This 30-Mile East Bay Trail Has Roots on the Railroad

Read a transcript of this episode. 

Several days a week, Bay Curious listener Linda Au walks along the Iron Horse Regional Trail in Concord, near where she lives. It’s a paved, multiuse trail that runs alongside the actual Walnut Creek that the city to the south is named for. Thanks to this winter’s abundant rainfall, tall grasses line the trail and water now flows in what had been a dry creek bed.

One day, Au’s job required her to visit an office in Pleasanton and she took a bus to get there. She said that when she arrived at her destination, “I saw the sign for Iron Horse Trail in Pleasanton. I was shocked. I didn’t know that it went all the way down there, and that was when my interest was piqued.”

The trail’s name gave a hint of its origins, prompting Au to ask about the train line that preceded it.

“When did actual trains run? Did they carry passengers? Where were the train stations located? Was the historic Walnut Creek Station one of them?”

That last question goes back further in Au’s own life. She grew up in Walnut Creek, where for a long time an old railroad depot housed a steak restaurant.

“I grew up passing by looking at it thinking, ‘Oh, what a cool building,’” she said. “And then (feeling) kind of sad that it wasn’t used as a train station anymore.”

Bay Curious set out to answer Au’s questions and explore the history of this popular East Bay Regional Park District trail through the San Ramon Valley in Contra Costa County.

A new way to travel

The transcontinental railroad arrived in California in 1869, with the potential to transform life for area residents. Now travel across the country to Chicago and New York could be done from the relative comfort of a train car rather than along the arduous routes cut by horse-drawn wagons. But to make use of the new system, a person — or a load of freight — first had to get to one of the major rail lines. In the San Ramon Valley, that was a challenge at the time. And winter travel meant muddy, rutted roads that at times became completely impassable.

Beverly Lane, curator of the Museum of the San Ramon Valley in Danville and a former board member of the East Bay Regional Park District, says some early residents in the area started to lobby for a branch line of the railroad — a connection that would extend south from the mainline near Martinez.

Lane says Southern Pacific wasn’t keen on investing in a branch line.

“They didn’t see that it would be a big moneymaker,” she said. “And so they said they wouldn’t pay for the right-of-way.”

The right-of-way is the corridor of land that contains the train tracks and a buffer on either side. The railroad company needs to own it in order to put down track and operate a train. Lane says much of the proposed right-of-way was privately owned at the time.

“People had to deed the right-of-way to them, and there were some people who didn’t see why they should be giving [away] land that would go through their ranch, when others were going to take advantage of [the train] and they didn’t lose land to the railroad,” she said.

Ultimately, deep-pocketed supporters of the branch line raised $15,000 to buy rights from the reluctant landowners. That’s about half a million dollars in today’s money. The rest of the needed land was donated, and the branch line was built and began operating in 1891.

“When the train first started, there was lots of enthusiasm and it carried passengers and freight,” Lane said. “People came on excursions. So it was an all-purpose Southern Pacific steam railroad.”

Having a train line changed the communities, especially where the tracks ran close to downtown, as in Danville. Lane says that community gained its first subdivision as a direct result of the train. A major landowner carved up his property so the town could expand to fill the one long block from downtown to the train depot. After its initial success, Southern Pacific extended the line a bit farther south to connect to the Oakland-to-Tracy mainline.

Within 20 years of the train’s arrival in the San Ramon Valley, the population of Contra Costa County had more than doubled. Growth was happening all around, of course, but the train certainly contributed. It made year-round travel reliable, and because shipping was so much faster, farmers shifted from growing grain, which could be stored for a long time, to more perishable things like cherries and pears. Warehouses presented new business ventures, and with people traveling more, hotels and other amenities helped small towns grow.

But the rapid rise of cars and trucks spelled doom for the line — regular passenger service ended in the 1930s. Service picked up during World War II, when trains ferried soldiers through the valley and hauled rock for military construction projects. But after the war, Southern Pacific’s use of the tracks diminished further. Lane says when she moved to Danville in the 1970s, the company would occasionally send a train down the line “just to assert their ability to run a train.”

Repurposing the right-of-way

Southern Pacific ended service altogether in the 1970s, a time when many little-used train tracks were being decommissioned throughout the country. This often prompted residents to look differently at the straight, clear corridors, generally filled with weeds and abandoned tracks.

The national rails-to-trails movement was gaining momentum at the time. Since the early 1980s, across the country some 24,000 miles of trails have replaced train tracks on existing rights-of-way — including more than 1,000 miles in California.

Lane and a group of trail supporters asked the East Bay Regional Park District about converting the San Ramon Branch Line into a multiuse trail. They were surprised to learn the agency, which serves Alameda and Contra Costa counties, had that project on its radar, though it wasn’t top of the priority list.

“It made a big difference if there was a public group that was advocating for it,” Lane said, “which indeed was the case.”

Contra Costa County was able to buy the right-of-way from Southern Pacific, and that preserved the space for public use.

“In stops and starts, that’s how the Iron Horse Regional Trail came about,” Lane said.

The original Walnut Creek train depot has been expanded and renovated, and the refurbished building sits right on the trail. The same building style is also preserved in Danville, where the original depot building now houses the Museum of the San Ramon Valley. The regional history museum is not focused on trains, but remnants of the building’s history remain.

Lane unlatches the original large sliding doors that open to the street side. A matching set would have been on the track side to allow easy transit of cargo between wagons and train cars. A scale built into the floor is still present and functional. The brown and beige two-story building has many windows that flood the indoor space with natural light. The stationmaster would have lived on the second floor.

While today’s runners, cyclists, inline skaters and dog walkers could travel miles on the trail without considering its railroad history, there’s no denying that the Iron Horse Regional Trail is a direct descendant of the San Ramon Branch Line.