Derailed Fortunes: California\u27s Forgotten Railroad

Abstract

At a mahogany bar in Collins Saloon of San Francisco’s Montgomery Street, a successful businessman James G. Fair traced a trail of water droplets for his partner Alfred E. Davis to create the map of a visionary rail line soon to be known as the South Pacific Coast. Using historical records and photographs compiled by a selection of local authors and historians, this non-fiction retelling of Davis’ experience highlights the tribulations and triumphs of the most successful narrow gauge line in California history in order to share a largely forgotten but crucial aspect of local industrial archeology, as well as to explore the origins of the ghost lines and tunnels which lay abandoned in the Santa Cruz Mountains to this day. Davis’ experiences provide a unique opportunity to tribute and memorialize the efforts of dozens of fallen Chinese immigrants, many of whom lost their lives in building this crucial railroad