Re: Ferries and Cliff House Railway Then and Now

I grew up in Western San Francisco and so far this story has missed a couple of significant highlights of this lines history.
Sutro Baths

Adolph Sutro, a wealthy San Francisco resident and former mayor of the city, once owned most of the land in the western half of San Francisco.

One of his grandest projects was the construction of an amazing glass-roofed structure containing seven salt water swimming pools, fed by the powerful tides at the entrance to San Francisco Bay.

Visitors could also view the huge collection of odd specimens he had picked up in his travels, including Egyptian mummies, stuffed polar bears and apes, and totem poles. He even had a train track and train service created to bring residents out to his entertainment palace. The tracks are gone now, but they used to run along the Lands End trail.

Adolph Sutro, creator of the Sutro Baths and Sutro Heights Park, bought the Cliff House in 1883 with the idea of pulling it out of a slump and making it family-friendly again. Apparently it had gotten a bad reputation for riffraff and scandalous behavior.

The Cliff House was badly damaged in 1887 when a ship carrying dynamite ran aground nearby and blew up. Sutro fixed up the building again, only to have it burn down in 1894.

This time, Sutro carried out an elaborate construction plan and created a marvelous Victorian confection on the cliff, which included a ballroom, several restaurants, museums, etc.



Sutro had made his fortune building the famous Sutro Tunnel of the Comstock Lode that connected the mines of Virginia City with the mills along the Carson River. The tunnel provided needed ventilation in the deep mines and provided cheaper hauling of ore to the mills. Once completed the mine owners bought Sutro's tunnel and he moved to San Francisco. He was also a huge collector and amassed one of the largest libraries in the world; he refused to give it to the University of California because he thought Berkeley was earthquake prone. For many years it was stored in warehouses but the State of California built it a new home near Lake Merced and San Francisco State University.

When I moved to San Francisco in 1954 Sutro Baths still existed but had been on a steep decline after WWII. It did have some of Sutro's collection of oddities on display in a museum above the baths, including a locomotive from the F &CH Rwy. Sutro Baths burned down in 1966 when I was in college; I believe the locomotive was already gone; I don't know its fate.

About this time I had acquired my first 'complete' railroad book, Last of the Three Foot Loggers, the history of the West Side Lumber Company, Pickering, Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite Valley Railroad that terminated in Tuolumne. On page 17 of that first edition I read that two Porter Locomotives, 2-4-0 saddle tankers, the Fido and the Star hauled construction trains building the line until it reached timber and the Heislers arrived. They had come from the Ferries and Cliff House Railway. Fifty years later research has shown that these two loco were not 2-4-0s from the F & CH Railway and all the F & CH locos were Baldwins. The Ferries & Cliff House Railway, also included the Powell Street cable car operations (also narrow gauge) The 19th century Powell-Mason line, which today is the oldest surviving transit line in America still operating its original route with its original type of equipment.