Octopus’s Garden

Very recently I visited the second-oldest railroad depot in California. And that naturally got me to wondering about the first-oldest (otherwise known simply as the oldest) railroad depot in California. And that would be the Santa Clara Depot, built in 1863.

I happened to grow up near Santa Clara, and I’m sure I must have visited the Santa Clara depot with my friend Detlef, as he and I would regularly ride our bikes to various railroad sites in the area to explore the ancient (though still-active) passenger cars and use our cassette recorders to capture the panoply of sounds emanating from the Southern Pacific locomotives as they pulled their trains to the platforms. Occasionally one of us would take a photo, but this was in the days before phone cameras, and lugging around an SLR was a hassle. Still, it was those experiences–seeing and hearing and smelling the various aspects of the moribund Southern Pacific passenger trains in the 1970s–that number among the best memories of my youth.

The Santa Clara Depot was built by the long-forgotten San Francisco and San Jose Railroad Company. Like most of the other small railroads in California around that time, the SF&SJ was acquired by the mighty Southern Pacific (non-affectionately known as The Octopus).

Though it’s survived for over a century and a half, the depot has undergone its share of work over the years. Notably, in 1877, the entire station was moved across the railroad tracks and joined to an existing freight facility. The historic photo below (lifted from my Uncle Edward’s celebrated Dome o’ Foam) clearly shows the original passenger depot in the front, connected to the larger freight building in the back.

As you can see from the photos I took today, the original appearance remains largely intact.

A hundred and fifty years ago, before Starbucks and shopping malls, a railroad station like this would be a major hub of activity in the community. Santa Clara Depot’s fortunes of course declined in the automobile age, but it survived the shift of passenger service to Amtrak, the demise of Southern Pacific, and the arrival of CalTrain. Indeed, the depot still had a functioning ticket office as late as 1997.

Today the depot is part of what’s called the Santa Clara Transit Center, where several rail and bus lines converge. There are also plans to eventually tie in a BART extension.

While the depot no longer offers its ticket office or waiting room or even restrooms to train travelers, it does house a railroad museum. Sadly, the museum is only open two days a week, and was closed when I was there. So I can’t report on the depot’s interior features. That said, the building lends an authenticity and ambiance to this transportation hub, and I’m pleased to see it featured so prominently.

Just a stone’s throw from the depot is another historic structure: This “interlocking tower” (whose purpose is to control rail switches in the nearby Santa Clara railyard) was constructed in 1926.

The tower was in service until 1993, when switch and signal controls were centralized at San Jose. Those of you who watched the 2010 movie Unstoppable know the risks of that kind of technological advance….

Anyway, next to the tower is a commemorative plaque installed by the City Council in 2002:

..and next to that plaque is a second one, installed by E Clampus Vitus in 2013. Note in particular the narrow secondary plaque beneath the main one:

Now, there are two notable points here: First, while E Clampus Vitus installed the second plaque 11 years after the City Council’s plaque, they take pains to point out they were prepared to be first. You’ve got to wonder what caused the 14-year delay. Second, and more importantly, is this: What in tarnation is E Clampus Vitus? You see their plaques all over the west. Are they a legit historical society? A dangerous cult? An Andy Kaufman-esque hoax? You can of course get some insight to these questions through Wikipedia, but I am going to do some hard-hitting investigative journalism on this topic and present a full blog post on ECV in the near future. If any of my loyal readers is a member of the ECV (i.e., a Clamper), please contact me.

In the meantime, I leave you with this sign that stands at the Santa Clara Depot, which raises a question that a Clamper might ask: Who is the “Lookout” for the locomotive?