Felton Toll Gate House

In 1870, Feltonite Otis Ashely complained in a letter to the Santa Cruz Sentinel: “We have a county grog-shop at the toll gate on the San Lorenzo Road. We would inquire what runs that institution? The Supervisors compel us to pay one hundred dollars a month for a man to oversee the road and keep the toll gate. Now where do the proceeds of that grog-shop go? Do they go into the county treasury, or do they go to help repair the road, or do the people of the San Lorenzo Valley have to pay one hundred dollars a month for a man to take charge of the roads and at the same time keep a grog-shop, and put the proceeds into his own pocket.”

Tolls collected averaged around $400 per month, so after paying the toll collector, Eben Bennett, there was barely sufficient to adequately maintain the road, which needed constant repairs in the winter, and sprinkling with water in the summer to keep the dust down.

Image: An early image of the Toll House, July 1, 1890, when it was being operated by Charles Hartman. Charles is in the center of the image. James Hartman Collection, San Lorenzo Valley Museum.

In his obituary in 1904, Santa Cruz pioneer and millman George Collins is credited with building the section of the road [from the new town of Felton] to Big Trees around 1867. His lumber mill was just south of Felton near Gold Gulch and he needed to ship his lumber over the Graham Hill Grade. This section of road was not well travelled until the turnpike to Santa Cruz was completed. He is also credited with erecting the Toll Gate House.

In September 1872, the Toll Gate House was purchased from John Hagar by H. F. Beckmann who enlarged and updated the premises. He also stocked it with choice wines, cigars, and other refreshments and supplies to cater to picnic parties, hunters, fishermen, and campers. A new road to the Big Tree grove was built that turned off near the toll gate. Visitors to and from the grove were encouraged to visit the Beckmann House for “information.”

In November 1872, it was announced that the road would no longer be a turnpike, the toll gate would be removed and that the county would take over maintenance of the road. “We congratulate our citizens and teamsters on the removal of this tax; it was an onerous burthen [sic] and should have been abolished long ago.”

However in 1876, a franchise to the road was granted to John Shearer and John Mahanney for two years, provided they did not increase the rate of tolls over that collected by Eben Bennett.

The toll gate house continued to be operated as a saloon and later as a resort with rustic cottages and tent cabins.

From the early 1900s to the 1930s seems to have been a tumultuous time at the Toll House. The ownership and management of the business changed many times, sometimes multiple times in a year. Each time the liquor license had to also be transferred until in 1915, the transfer to Florence Ruth Silbery for the re-named “Big Trees Entrée” (a name that did not stick) was denied. However, that did not stop her and in September of that year she was arrested, and charged with selling liquor without a license, for which she paid a $50 fine.

In 1924, during prohibition the Toll House, now a café, was raided by federal officers, a quantity of liquor was seized and Joe Shaska and Harry Lusk were arrested and taken to San Francisco for violation of the prohibition laws. Lusk was acquitted but Shaska did plead guilty to one count of possession of intoxicants; he was fined $500.

Image: The Toll House circa late-1920s. Denise McMillian Collection, San Lorenzo Valley Museum.

The ownership of the café passed to Mr. and Mrs. E. Emlay who specialty was real Spanish dishes. It was Toll House owner W. H. Nidever, who in 1932 erected 10 rustic two room cottages with garages, to create the Toll House Resort. By 1952, there were 14 units. In 1963, cabin no.1, the first cabin to be built, burned to the ground. The old rustic cabins have since been replaced by new cabins but on the original sites.

There have been many locally renowned operators of the resort, George Featherston and Otto Holm to name just two. And others from further afield. In 1935, it was known as Lloyd’s Toll House Resort operated by Lloyd Boyea, son of prior owner Oliver Boyea, whose wife, Leonie, was reputedly a better shot that most men!

Over the years as a resort, visitors have returned time and time again often requesting their favorite cabin. Was the resort ever a brothel? We may never know. Certainly long time residents of the area believe so.

As the gateway to Big Trees the resort was ideally located. The private road that led to Big Trees adjacent to the resort was owned by the F. A. Hihn Company. Visitors would ford the San Lorenzo River from the west to the east bank to enter the Big Tree Grove. When, in 1933, the new north entrance to the park was completed, this south entrance was closed. This must have affected business at the resort.

It was 1952-1978 owners Wilbur and Anabelle Oliver that put a false front on the Toll House building to modernize it. This has since been removed. The property was subsequently marketed as an investment property and just before the 1989 earthquake the property was purchased by current owners Larry and Trey Noon of Blackburn and Noon Property Management.

Later that year the Toll House housed an antique store, owned by Bill Castor and managed by Sharon Phillips. The store closed just two years late in 1991. 

The Toll House or Toll House Resort Motel was designated a California Historical Resource in 1993 as a Point of Historical Interest.

Brookdale Ghost Stories

Let us look at the early history of the Brookdale Lodge, consider the validity of the ghost stories and examine some pretty awful deaths that happened in the waters near the Brookdale Lodge. None of them however, involve a Logan. No Sarah (she is made up) and no Gladys (she died in 2006 in San Diego).

In May 1903, it was reported that the “famous summer home of the L[afayette] F. Grovers, is being enlarged and added to, and will be converted into a boarding house.” Lafayette Grover was the son of lumber baron Stephen Frealon Grover, reputed to be one of the first white men to enter the Yosemite Valley. The Grovers had had a lumber mill just north of Brookdale at the end of what is now Camp Joy Road. In Stephen’s 1907 obituary, it reports that the Minnehaha summer cottage was the first in Brookdale. Enlarged, the cottage, then called the Minnehaha Hotel, could accommodate around forty guests and had a “well lighted wing for a dining room.” 

Its new owner, Judge James Harvey Logan, was to increase the hotel’s accommodations by building cottages on the grounds. The boarding house was to be run by Miss “Gussie” Heubeling. From 1904 to 1905 an advertisement ran in the Oakland tribune touting Brookdale’s virtues. “No business, no trade, no liquors. White sulphur springs; Electric lights; sanitary sewerage; 3 trains a day each way.” Hotel rates were between just $9 and $12 per week and cottage sites were available with building restrictions for “selected people of the better class only.” Actually, the sewer outlet was just a rocky barren spot on the east of the San Lorenzo River a short distance south of the town. Clear Creek was the source of the electric power; water from the creek being drawn by an eight-inch pipeline to a large Pelton water wheel and dynamo.

In 1905, the hotel changed its name to the Brookdale Hotel (later to be the Brookdale Lodge) and in 1911 it was purchased by Judge William Mack Aydelotte, a Santa Cruz lawyer and president of the Santa Cruz Emporium, who leased the hotel to Mrs. D. S. Fairlee. In 1913, Mrs. Fairlee applied for a liquor license – Brookdale was changing!

Judge Logan's wife Catherine had died in 1909. Although they had no children, a niece and nephew, Josie and Herbert Turcot had resided with them. Judge Logan remarried in 1910 to Mary Couson who bore daughter Gladys in 1911. 

In 1921, William and Mary Shier of Stockton bought the Brookdale Hotel. Mary Shier was close friend of Sheehan family, Logan's niece Josie and her husband. The Sheehan's daughter, Alice "Logan Berry Jam" Sheehan as she was affectionately called, owned the parcel across the street from the Brookdale Hotel that would become the site of the Brookdale Inn - more to come on that story in another blog post!

Mary Shier ran the hotel for a couple of years until it was sold in 1923 to Pasadena capitalist Foster K. Camp. Camp would create “A Mountain Lodge with Nature Brought Inside,” – The Brookdale Lodge. The Shiers signed a five year agreement with Camp to stay out of the resort business.

So, by the time Camp had built his famous dining room, Logan's daughter Gladys was 12 years old and they were living in Oakland. 

Image: Brookdale Lodge Collection, San Lorenzo Valley Museum.

Now let us back track to 1912 for a horrific tale with the makings of a ghost story.

Tragedy in Brookdale

It was an exceptionally hot day in July 1912 as two teenage friends, Gladys Hawkett and Lillian McDonald of Oakland, enjoyed their summer vacation in Brookdale. They were staying at "Tekwah," the Brookdale summer cottage, of Joseph and Emma Sills also of Oakland, on Clear Creek, the creek that runs through the Brookdale Lodge. Together "they donned their bathing suits" and along with Gladys' sister, Mrs. May Cripps and her two children, William aged five and Dorothy aged six, they ventured to the public swimming hole. Gladys had written to her mother "that she could swim six good strokes."

The girls could not swim, so after "sporting around" in the water for a while they decided to find a more secluded spot to practice their strokes. The entire party walked down stream. Mrs. Cripps and her children walked along the bank of the San Lorenzo River, while Gladys and Lillian walked along the river bed.

Mrs. May H. Cripps Goes to

Death in the San Lorenzo River,

Oakland Tribune, July 16, 1912.

Then tragedy struck. The girls stepped off a shelf in the river into a pool at least fifteen feet deep. Unable to swim they quickly began to sink. Watching them from the river bank Mrs. Cripps must have been frantic. She could not swim either. "Bidding her children to remain on the bank she plunged into the pool." She too began to sink.

On the river bank Dorothy and William witness this awful scene. First their cousin, her friend, then their mother, consumed by the San Lorenzo River. They screamed and waded into the water. Their cries so loud that rescuers were soon on the scene. But alas too late.

It took over twenty minutes to pull their bodies out of the water, using rakes, and up the slippery bank. Their rescuers were Charley Hall who at the time was working on the Wright property adjacent to the hatchery and the river, and Harry Nehf, the assistant at the Brookdale Hatchery. Hall, Hehf, and Welden Conklin of Santa Cruz carried the bodies up the steep hill to the hatchery where a team of three doctors, Dr. William Caesar of Boulder Creek, Dr. W. O. Smith, and Dr. E. R. Campbell of Oakland, tried valiantly to resuscitate them.

Just a few days earlier a six-year-old girl named Mary Corbett had been rescued by a ten-year-old boy, Leslie Short of Berkeley. Mary had been paddling in the river at Brookdale when a current caught her and started to carry her down stream. If not for Leslie, the young girl too might have become a victim of the river. Her father rewarded Leslie's heroism with a "shining $10 gold piece."

Danger notices to be placed along the river banks between Boulder Creek and Ben Lomond were called for as a "matter of life or death." "Danger! The water here is 15 feet deep."

Beedes' Museum

Tucked behind the current Sew Rose building on the corner of Highway 9 and Mill Street in Ben Lomond is a little cottage. In 1940, Willoughby A. Beede, a mining engineer, owned both the cottage and the Sew Rose building, which housed the Ben Lomond telephone exchange. He and his wife Elizabeth, who was the manager of the Ben Lomond telephone exchange, which was located in the now Sew Rose building, opened a small museum in the cottage. 

Image: Robinson Collection, San Lorenzo Valley Museum.

The Beedes wanted to be able to show the public their “fine collection of Indian relics, and trophies gathered from all parts of the world.” The collection had been gathered from Western Canada to Mexico City and the Pacific to the Great Lakes. Two pottery pieces were reputed to be 2000 years old.

The collection included Native American baskets from fifteen different tribes. All old and representing the “excellent craft[wo]manship” of the various tribes. Author and historian Geoffrey Dunn, who was a young boy when the museum closed down, recalls, "… being very overwhelmed by the beauty of all the baskets, the place seemed magical to me…"

In addition to the museum, the building also housed a souvenir shop and lapidary, since as a mining engineer working in “many parts of the world,” Beede had collected copious amounts of wonderful rocks and gems.

Beede, who had come to California around 1928, co-owned “Ye Old Book Shop” on Pacific Avenue before moving to Ben Lomond. In 1904, while employed as an engineer for the Standard Oil Company, he went to Alberta to work with the Sarcee tribe, now known as the Tsuu T’ina Nation. The wife of the chief of the dance had had an accident and could not move, a government doctor had deduced that she had broken her back. Beede, who had studied first aid, was urged by her husband to examine his wife. He determined that her hip had been dislocated and was able to put it back into place. Pleased with the outcome, the chief made him his blood brother in a wrist-slicing ceremony.

Buy a Farm at Boulder

 

Image: Christian Horstman displaying fruit from his Boulder Creek, California farm at a fair. San Lorenzo Valley Museum Collection.

(Extract) by Truthful James

I'll tell you of a town, a place of great renown,

'Tis the liveliest and best in all the earth;

Where the people all are clever and they almost live forever,

For their lives are filled with jollity and mirth.

Talk of every lovely Eden, from the Southern Cross to Sweden,

Vale of Cashmere, Spain or Naples, new or older,

There is one excells [sic] them all, like the fair belle of the ball,

'Tis the celebrated mountain town of Boulder.

We have climate fine and rare, and the rich and perfumed air

Gives us rosy cheeks and tempers of sweet-savor,

For 'tis full of pure ozone - and it always rains cologne,

Which gives our fruit its most delicious flavor.

'Tis of size unknown before, for one peach will feed a score

And the peach stones make good cord wood when 'tis colder;

Then our prunes are not so little, for each one will fill a kettle,

Say, don't you want to buy a farm at Boulder.

In our fields the hay crops stand, twelve feet high on every hand,

Smelling sweeter that the tropic isles of spice,

And the cows that roam the scene, always give down pure ice cream,

And the boys and girls all think it very nice.

The chickens always lay half a dozen eggs a day,

All of purest breed and double yolks I'm told-er

If you doubt it, just you try, for "I cannot tell a lie,"

Just come and buy a little farm at Boulder.

Mountain Echo, December 29, 1906.

Married Men Versus Single Men

In 1911, a baseball game with larger-than-life legends was captured in cartoon form in the Mountain Echo newspaper by caricaturist Parker. A neighborhood baseball game was played on the diamond at Harmon Park, a quarter of a mile north of Boulder Creek. 

The day was perfect for the Easter game, which was well attended by “Society” as was demonstrated by the display of Easter millinery which rivaled that of San Francisco! It was here that the Married Men suffered a “heartbreaking defeat” against the Single Men.

As they played the Married Men’s wives shouted their encouragement and when a play was made by one of the “eligibles,” the “giddy young debutantes” in attendance answered in chorus.

However, if the first inning had been different, the score would have been a tie. One of the first balls pitched by “Cannonball” Cottle for the Married Men broke rival teammate Billie Ritchie’s finger and while the injury was being evaluated the Single Men had trotted over the home plate no less than 8 times.

Winfield Scott Rodgers, editor of the Mountain Echo who played at third base for the Married Men was characterized as always there, except when needed. Postmaster Dan Trout, in right field, apparently had nothing to do but catch flies, and Town Trustee Joseph Mello’s fingers were described as buttered.

The Enduros

As far back as the early 1900s the San Francisco Motorcycle Club ran Enduros – motorcycle endurance races.

In 1916, two of the participating riders were arrested for speeding on the Santa Cruz –Watsonville road during the run. They were each fined $5.

In 1919, the run was to be “the greatest motorcycle endurance run ever put on in California.” The run was to be the big sporting feature of Washington’s birthday. The motorcyclists were to make two round trips on the Saturday and two on the Sunday over a course from San Francisco, down the narrow, treacherous wagon road along the coast to Santa Cruz, then over the mountains to Los Gatos, and back up the peninsula. Twenty-seven riders took part and Lores Alzina, cousin of Santa Cruz Deputy Sheriff Enoch Alzina, won first place with a perfect score. It took three hours and forty minutes for him to drive down the coast. The road between Pescadero and Santa Cruz was described as “very heavy” and the going “very sloppy.”

By the 1950s, there were four Enduros being run in the Santa Cruz Mountains: 1) Frisco Enduro 2) Tin Hat Derby San Jose 3) Palo Alto Yellow Jackets 4) Santa Cruz Stunt Jumpers (Stumpers).

As many as 40 to 50 riders would compete in the 120-150 mile events starting from their clubhouse and riding up into the mountains and out to Pescadero on a maze of fire roads, old wagon roads and trails that wound around the Big Basin State Park area. These events were always run in the winter months. The more rain – the better.

The noon checkpoint was always Boulder Creek, a one hour stop for gas, food, and rest before going back out to finish the event.  

Image: Pictured in Boulder Creek outside Boulder Burger is Stumper Keith Cornick on his BSA Gold Star Motorcycle. Keith was the winner of the 1958 Yellow Jackets Enduro. San Lorenzo Valley Museum Collection.

From 1955–60 Keith competed in most of the Enduros, but by the early 60s the roads and trails were being gated by State Parks and private property owners and the Enduros stopped being held here in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

In 2017, Keith Cornick participated in the Home Town Teams exhibition at the San Lorenzo Valley Museum, and shared the Enduro story. At the time he still lived in Santa Cruz and at the age of 85 still rode an off-road motorcycle. He passed away in 2019.

In 1903, a remarkable young man opened a summer camp for the Boys’ Brotherhood of East Oakland. He was just 21 years of age and would go on to become an authority on the upbringing of boys, lecturing all over the country. 

The problem, as described by George Ellingwood Joy, was “that ordinary man is so wrapped up in making a success of his business, so intent upon the pursuit of the almighty dollar, that he has no time to devote to the simple things in the boy’s life.”

The Reverend Joy also managed Camp Joys in San Bernardino, until in the spring of 1909, the Boys’ Brotherhood there decided to disband.  Joy, however, was also an advisor to the Boys’ Brotherhood of Sacramento and it was for this organization he organized a summer institute on land owned by his father just south of Boulder Creek on the east bank of the river in the summer of that year.

The Sacramento club was the largest west of Chicago with almost four hundred members. For fifteen days in late July 1909, about forty boys from the club, ranging in age from nine to eighteen, stayed at Camp Joy. They were accompanied by a number of their parents who stayed in nearby resorts.

A large open-air pavilion seating four hundred was erected in one of the groves for entertainment and as an open-air dining room. The sleeping quarters were “in a most picturesque location,” being located in eight tents on large platforms that were built over the river.

In 1910, the railroad company established a flag-stop at the camp.

In 1911, the ninth season of the camps, a thirty-two-page brochure describing the Boulder Creek location was published. Besides the activities and outings available to the boys such as boating, swimming, photography, a dramatic club, athletics, culinary, workshop, reading … to name just a few, there was also a treasure hunt. With the goal of “education through play,” each new boy is given a description of the exact location of where the treasure was buried in a prior year. This encouraged him to “observe nature so closely that he unconsciously becomes clever in his knowledge of the woods.”

Image: San Lorenzo Valley Museum Collection, 2003-085-0050 (Scanned Document), 1911, Athletic Bars and Rings – The Boys at Play.

Now the camp ran from the end of June for two months. A boy could stay the whole summer ($80) or just three weeks ($35). For just an extra five dollars a boy could be part of a three-day excursion to Yosemite, all expenses, including hotel accommodation, included.

After the camp ended, Rev. Joy too returned to his home in Sacramento and the resort remained deserted until the following year.

Over the subsequent years Joy founded a home for young men in Sacramento, and lectured profusely. His talks were often attended by hundreds. The camp was reportedly was sought after by many for a Boy Scout camp, but eventually it became the home of Elihu Huntington. After his death it passed to his daughter Cressie, who was born on the property. In 1971, Cressie had the property re-zoned from single-family-residential to residential-agricultural and allowed the Camp Joy Garden Project to use the land. She and her family members “wanted the land turned into a garden to preserve older values that have been lost since the American public became urbanized.” 

Today, Camp Joy Gardens is a small, organic family farm that is run as an educational non-profit organization. You can learn more at www.campjoygardens.org.