Drive Highway 9 from Felton up to Boulder Creek and you follow the river the whole way. For ten years a wooden channel full of rushing water ran beside that river. It carried the valley's redwood down to the railroad. Nothing of it stands today. Even the people who live along it now rarely know it was there.
A river built of boards
The San Lorenzo Valley Flume & Transportation Company was incorporated in August 1874. Its problem was simple. The best redwood stood in the upper valley above Boulder Creek. The railroad ended at Felton. Hauling boards between the two by wagon was slow work on bad roads.
The answer was a flume. A flume is a V-shaped wooden trough with water running through it. Drop lumber in at the top and the current carries it down.
Construction began in early 1875. The company built its sawmill north of Boulder Creek first. Then it floated prefabricated flume sections down the line and fastened each one to the end of the last. The trough dropped about five inches every eighty feet. Redwood arch bridges carried it across the river and the side creeks. Feeder flumes pulled water from Bear Creek, Boulder Creek, Newell Creek and half a dozen others.
How long was it? Period accounts disagree. Some say twelve miles. One old newspaper headline says fourteen. The difference depends on whether you count the feeders.
Ten hard years
The flume opened in October 1875. It was the main lumber route out of the upper valley until 1885.
It was never easy to run. The 40-inch trough was too small almost as soon as it was finished. More mills came in. All of them wanted to use it. It leaked. In late summer the creeks ran low and the water barely moved the boards. A hard storm in early 1876 tore up sections of the flume and the railroad below it. Later winters did more damage.
Keeping lumber moving took men. Flume walkers patrolled the line to break up jams before they backed up the water. Their path was a boardwalk about twelve inches wide that ran beside the trough. It had no railing. Locals used it as a footpath anyway, and more than one of them fell.
Riding the flume
The flume also became the valley's fastest road. In 1875 the company shipped an entire work camp down it. Before long people were building small boats to ride it themselves. A 1937 newspaper story recalled that men rode the flume to keep an eye on the logs. Some of them carried messages from the lumber camp down to the train at Felton.
Picture it. You sit in a narrow wooden box in cold water. Redwoods go by on both sides. The trough carries you over a trestle above the river with nothing on either side.
1885
The railroad finished what the storms started. The Felton & Pescadero Railroad was incorporated in June 1883 to replace the flume. Its narrow-gauge track reached Boulder Creek in April 1885. The flume along that route was torn down soon after. A short stub ran for three more years above town. By 1888 a logging railroad had replaced that too.
The arrival of the railroad changed Boulder Creek overnight. Lumber could now go out by the trainload.
Why it stayed with me
I grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and I've driven Highway 9 my whole life. I never once wondered how the lumber got out before the trucks. When I finally found the answer, I couldn't stop picturing the walkers. Day after day they walked a plank a foot wide with the water racing past their boots. Theirs was the most ordinary job on the mountain. Almost nobody wrote down their names. That year of 1885, with the flume coming down and the railroad roaring in, became the setting for my novel.