Story by Angelo Mithos
Hi, to all. Yes, John Schmale., I did receive a copy of the email you sent to John Vonderlin. On Pg. 120 of my copy of THE LAST WHISTLE are the ruins of the trestle where the Wurm group once posed for a picture. I remember the trestle looking like that in the 1930s when I took pictures of it with my Brownie camera, which photos I still have. The best I can recall is that the trestle was somewhat South of the Montara station, and was removed later when the road was widened. My pictures are very much like the Pg. 120 picture. My copy of THE LAST WHISTLE is a second printing, December 1974, with changes on Pages 16, 35, 56 and 75. I cannot find any picture you mentioned of “the Ocean Shore Railroad tracks at Montara following a flood caused by a very intense storm.” Is your copy the same as mine? If so, what page? If not, what printing do you have and what page number? I can check out out the Sonoma County Library system which has a couple of the books and see if they have the picture in their books. I figure this is probably the McNee trestle listed in the book, but the McNee Ranch is to the North–maybe this was the extreme South end of the ranch at that time. One troubling thing is that the Trestles list in the Appendix shows no trestle at either Montara or Farallone; another thing is that Ted Wurm who was quite knowledgeable about the OS called it the Montara trestle. Also it seems to me the trestle wasn’t far from the Montara lighthouse, though I don’t completely trust my memories of those times since we’re talking of 70 or so years ago.
Pretty chilly here this morning–down to the high twenties. Keep warm. folks. Angelo