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Field Notes from the Santa Cruz Mountains: Mapping Ghost Towns

There has never been an easy way over the steep and rugged terrain of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Even today, far too many zippy Silicon Valley commuters meet their demise as they weave around sluggish trucks on the treacherous Highway 17. The highway rapidly changed the cultural landscape. It was not the only way "over the hill." Its completion in 1940 led to a widespread abandonment of towns, roads, and railroads in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Towns that were once busy stagecoach or railroad stops now lie deep in watery graves below human-made reservoirs or have been incinerated by wildfire, never rebuilt. Rails and ties from the short lived South Pacific Coast Railroad (1880-1940) have all been removed. Only faint dirt roads that once were railroad grades, along with the haunting portals of the perilous mile-long railroad tunnels, remain to tell the story.

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