For a different take on the road trips my wife Sarah and I have taken over the last few years, we recently took a train to Oakland for the day in December.
We parked at the San Jose Diridon Station, an historic landmark built in 1935. Its history spills much further back in time, however. In 1878 The South Pacific Coast Railroad built a wooden station—the West San Jose Depot—on the same site. In 1887, Southern Pacific Railroad took control of the railroad, and the station became part of their system.In 1935, the Cahill Depot was built in the Italian Renaissance Revival style—the one standing now—but was renamed Diridon in 1994.
The kind woman behind the glass sold us round-trip tickets for $58 each to Jack London Square in Oakland on Amtrak. The train left promptly at 10:05am.
Our seats on the upper deck offered sweeping views with comfortable seats.
Traveling the rails brings back a wealth of memories for me when my high school pal, Joe, and I hopped freight trains from Sacramento to Seattle.
This was back in the early 70s. We hitchhiked out of San Diego on Highway 5 from Pacific Beach to Marysville, by Sacramento, and then we hopped freight trains all the way to Seattle, 1,255 miles. We did the same thing in reverse to get back home at 18 years old.
The trip was stacked with adventure and we lived to talk about it, so I guess nothing went terribly wrong.
Unlike the movies, we didn’t have to charge after a speeding train and jump onto it as it whistled across the land. We walked into a massive freight yard packed with trains facing in all directions and asked one of the bull gang members which train was headed north.
“That one right there,” the man said. “Leaves in about 15 minutes.”
Within the next half hour, we were sailing across the Sacramento Valley at 60 mph in 105-degree heat. We had taken a seat on a flatbed car piled with big-rig trailers known as piggybacks. We met all kinds of hobos who were always friendly and helped us with train hopping tips.
Back to the present, as Sarah and I sailed along on Amtrak north along the shores of Alviso Marina County Park and the San Francisco Bay, we passed scores of dilapidated wood and tin buildings standing out in the marsh. We learned that this was once the town of Drawbridge, now a ghost town on an island in San Francisco Bay that’s sprinkled with ramshackle, broken-up buildings. Starting back in 1878, Drawbridge was a busy port town for duck hunters.
As we rolled past the salt ponds of San Francisco Bay, we noticed the huge white piles of salt on the water’s edge. Then came the sprawling recycling yards, PG&E substations, cemeteries, neighborhoods and tire factories. All kinds of warehouses lined the railroad tracks, most of them splashed with graffiti, many whose exterior walls were lined with homeless camps.
At times, traveling by train offers a different window to the landscape and the city’s “other side.”
We climbed off the train at Jack London Square, and the history of one of America’s greatest writers was there to welcome us on our one-day visit.
In the second half of this story we delve into London’s life, check out harbor life and head back to San Jose via the rails.
