The Ghost Town of Drawbridge, CA

We visited the ghost town of Drawbridge California, a reminder of the boom-bust nature of San Francisco’s Bay Area.

Settlement: In 1876 the South Pacific Coast Railroad was built, connecting Santa Cruz to Alameda. Its route across the bay crosses over two sloughs (rivers), with Station Island between them. Because the sloughs had to remain navigable, the railroad’s bridges were drawbridges. A cabin was built on Station Island to house the bridge tender.

Golden years: In 1880 a train station was added so that duck hunters could get access to the marshes around Station Island more easily. Then shacks were built to house the hunters overnight, and then hotels. By 1906 there were private residences on the island and there was also a thriving shrimp and oyster industry. When prohibition came along in 1920, isolated Drawbridge got a reputation for drinking, gambling and prostitution. The town had over 200 residents: rowdy Catholics in the South and the quieter Protestants in the North. Sunny summer weekends saw up to 1,000 duckhunters visiting the island.

Demise: By 1950 the Bay Area’s population had grown to 3 million (up from 250,000 when Drawbridge began). Their sewage ran into the bay, killing the wildlife and causing the shrimping and oyster-harvesting industry to collapse. For many years salt companies had been building levies to form shallow ponds whose water would evaporate, leaving a layer of natural salt. Consolidation of these companies in the 1950s meant more, bigger salt ponds and less natural salt marshes for the wild birds and their hunters. What’s more, Station Island had begun to sink into the bay, thanks to half a century of groundwater pumping in the surrounding Santa Clara valley. The hunters stopped coming and in 1979 the last resident left.