Offroad and Backroad Books for Northern California, Part 5
Book reviewed: Ghost Towns of the Santa Cruz Mountains
Ghost Towns of the Santa Cruz Mountains isn’t an essential book for your collection unless you’re looking to explore the history of the mountains, at which point it becomes key.
It’s an unusual book. Originally published in book form in the late seventies, most of the content is actually reproduced from a series of articles in the local newspaper from the 1930s. After some additional research, the book was expanded (by two dozen pages) into its current form in 1984.
The book runs 144 pages, including index, and features some black and white photos. The book is compact in size (5.5 x 8.5″) with a square binding.
I was always interested in the history of this area, and bought the book after discovering the multi-stage Mountain History geocache that serves as a wonderful tour of the old settlements and train tunnels. The tour and the book combined were my first real education into the interesting history of this region, and it continues today as I find additional historical documentation and travels these backroads.
There’s not an exhaustive amount of detail in the book, and the information seems a little thin and informal at times. In many ways it represents a recording of oral history, which benefits from its original publishing date in 1934.
Still, I don’t know any other books that so nicely catalogs all of the small settlements throughout the mountains. In many places, only a single building or historical plaque marks where a small community once stood. Other town sites, like Germantown and Austrian Gulch, are not only no longer accessible to the public, but they also lay under the waters of one of the local man-made reservoirs.
A few settlements like Lexington (usually under the waters of Lexington reservoir) usually appear only when the reservoirs are especially low from lack of rain. As I write this in December 2007, the foundations of several buildings of old Lexington have recently been exposed, as the reservoir is nearly empty while they work on a new output pipe.
There are no offroad trails here, but this is a helpful guide to the history tucked away in these green mountain backroads. There are no real maps in the books, so having other resources (or good enough local knowledge in your head) is going to be needed if you plan to tour the available locations in the book.
The book provides quite a few colorful stories which help to bring the frontier history to life. A notable example was when Germantown was essentially washed downhill during a period of heavy rains in 1889. When the winery building there collapsed, it is said that the Los Gatos Creek ran red with wine for several miles downstream. We also learn of the reasons behind the rise of some towns while others faltered.
The book is filled with names that modern residents in this area would recognize, but probably without knowing the history involved. Names like Branham, Webb, Forbes, Fremont, and Alma still are found on local roads and other landmarks. We also learn of two famous Charleys: Mountain Charley, who famously survived terrible injuries from a grizzly bear, and Silent Charley, a profane woman stagecoach driver who passed as a man until her death.
The there are stories about the ghosts of Chinese miners, reporters hiding a telephone in a courthouse, and places like Holy City, the self-proclaimed “home of the world’s most perfect government.” It’s obvious that there were a lot of strange things going on in California long before the 1960s.
The book makes for fascinating, if somewhat jumbled reading. There’s no in-depth, detailed information here, as the book jumps around from place to place, and from tale to tale. If you’re interested in the history of the Santa Cruz mountain communities (including those that still survive, like Los Gatos and New Almaden), then this book is a must-have for your collection. But even if you’re not near the area, it still provides a colorful look into California’s frontier past.