Reminiscing about the Vaca Valley Railroad
This is the second in a series of occasional pieces contributed by the Vacaville Heritage Council. — Editor
The same day that the last railroad spike was driven at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869, the first work started on the Vaca Valley Railroad, the line that would eventually run through Vacaville all the way to Rumsey.
It would operate for the century until the 1970s, when the last freight train made its run on the last remaining section of track that ran between Vacaville and Elmira, according to a 1992 history book, “California Railroads.”
It was one of two railroads that would serve Vacaville, the second being an ‘orphan’ branch line of the Northern Electric Railway Company which announced service between Suisun City and Vacaville in May 1914. The halfhour trip cost 35 cents.
The electric railway branch was an orphan because it didn’t have a physical connection to the rest of the then-Sacramento Northern Railway (which the Northern Electric had merged into) system until 1930.
The older Vaca Valley Railroad was incorporated in April 1869, a year after the California Pacific Railroad completed laying track east to Dixon in August and linked up to Sacramento that winter.
The first section of Vaca Valley track ran 4.35 miles from Elmira to Vacaville and was opened to service in June 1869.
The original company went defunct after a year and was sold to two brothers, Andrew and Bushrod Stevenson, in 1870.
They extended the line to Winters, via Allendale, in August 1875 and Madison in May 1877, the same year that it was renamed the Vaca Valley & Clear Lake Railroad.
The brothers built a new depot in Vacaville which was completed in May 1884. It was lauded by the Vacaville Reporter, which called it “the neatest in the state outside the cities, and Mr. Stevenson certainly has the thanks of all for his good taste in the structure.”
The company ran on a shoestring and controlled a single locomotive, a passenger car, 10 flat cars and some other assorted rolling stock. The service was informal. “Riding on rough wooden seats in the passenger car whose aisles were crammed with luggage perhaps was not the ideal way to travel,” wrote historian Ronald Limbaugh in 1978, “but passengers liked the trainmen and usually could get them to make unscheduled stops even though they were officially forbidden.’
For example, in 1888, a farmer’s wife stopped the train three times between Capay and Rumsey before she found her house thanks to the sound of her barking dog. The train was two hours late that night.
It reached Rumsey via Capay in 1888, the same year
that Southern Pacific Railroad bought out the Stevensons, but kept the branch’s corporate name.
The railway brought development to the Capay Valley when directors of the Southern Pacific formed the Capay Valley Land Company which sold land for fruit orchards along the line, according to a 2011 article in the Daily Democrat.
At the end of the line at Rumsey, the railroad planned a 935-acre town site with a station, sidings, a manually operated turntable, a section house and a 23room hotel.
Rumsey remained the end of the line due to the high costs of construction further through the mountains.
The first locomotive to use the rail line was known at the Flea with passengers and freight carried in the single car pulled behind the small engine. It was followed by what was described as the much larger “elaborate and costly” engine Ben Ely which was built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in July 1875.
Another engine that used the rail was the Vacaville which was built by Vulcan Iron Works in May 1867. It was sold to Union Coal Company in 1888 when the railroad was sold to the Northern Railway.
The rail line gave the area’s orchards a faster outlet to the world, but the fruit companies did not like how much the Southern Pacific charged to ship their fruit to the major markets.
For example, the freight rate from Sacramento to Chicago in 1883 was $500 per fruit car, while from Vacaville to Chicago, it was $800. The rates did drop in the following years, it did not drop as much as Vacaville fruit growers would have liked.
Some plans hatched to get out from under Southern Pa
cific’s thumb were fairly farfetched. One was to dam up Ulatis Creek to create locks for fruit-carrying boats.
Another was to build a horse- drawn railroad through the Vaca Valley with spur lines linking it to each packing house, according to Limbaugh. By 1890, residents were considering supporting a competing steam or electric rail line.
“Such plans, however remote, were disturbing to SP officials who responded with promises of better service,” Limbaugh wrote.
On Aug. 10, 1910, several members of the Northern Electric showed up on Davis Street to lay a single rail. It was done two days before a city council deadline that would have dropped the franchise the company had for a rail line to Suisun City.
“It was entirely covered over and would therefore escape the notice of the most observing person — but it serves the purpose,” the Vacaville Reporter stated.
Work on the Suisun-Vacaville rail line started in August 1912 with grading starting in both Suisun and Vacaville. Work progressed slowly, but a news story in the Sacramento Bee stated the line would start passenger service on May 17, 1914.
The line crossed what would become the FairfieldSuisun Army Airfield. In 1943, the government paid to relocate the line from Vacaville Junction to Dozier to avoid the airfield.
Passenger service on the electric line was provided four times a day on weekdays and once on Sunday by comfortable interurban cars 103 and 104. A three-compartment California type city car 22 was added in 1920.
Whenever the Southern Pacific did not provide a convenient connecting train at Elmira for the trip to Vacaville, passengers traveled to Fairfield-Suisun to catch one of the Northern Electric interurban trains.
Freight service in the interurban line was pulled by an engine called Old Maude. An old converted interurban car was brought in to help with the summer fruit harvest rush to haul the produce to the crossing between Fairfield and Suisun.
Passenger service dropped off to the point that the fares could not even cover the wages of the crew. The increasing use of autos forced the interurban to stop carrying passengers in 1926.
The branch was finally linked up to the rest of the Sacramento Northern system in 1930 with the link built between Vacaville Junction and Creed despite the objections of the Southern Pacific. It crossed the SP line by an overhead bridge just east of the present Fairfield-Vacaville station.
The SP abandoned the track between Rumsey and Capay in 1934. The track between Rumsey and Esparto was removed in 1937. Passenger service continued between Elmira and Esparto until 1957.
The line between Winters and Vacaville was abandoned in the 1970s, ending at the grocery warehouses just south of Midway Road/I-505 in Vacaville. The Vacaville Branch’s last train operated in about 1985 and the line was removed to Elmira by the 1990s.
There are few traces left of either rail line.
The tunnel under Highway 40/I-80 that allowed the Sacramento Northern access to Vacaville still exists. It initially shared the roadway with Davis Street on the west side and the railway on the east side.
The Sacramento Northern’s right- of-way south of the overpass is now a city bicycle/pedestrian path.
The Southern Pacific had a similar crossing under I-80 for the Vaca Valley railway line which ran toward Elmira along the north side of Elmira Road.