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by Andy Fahrenwald,
Chapter President
In the early hours of November 20, 1902, the Alameda
Point Ferry
Terminal far out on San Francisco Bay was destroyed by
fire. This
handsome Victorian railroad and ferry service terminal
complex had been
completed in 1884 by the South Pacific Coast Railroad, a
fierce little narrow
gauge rival of the Southern Pacific. In its battle to beat
the SP's time to
Santa Cruz, the SPCRR had extended its Mole over two and a
half miles
from the shore of the Alameda isthmus (now an island)
across the Bay
shallows to the brink of deep water - in large part to
shave 15 to 20
minutes off its schedule.
The Alameda Point Mole and
Ferry Terminal were impressive structures.
The Mole was earth and rock filled and required 10,000
piles and six
million feet of lumber in its construction. The wharf at
the end of the Mole
was 800 by 280 feet in size with a 510 by 170 foot "H"
shaped terminal
complex lit with electric lights and spanned by an advanced
iron and
wood truss structure supporting alternating glass and
corrugated iron
panels. The facade was "modeled on the Eastlake plan of
architecture, so
popular just now," in the words of the February 22, 1884,
Oakland
Enquirer. The terminal was inaugurated by fourteen narrow
gauge
locomotives giving an impromptu "midnight Calliopean
concert" and
startling half the residents of Alameda out of their beds
(March 15, 1884,
Oakland Enquirer).
The SPCRR also bored two mile-long tunnels through the
Santa Cruz
Mountains, founded the city of Newark for its shops (and
for land
development) and was, all in all, a well capitalized, first
class operation.
The southern terminal of the SPCRR was the still-existing
wharf (confirm)
at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, a tourist destination to this
day. Starting
from the Ferry Building in San Francisco and taking the
Santa Cruz
Express from Alameda Point, a traveler reached Santa Cruz
in only three
and half hours, a time often hard to beat on today's
freeways.
By the time of the 1902 fire, the SPCRR had been swallowed
up by
"TheOctopus", but was still being operated as an SP narrow
gauge
division. The ferry terminal had been converted to both
narrow and
standard gauge, with freight traffic connecting to the
Embarcadero, San
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