|
Francisco's thriving
maritime waterfront. A fire of accidental origin started
around 1:15 in the morning of November 20th and as the
headline in that
morning's Oakland Enquirer reported, "Fierce Flames Fanned
by Last
Night's Gale Made Quick Work." Ferryboat restaurant workers asleep in
their bunkhouse escaped the conflagration singed, shoeless
and clad in "a
few thin undergarments."
The Enquirer continues: "In the train sheds were 31 narrow
gauge and 16
broad gauge cars and of this rolling stock not a vestige
remains but the
twisted and warped iron work of the trucks. Many of the
trucks which
were on cars standing out near the end of the wharf have
fallen through
into the water beneath and others hang on the charred end
of the piles." A
photograph of the fire scene reveals the wharf deck totally
consumed with
wheels, truck parts and a tangle of truss rods and other
iron work clinging
to some remaining track. The numbers of the narrow gauge
coaches are
known and they include the #1, one of the SPCRR's sumptuous
parlor cars.
Half the narrow gauge's passenger rolling stock was lost
and never
replaced.
The SP rebuilt the Alameda Point Terminal, soon converted
the terminal to
electrified interurban service and continued operations for
several more
decades. Ultimately, the terminal was buried under land
fill, where it now
lies beneath the runways of the recently decommissioned
Alameda Naval
Air Station. Thus all access to the site of the original
Alameda Point Ferry
Terminal of the South Pacific Coast Railroad has been lost.
Or has it?
In August of this year, the Chapter was contacted by Celia
McCarthy, an
archæologist with the Port of Oakland. The Port
wanted to know if we had
any interest in the preservation of historic sites along
the Oakland shipping
channel, which they are planning to widen and deepen. The
historic North
Jetty and light, constructed from 1874 to 1896 by Chinese
labor, will be
removed. The Alameda Point Terminal lay just south of the
channel and
the South Jetty. The Port sent along a series of details
taken from Geodetic
Survey maps of the harbor mouth - from 1899, 1942 and 1980.
Serendipitously, these three maps turned out to be
potential buried
treasure maps!
A close comparison of the 1899 and 1942 maps revealed that
when the SP
rebuilt the terminal in 1903, they did not build as far out
into the bay as
had the SPCR and they realigned the end of the pier a
little to the north,
perhaps in order to avoid the wreckage and more easily sink
new piles.
Thus the location of the original 1884 South Pacific Coast
Alameda Point
Terminal is not identical with the location of the
post-1902 terminal, and
thus was not buried under the air station runways, as has
been assumed,
but in fact lies just off the present shoreline. Finally,
the 1980 map shows
an area of piles extending out into the Bay at this very
location!The shore
line appears to mark the former land-side entrance to the
terminal
building, the present shore sloping out to a depth of about
12 feet.
What might be out there under the mud? SPCRR historian
Bruce
MacGregor reports that SPCRR iron artifacts removed from
other locations
in the Bay have been well preserved; encrusted but not
corroded. Bruce
also observes that some structural members of the trucks
were made of
wood, so the trucks won't be found intact. The Carter
coaches featured
ornate metal fittings on the seats and luggage racks, but
very few of these
artifacts have survived the last century. The running gear
- the brakes, the
trucks, the couplers - of Carter rolling stock, was worn
out in service and
modernized so that very little original equipment remains.
As is well
|
|
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
