The rise and fall of the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad, formed 120 years ago

The Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad held its first-spike ceremony 120 years ago, ushering in a new line of transport within the county and shaking up a railway monopoly.

After the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, a flurry of railroad building began in Sonoma County — spurred in large part by a county bond passed in 1870 that promised a $5,000-per-mile subsidy for local railroad construction.

Tracks were laid all across the county in the 1870s. The San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad, completed at the start of the decade, was the county’s first extensive rail service and had monopolized local rapid land transit. The San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad controlled access to the south in Tiburon and to the north in Eureka, but many locals wanted a dedicated line connecting Sonoma County cities.

According to the description of the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway Powerhouse, listed in the National Register of Historic Places in Sonoma County, by 1903, “leading citizens decided that the needs of this region, including development of the fruit and poultry industries, would best be served by the construction of an electric railroad linking the principal cities and providing easy access to the rich farm lands.”

The Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway was incorporated on June 20, 1903. That year, the railway purchased local horse-drawn trolley lines, a paddlewheel steamer in Petaluma and land for a powerhouse station in Sebastopol. On April 5, 1904, Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway drove the first spike for its railway at Steamer Landing in Petaluma, commencing railroad construction.

Threatening the completion of the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway railway was a bitter fight over right-of-way with the California Northwestern Railroad, the new name for the old San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad steam line, according to an April 29, 1984, Gaye LeBaron column in The Press Democrat. A.W. Foster, president of the California Northwestern Railroad steam line, wanted to quash the competition of the new, cheaper electric line, which already finished the link from Petaluma to Sebastopol by the end of 1904.

Despite Santa Rosa merchants threatening to boycott the California Northwestern Railroad if Foster didn’t allow the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway line into town, he still refused permission for a grade crossing with the electric line. A fight between the rival railway construction crews ensued, resulting in what’s now known as the “Battle of Sebastopol Avenue.”

According to the Sonoma County Library, when a Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway construction crew arrived to install a crossing at the rival’s tracks in early 1905, “they found a pair of steam locomotives on either side of the crossing fitted with steam nozzles to spray hot water on anyone approaching the crossing site.”

The construction crew retreated, but came back the next day in secret and laid out a temporary track across the California Northwestern Railroad tracks, over which they had a team of horses pull trolleys across to serve downtown Santa Rosa.

After a few months of public debates, a temporary court-ordered injunction and tug-of-war antics between the dueling railways, the battle came to a violent head on March 1, 1905 (just after the injunction dissolved). Hundreds of citizens assembled in the streets to watch the rival railroad crews duke it out. Santa Rosa police eventually restored order, and the crossing was installed that evening.

The Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway line went on to carry passenger cars and farm products all across the county for a few decades. However, demand for rail service started to dwindle during the Great Depression and the rise of personal automobiles.

Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway discontinued passenger service in 1932, though continued freight service through the war, regardless of lack of track maintenance. The railroad officially shut down in 1946, and the county didn’t have its own passenger train again until the SMART train opened for regular service in August 2017.