LAUREL STATION When the South Pacific Coast Railroad first traversed the Santa Cruz Mountains, it ran through a small basin that formed the headwaters of Burns Creek. The crude trail through the basin served as a toll road through the Santa Cruz Mountains, catering specifically to small logging operations and fruit growers in the region. Once construction started on the Summit Tunnel around 1878, the location was formally named Highland. While the Place Names Index suggests the name is descriptive of the location—high land—, an alternative theory is that the location was named in honor of M.C. Highland who was killed in the February 12, 1878, Summit Tunnel explosion alongside at least thirty Chinese laborers. The community served as a construction site for three years while the Summit Tunnel and Glenwood Tunnels were being bored. SPCRR built a small sawmill there to built ties for the tracks. Highland earned its name as it was the highest point on the South Pacific Coasts grade over the mountains at 910 feet. Soon after construction was completed and trains started to pass through the basin, a town center began to develop in a clearing alongside the right-of-way near the Glenwood Tunnels north portal. For about a decade, the name Highland stuck despite efforts by the South Pacific Coast to rename the site. Once the Southern Pacific Railroad took over operations along the line in 1887, however, all reference to Highland went away and Laurel Station became the official name of the community. Laurel Station in the 1910s The town of Laurel grew with the railroad. A school and post office were established in 1882. As Glenwood Highway was expanded and the proto-Highway 17 built, Laurel fell off the grid. The railroad closed the station in the winter of 1920, turning the location into a flag-stop (which continued to appear on timetables until 1940). The school remained until 1947 and the post office continued in operation until July 15, 1953. The station building was still in existence in 1948 and probably still was the home of the villages post office. Its eventual fate is unknown; only foundations exist where the station and freight buildings were originally located. Hihns mill at Laurel, c. 1905 Frederick Hihn, seeing an opportunity to expand his logging operations beyond the redwoods north of Aptos, took over the remnants of the SPCRR mill and expanded operations to the ridge overlooking Laurel in 1899. He built his own spur from the mainline which used flatcars and winches to transport manufactured boards. His mills here and elsewhere in the Santa Cruz Mountains provided much of the lumber used to restore San Francisco following the 1906 Earthquake and fires. His facilities included bunkhouses, a blacksmith shop, and cook huts, some of which are visible in the photo at left. Similarly to Glenwood, the town acted as a service area for the train, though there were no major resorts in the area to encourage tourism like Glenwood. The 1899 Station Book notes a number of important points. Firstly, Laurel was located 64 miles south of San Francisco via Alameda Point. The facilities were considered a full freight and passenger station with a telegraph office on site. The freight depot itself had a full set of sidings for storing freight loads, and it had a class A facility and crew. The freight platform was located on the right side of the tracks as heading southbound. Although it is not noted, the site had a water tower and a small stock yard, as evidenced from contemporary photographs. MacGregor adds that Laurel stored much of the fuel wood for the Mountain Route, which suggests the initial load of wood may have been largely used up by the time the route reached its apex. Once the railroad left in 1940, the town dissolved and today serves about a dozen homes. Formally, it is considered a ghost town. There are no commercial buildings in the isolated valley and only one major road into the basin. Photo 1. Laurel Station in 1948 after the tracks had been removed. 2. A view of Laurel from the top of the Glenwood Tunnels north portal. 3. Photograph looking south down the tracks toward the Glenwood. 4. The home guarding the entrance to the Glenwood Tunnels north portal.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 04:17:11 +0000
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