It is owned jointly by the Union Pacific and BNSF Railway.
The Sacramento Northern Railway was a 183-mile (295 km) electric interurban railway that connected Chico in northern California with Oakland via the California capital, Sacramento. In its operation it ran directly on the streets of Oakland, Sacramento, Yuba City, Chico, and Woodland and ran interurban passenger service until 1941 and freight service into the 1960s.
The Tidewater Southern Railway was a short line railroad in Central California in the United States. For most of its history, it was a subsidiary of the Western Pacific Railroad. It was originally built as an interurban system, connecting to the Central California Traction Company, Western Pacific Railroad, Southern Pacific Railroad and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in Stockton, California. Its mainline went southeast from Stockton to Escalon, California and thence to Modesto, California before splitting into two branches ending at the towns of Turlock and Hilmar. Until the mid-1930s, there were plans to extend the line to Fresno and even toward the Los Angeles area. Today, much of the line is still operated by the Union Pacific Railroad. Of all the former interurban railroads in California, the former Tidewater Southern retains the highest percentage of still operating trackage.
The North Pacific Coast Railroad (NPC) was a common carrier 3 ft (914 mm) narrow-gauge steam railroad begun in 1874 and sold in 1902 to new owners who renamed it the North Shore Railroad (California) (NSR) and which rebuilt the southern section into a standard-gauge electric railway.
San Francisco Bay in California has been served by ferries of all types for over 150 years. John Reed established a sailboat ferry service in 1826. Although the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge led to the decline in the importance of most ferries, some are still in use today for both commuters and tourists.
W. L. Holman Car Company was a streetcar and cable car manufacturer based in San Francisco, California. It mainly built equipment for rail operation, including San Francisco Municipal Railway's first publicly owned streetcar, and some of the cable cars still operating on San Francisco's California Street line. Holman also constructed heavy interurban coaches and combines that ran on inland California electric railroads including Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad, Sacramento Northern Railway, and Central California Traction Company, as well as the Sierra Railroad, a Common Carrier line which operated out of Jamestown, California.
San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad (SF&NP) provided the first extensive standard gauge rail service to Sonoma County and became the southern end of the regional Northwestern Pacific Railroad. Although first conceived of by Asbury Harpending, who had even obtained many of the right of ways, the SF & NP was bought and subsequently constructed by Peter Donahue, who drove the first spike on August 30, 1869.
The Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway Power House is a historic building in Sebastopol, California, U.S., built to serve the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad, an electric interurban railway of Sonoma County. It is also known as the Hogan Building and the P&SR Substation. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.
The Fort Bragg and Southeastern Railroad was formed by Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway as a consolidation of logging railways extending inland from Albion, California on the coast of Mendocino County. The railroad and its predecessors operated from August 1, 1885 to January 16, 1930. The line was merged into the regional Northwestern Pacific Railroad in 1907; but planned physical connection was never completed.
Southern Pacific Transportation Company formed the Oregon and Eureka Railroad in 1903 in an agreement to use logging railroads as part of a line connecting Humboldt County (California) sawmills with the national rail network. Northwestern Pacific Railroad offered service over the route from 1911 through 1933. The northern 6-mile (9.7 km) of the line remained in use as a Hammond Lumber Company logging branch until 1948.
The Sonoma County Library is a medium-sized public library system that serves the nine cities and unincorporated areas of Sonoma County, California. The library system is a joint powers authority, with administration located at the Administrative Offices, 6135 State Farm Dr, Rohnert Park, CA 94928.
Sebastopol station was an interurban train station in Sebastopol, California. It was served by the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad and was adjacent to the railway's powerhouse. Official operations ceased in 1932 with the rest of P&SR passenger service. It was leased as retail space for a time before being converted to a museum. The station was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996 as Sebastopol Depot of the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway .
The Joe Rodota Trail is a 8.5-mile paved rail trail in Sonoma County, California that spans from near the intersection of Mill Station Road and Highway 116 in Sebastopol to the area of West 3rd Street and Roberts Avenue in Santa Rosa. The trail provides a safety separation for pedestrians and bicycles from motor vehicle traffic on the parallel California State Route 12/Luther Burbank Memorial Highway.
The Northwestern Pacific Railroad operated a network of electric interurban lines in Marin County, California from 1903 to 1941. The lines ran to Sausalito at the southern tip of the county, where connecting ferries ran to San Francisco. Trains consisted of electric multiple units powered by third rail electrification. The lines were the first third-rail electrification in California, and the first major railroad to use alternating current signals.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
