Greetings family, friends, and neighbors. "Roaring Camp", is the topic of today's historic snippit. Ride along with me as takre a brief look into the background of the popular western theme park and steam railroad visited by millions during the past six decades..... Bill
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ROARING CAMP
Railroad enthusiast Norman Clark envisioned rebuilding the abandoned South Pacific Coast Railroad that ran between San Jose and Santa Cruz using vintage steam powered passenger trains, and creating an 1880’s logging town tourist destination adjacent to Henry Cowell State Park near Felton, California. When Southern Pacific declined selling the historic SPCRR line, Clark focused his attention on creating the Roaring Camp and Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad in the Santa Cruz Mountains near the San Francisco Bay Area, a region rich with roadside attractions since the late 1800’s.
Clark engaged the services of Los Gatos civil engineer Bradley Honholt to design and supervise the construction of a narrow gauge tourist railroad running from the fictional town of Roaring Camp, through the redwood forest, over canyons and up the steep hillside to the top of “Bear Mountain” using century old equipment and technology. Dubbed “America’s Most Backward Railroad” a major challenge, other than creating a route that avoids cutting any old growth redwoods, was negotiating the crossing at Spring Canyon. Honholt devised a plan to construct a pair of tight corkscrew trestles allowing the railroad to maintain a steady five percent grade while gaining forty five feet in vertical height, and providing passengers on long trains dramatic views.
As Clark’s railroad pushed forward from Roaring Camp in 1966, construction began on the Spring Valley bridges with the pouring of footings pumped from cement trucks and the hauling of piles and heavy timbers for bents delivered to the site on flat cars by steam locomotives. Eighty feet above the ground and forty five feet above the lower bridge, the completed corkscrew trestles at Spring Valley thrilled visitors to Roaring Camp for ten years until 1976 when a suspicious fire destroyed the iconic structures. Because insurance would only cover a steel replacement it was decided to not rebuild the vulnerable High Trestle but to construct an authentic nine percent switchback bypass at Spring Valley, making the Roaring Camp and Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad one of the steepest operating railroads in the country.
-Bill 1/26
Circa 1960's Postcard: Artists View of roaring Camp
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