Half Moon Bay Memories

Story by John Vonderlin

Email John: [email protected]

Hi June,

Not too long ago I did a series of postings about the historical Coastside upgrades done on Highway 1, and Skyline Blvd., that I had extracted from a series of “Highways and Public Works” pamphlets I found at Archive.org. The one about the new highway and bridge in the Pescadero area in 1941, mentioned that the Tunitas Creek area upgrade and others were coming soon. World War II delayed all those projects. After hours of flipping through thousands of pages online I was able to find every article about the improvements from Davenport to Pacifica, except the Tunitas Creek section. I tried to locate the date of the Tunitas bridge’s construction online with websearches, hoping to better focus my eyestraining search, but had no luck, and finally gave up.

Well, a few days ago John Schmale sent me this great century old picture of the almost completed Tunitas Trestle of the Ocean Shore Railroad

and the nearby, nearly fifty year old, Long Bridge. My interest was rekindled and as I mentioned I visited Tunitas Beach a couple of days ago. I walked over the bridge

and discovered it hadn’t been built until 1962 and photographed the spraypainted stencil indicating so.

I also photographed the bridge from the north end that shows the 1962 span and the newer section to the south, constructed after the huge landslide in the winter of 1998. Lastly, in the canyon below I took this photograph of the old foundations of the Long Bridge’s last incarnation, built sometime after the one portrayed in John Schmale’s photo, and replaced by the 1962 span. It was located less then 50 feet west of the present span. (I think you have a picture of that incarnation, but I don’t)

With the date from the stencil, I returned to Archive.org and went through 1962’s pamphlets, carefully, page by page, until I found a small paragraph in the May-June issue that stated:

“South of Half Moon Bay on Sign Route 1 (Cabrillo Highway), work is under way on a $592,000 contract between .5 mile south of and .3 mile north of Tunitas Creek. The work includes construction of a new bridge across the Tunitas Creek and improving the approaches.”

Unfortunately, after extensive searching I think that is the best there is. By 1962 there were so many big projects going on in the Bay Area, that a half a million dollar project out on the coast just didn’t rate page space, I guess. The attached ScreenShot of Bay Area projects in 1962 illustrates why.

There was also an interesting item in one of the 1962 issues I’d like to share. It was the 50th anniversary of the pamphlet, in one form or another, and they had a memorial story. It included these two 1912 photos from Issue 1, Volume 1, of the “California Highway Bulletin,” depicting work on the El Camino Highway in San Mateo County. My, how things have changed.

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In a previous email railroad historian/author John Schmale said:

Here are two of pics from Tunitas. The railroad trestle crossed over the county road on the north end. The county may have removed the overhead part of the trestle for safety reasons. Angelo,is this how you remember the structure?  I guess only about four of the five railroad trestle abutments remain. The auto bridge in this photo does not match old photos of the main road bridge which is upstream from this one. It had about seven trusses and was quit long, hence “Long-bridge”. I believe that it was rebuilt in 1914 by the state. I have a photo showing the long wagon-auto bridge as well as some Ocean Shore Rail cars on the Railroad Trestle. I suspect that the “long-bridge” may have been replaced by the Highway-one bridge, which has again been replaced by the current bridge.

What do you think? The other pic is the Tunitas depot in about 1938. It burned in around 1967 or so. I will look for the newspaper clipping.

John Schmale

Story by Angelo Misthos

To John (Vonderlin)

In David L. Durham’s “California’s Geographic Names: A Gazeteer of Historic and Modern Names of the State” there appears under Tunitas Creek (San Mateo) stream: “The (OS) railroad stop near the creek about 1910 was called Long Bridge for a structure built across the stream in 1869. (Browm P. 49.)” This coincides more with your findings that the the Long Bridge name originated from an early roadway  and not with my view that  it was that the OS had so named its 515 foot trestle, though the railroad must have appropriated the name for its own use as previously explained.  I found the above by Googling: Long Bridge at Tunitas Glen/David L Durham. The reference to Brown is probably to Thomas P. Brown’s “Colorful California Names: Their History and Meaning.”  Angelo

Elaine Teixeira’s Half Moon Bay High Class Reunion

Story by Elaine Teixeira

A Half Moon Bay High School reunion was held at Nick’s in Rockaway for graduates, spouses, and former members of the classes 1944-1956 on October 10.  Pat Baldwin Weir and her committee have organized these reunions every 5 years for at least 20 years.  This year, it was only three years since the last and it was one of the largest groups ever to attend. Pat is already planning the next reunion and deserves a big hand, along with her committee, for putting so much effort into making these events such a success.

Photos by Fred Cunha

Images of some of the attendees: Bev Cunha Ashcraft, Pedro Corral, Terri Santini, Bruno & Gwen Giusti, Norman Carter, Dorothy Gillie Bettencourt, Jack Bettencourt, Jerome Vallado and Lorraine Gabriellie Valladao, Donald Benson, & Virginia Frances.

To enjoy their images, please click here

These are from Roswell:

But today they visited the new Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park:

Visit the Lost Coast with Joel Bratman, please click here

Images by photographer Lynn McCloskey:

please click here http://gallery.me.com/lynnmc1227#100157

Story by John Vonderlin

Email John: [email protected]

(Photo courtesy

Elaine Martini Teixeira.)

You may not familiar with this restaurant, owned by Frank Torres, which stood overlooking Montara beach and burned. Here’s what it looked like originally:

Story by Marcy Gensic

Hi June!

I work with Neil Young and we are currently working on the Neil Young Archive Volume 2 Box Set.  It goes from roughly late 1972 through 1982.  In December of 1975 and January 1976 Neil did a bar tour in Northern California unannounced with Crazy Horse and he played at the Frank Torres Beach Hotel but we don’t have the exact date nor can I find any reviews or references to it anywhere.  In all of your research, have you ever come across anyone ever mentioning this?  In reading through your site, there was a gentleman, Bruce Pine and he seemed to be around about that time.  Would he possibly remember anything or would you have contact info on that.

Also I was wondering if you know of anyone who would have photos from the 70’s of the hotel.  I do have photos from much earlier time periods, but it would be nice to see it in the 70’s athough maybe it hasn’t changed that much.

Fun site to read through.  Any suggestions or help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

All My Best!

Marcy Gensic