Steam & Excursion > Robert Hanft: Do mind the wires?

The Western Railway Museum Archives has this undated Kodachrome of SP Extra 4186 West taken by Robert Hanft along the Carquinez Strait between Crockett and Eckley, CA.  The beached ex-SP ferry Garden City is visible at Eckley in the distance.  For those who love pole lines and wires, eat your hearts out.  I'll admit they can add to a composition - heck they can even be the main subject if you play it right.  All the same, I wasn't sorry to see them go along this stretch of the SP.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/15 03:32 by Evan_Werkema.

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Looks like something I'd do - climb a hill and get a crummy shot for the effort.

They always seemed to be at the wrong place at the wrong time!
ALLEN

If the locomotive had been one pole back the wires would not have been so prominent. But I have done worse, myself.

Fred in Wichita

Crummy shot? It's a gem if you consider the entire composition! Evan, do you happen to have a date to go with the photo? And the industry on the pier behind the train?

Evan, thanks for posting the photo taken near Eckley.

I spent a few hours watching trains and maritime traffic there on the 16th.  Was wondering what the area looked like back in the day.

Lots of old pilinigs and the burned out hulk of the Garden City is all that is left of the old scene.

Eckley is home to a park and fishing pier now days.  A nice area to relax have a picnic and watch boats, ships and trains.

Bob

wpdude Wrote:

> Evan, do you happen to have a date to
> go with the photo?

Sorry to say I don't.  The slide is old enough that it doesn't even have a processing month/year date stamp.  I agree it's a great shot for what it shows, and I've been puzzling about that industry, too.  I suspect Hanft didn't realize how bright the wires would be until that big black locomotive showed up behind them. 

Except for the bottom two crossarms, which look like they might have D phone circuits, the upper ones are WUT Co -- Copperweld because they are greenish in color. I have an Arcadia Publishing book on Port Costa which says the industry was "Granger's  warehouse" but doesn't go on to explain who or what that was.

EtoinShrdlu Wrote:

> I have an Arcadia Publishing
> book on Port Costa which says the industry was
> "Granger's  warehouse"

Thanks for the tip...this the one?

https://books.google.com/books?id=BZxNdgQq5LgC&pg=PA112

Googling around for "Granger's warehouse" turns up items 3576 and 3577 on this page, which are photos of the larger version of the warehouse in a state of distress after "one half of it, bearing a load of sacked grain, collapsed in September, 1920. After teredos had eaten through the supporting piles. Nov. 27, 1920"

http://dpg.lib.berkeley.edu/webdb/metcalf/search?Date=&page=128

Also a short item from the Woodland Daily Democrat from November 13, 1896 saying, "The Granger's Warehouse Company shipped thirty-seven cars of wheat to Port Costa today."

http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/51353505/

Which leads to this 1963 piece entitled Port Costa, California's Wheat Center, which describes briefly the Grangers' Business Association docks:

http://scholarworks.csun.edu/bitstream/handle/10211.2/2262/CAgeographer1963p63-65.pdf

An item in the Grain Dealers Journal from July 10, 1902 says:

"The Grangers Warehouse & Dock Co. has been incorporated at San Francisco, Cal., with $200,000 in capital stock, by men connected with the California Ballasting & Stevedoring Co., in which Geo. W. McNear and other grain dealers are interested.  The new corporation has purchased the docks at Port Costa of the Grangers Business Association, together with its warehouse, commission business and interior agencies, and is shaping matters so that independent shippers at San Francisco will be unable to compete."

https://books.google.com/books?id=rz4yAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA148&lpg=PA148&dq=granger%27s+business+association+docks+%22port+costa%22&source=bl&ots=DAwnN_VGKs&sig=pnT_-S_ETcLll_m6zo_dbYQCncU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=buhaVcKQDoH8oATfwoH4CA&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=granger%27s%20business%20association%20docks%20%22port%20costa%22&f=false

And this 1920 wage case before the Railroad Commission that describes facilities including Granger's as

"...built primarily to meet the demands of the export trade in grain, approximately 90 per cent of all business handled being loaded to deep sea craft for direct shipment to Europe."

https://books.google.com/books?id=HOhDAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA350

So with visions of S. Behrman and the Pacific & Southwestern RR dancing in my head, it sounds like the warehouse was originally built to move wheat from rail to ship.

Thank you!

I like everything in that picture.

I'll guess the photo dates from the spring of 194?.  Colored slides were popular after 1937. The Benecia Hills are not yet populated.  They are gray and the nearby grass is green (Spring). The white houses may have been new then and would have been built after 1945. 
 Grain was shipped in bags; I saw them loading ships in San Francisco  in the late thirties.  My father was a Scot marine engineer and we talked aout the ships usiing their masts and winches to load and unload.  He had been the Port Sargeant Engineer at Calaise  during WWI before 1919.  They had installed an endless belt scheme to unload loose grain into rail wagons. Grain was a pricipal military fuel; horses needed grain to haul ammo, cannons and food.  He was surprised that they were still shipping sacks.  I recall moving five sacks on a hand cart from box cars to warehouse in the forties.  Fork lifts showed up around 1945.    Just to the East of Port Costa, Jack London loaded loose hay on a scow to feed horses in San Francisco.
They weren't good old days if you had to work for a living.

Anyone have a recent photo to show how the area has changed?

I like this shot....everything but the distortion caused by those lines....and I agree that, if the locomotive were just one or two poles to the rear, those lines would not have been such a distraction.  Can we say that, as evidenced by the silvered nose, and large Southern Pacific lettering on the tender, that this was shot in 1946 or later?  Is that the old SP carferry landing we see in the background?  AA

Stanford White
Carmel Valley, CA

agentatascadero Wrote:

> Is that the old SP carferry
> landing we see in the background?

I don't know that Eckley proper ever had a ferry landing.  The ferry Garden City that you're seeing in the distance was merely beached at that spot and used as a resort.  Some closer views are here:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,3471293,3472195#3472195

There used to be an auto ferry a few miles west (behind the photographer) at Crockett before the first bridge across the Carquinez Strait was built in 1927.  A few miles east (around several corners and out of sight) was Port Costa, where the train ferries to Benicia used to call prior to the construction of the Suisun Bay Bridge at Martinez in 1930.  There was also an auto ferry at Martinez until a highway bridge was built parallel to the rail bridge.