West Side and Mendocino Railroad

West Side and Mendocino Railroad
Locale	Willows - Fruto, California
Dates of operation	1884–1888
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge

Last updated April 29, 2019

The West Side and Mendocino Railroad is a defunct railroad that operated in California.

California is a state in the Pacific Region of the United States. With 39.6 million residents, California is the most populous U.S. state and the third-largest by area. The state capital is Sacramento. The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, with 18.7 million and 9.7 million residents respectively. Los Angeles is California's most populous city, and the country's second-most populous, after New York City. California also has the nation's most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The City and County of San Francisco is both the country's second-most densely populated major city after New York City and the fifth-most densely populated county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs.

The WS&M had a 16.84 mile route that ran west from Willows, California to Fruto, California. It began officially operating on July 1, 1888, however special excursion trains were being chartered by San Francisco real estate developer Eastin Eldridge & Company in order to bring prospective buyers to Fruto and develop the area. Fruto existed as a postal location from 1888 - 1953. Fruto today is a Willows postal location.

Willows is a city in and the county seat of Glenn County, California. The city is a home to regional government offices, including the California Highway Patrol, California Department of Motor Vehicles, the United States Bureau of Reclamation and the main offices of the Mendocino National Forest, which comprises about one million acres of Federal land located mostly in mountainous terrain west of Willows. The population was 6,166 at the 2010 census, down from 6,220 at the 2000 census.

Fruto is an unincorporated community in Glenn County, California. It is located 14 miles (23 km) west-northwest of Willows, at an elevation of 610 feet. It is located along State Route 162.

There was a depot at Fruto. The stationmaster lived at the depot. The depot was destroyed by fire in the 1950s. The end of the line at Fruto also had a water tower, freight storage area, livestock loading area, and a roundhouse. In the branches early days there were two trains that ran the line; one freight and one passenger. The passenger train originated at Fruto and ran to Willows in the morning. It returned to Fruto in the afternoon. The freight train originated at Willows in the morning and returned to Willows in the afternoon.

During World War I and II the line hauled chromite ore to Bay Area smelters.

World War I 1914–1918 global war originating in Europe

World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

Chromite is a mineral that is an iron chromium oxide. It has a chemical formula of FeCr₂O₄. It is an oxide mineral belonging to the spinel group. The element magnesium can substitute for iron in variable amounts as it forms a solid solution with magnesiochromite (MgCr₂O₄). A substitution of the element aluminium can also occur, leading to hercynite (FeAl₂O₄). Chromite today is mined particularly to make stainless steel through the production of ferrochrome (FeCr), which is an iron-chromium alloy.

Connection with the Southern Pacific Railroad

The West Side & Mendocino connected with the mainline of the Northern Railway, a non-operating subsidiary of Southern Pacific, at Willows. The Northern Railway had been operating the mainline 8 – 10 years prior to the construction of the WS&M and ran from Tehama, California to Woodland, California.

The Northern Railway was a non-operating subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Railroad during the 19th century, created primarily as a device to consolidate the management of a number of smaller subsidiary railroads. The initial railroad opened in 1876 from Woodland, California, to Williams; and extended to Willows in 1878, and to Tehama in 1882. By the time of its 1898 merger into Southern Pacific, it also controlled the Winters and Ukiah Railway, the Woodland, Capay and Clear Lake Railroad, the West Side and Mendocino Railroad, the Vaca Valley and Clear Lake Railroad, the San Joaquin and Sierra Nevada Railroad, the Sacramento and Placerville Railroad, the Shingle Springs and Placerville Railroad, the Santa Rosa and Carquinez Railroad, the Amador Branch Railroad, and the Berkeley Branch Railroad.

A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company that is owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company, parent, or holding company. The subsidiary can be a company, corporation, or limited liability company. In some cases it is a government or state-owned enterprise. In some cases, particularly in the music and book publishing industries, subsidiaries are referred to as imprints.

Timeline

October 3, 1878 - Northern Railway (a Southern Pacific subsidiary) completes construction from Williams - Willows. (Other sources say railroad reached Willows on September 26, 1878).
July 31, 1882 - Northern Railway completes construction from Willows - Orland.
1884 - Plans are made to build a railroad from Willows to the Pacific Ocean coast of Mendocino County. The proposed route is to be along the Elk Creek and through Grindstone Canyon. It was anticipated that the railroad would haul local fruit as well as haul redwood and sugar pine lumber from Mendocino County to a proposed lumber mill in Willows. However, the railroad never made it more than 17 miles east of Willows.
October 26, 1886 - Contract to build line awarded to Turon & Knox of Sacramento.
April 1887 - Grading complete.
March 1888 - Began laying track using Chinese labor.
May 15, 1888 - West Side & Mendocino consolidated into Northern Railway/Southern Pacific.
July 1, 1888 - Northern Railway/Southern Pacific opens line from Willows - Fruto (16.84 miles) and line is known as the "Mendocino Branch" of Southern Pacific's Benicia Division, Clear Lake Subdivision.
July 14, 1898 Northern Railway sold and consolidated into Southern Pacific.
World War I - Line hauls chrome ore.
1917 Line hauls copper ore from the Frank Tendor Copper Mine.
1927 Line hauls materials for the Stony Gorge Dam project and livestock.
1951 Southern Pacific abandons most of the branch line except for a one-mile section west of Willows that was left in place to handle wood products produced at the Setzer Box Company mill in Elk Creek.
1993 Southern Pacific leases their "West Valley Line" (Davis - Tehama), including the small portion of the Mendocino Branch serving the Johns-Manville Fiberglass Plant east of Willows, to the California Northern Railroad.

The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east.

Sequoia sempervirens is the sole living species of the genus Sequoia in the cypress family Cupressaceae. Common names include coast redwood, coastal redwood and California redwood. It is an evergreen, long-lived, monoecious tree living 1,200–1,800 years or more. This species includes the tallest living trees on Earth, reaching up to 379 feet (115.5 m) in height and up to 29.2 feet (8.9 m) in diameter at breast height (dbh). These trees are also among the oldest living things on Earth. Before commercial logging and clearing began by the 1850s, this massive tree occurred naturally in an estimated 2,100,000 acres (850,000 ha) along much of coastal California and the southwestern corner of coastal Oregon within the United States.

Lumber or timber is a type of wood that has been processed into beams and planks, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for structural purposes but has many other uses as well.

Route

Willows - Milepost 0
Kurand - Milepost 5.9
Halconera - Milepost 8.5
Millsholm - Milepost 9.7 (named after Edgar Mills, a Fruto property owner; and "holm" - German for hills; this location was in the foothills)
Athena - Milepost 13.7
Fruto - Milepost 17.1

Kurand is a former settlement in Glenn County, California. It was located on the Southern Pacific Railroad 9.5 miles (15 km) east-southeast of Fruto, at an elevation of 194 feet. It still appeared on maps as of 1944.

Millsholm is a former settlement in Glenn County, California. It was located on the Southern Pacific Railroad 7 miles (11 km) east-southeast of Fruto, at an elevation of 312 feet. Millsholm still appeared on maps as of 1944. Millsholm was on the West Side and Mendocino Railroad.

Foothills or piedmont are geographically defined as gradual increases in elevation at the base of a mountain range, higher hill range or an upland area. They are a transition zone between plains and low relief hills and the adjacent topographically higher mountains, hills, and uplands. Frequently foothills consist of alluvial fans, coalesced alluvial fans and dissected plateaus.

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References

Robertson, Donald B. Encyclopedia of Western Railroad History - Volume IV - California, The Caxton Printers, Ltd. 1998. ISBN 0-87004-385-4
Bonner, Brian. Fruto. Retrieved November 19, 2005.

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