Most astonishing were the statistics from June 1912: 30,000 passengers, commuters and picnickers had boarded the famous “Reaches the Beaches” Ocean Shore Railroad in San Francisco for the refreshing “voyage by rail” to Half Moon Bay.
The numbers showed a 100 per cent increase over the previous year!
And everybody raved about the Ocean Shore. Tourists declared the roller coaster train ride “the most magnificent combination of mountains and marine view that can be seen from a car window anywhere in the world.” The buzz was that it would become a “must see” side trip for every tourist visiting the Pacific Coast.
There were other plans to perk up the isolated, peaceful Coastside. One of the most ambitious was a “fine boulevard” that would link San Francisco with Half Moon Bay. At a crowded public meeting in Redwood City, a decision was made to hold a bond election to raise funds for the construction of “a great ocean boulevard from Golden Gate Park to all the shore towns of San Mateo County.”
Public school education shared the spotlight in the development explosion:Blueprints showed that Half Moon Bay High School and Farallon School in Montara were to be built in a style that tried to match the Spanish architecture see in the train stations built by the Ocean Shore.
Overlooking a lovely sheltered cove at Marine View in Moss Beach, a three-story, $25,000 Mission-style hotel was under construction. Summer cottages, a “pleasure pier”, bathhouses and concessions were to be built nearby.
The developer of the Marine View Hotel was very proud of the location near upscale Moss Beach, already touted as a place of “high character,” distinguished by its “artistic up-building” and what was called “protective restrictions” (I don’t know what “protective restrictions” means….)
…To Be Continued…