What the heck are those things?
The Mysterious Structures Along Beach Road

When you drive along Beach Road between Watsonville and Palm Beach, you can’t help but notice these large concrete structures. What the heck are they?

Sometimes logic just doesn’t get you there.

As you’ve driven along Beach Road, you probably wondered, what the heck are those things? This is a good example of how deductive reasoning often fails to provide the correct answer. So let’s work our way through this and see if we can figure it out together.

When were they built?
If you were to stop alongside the road – look out for that ditch! – and examine one of them, you would find the date imprinted at the bottom.

Thanks to the folks that built these things, they put the date at the bottom. The year 1912. That’s a start.

Aha! This one has a water tank on it. Maybe they were all used for water tanks at one time?

What were they used for?
If you drive the length of the road between Highway 1 and Palm Beach you will find one of them actually in use.

To water what?
Your first impulse might be to answer that they were used to water the crops here in this part of the valley. But if that’s so, why were they lined up along the road? It wouldn’t make sense to have them all lined up along the road as the farmers would have to pipe the water out to the fields at long distances from the road.

Why is Beach Road so straight?
A clue to the ultimate purpose of these water tank platforms lies in Beach Road itself. You’ll notice that the road is very level and very straight suggesting that maybe there was a ---- railroad involved.

The ocean end of the electric railroad line connecting Watsonville with a seaside resort and wharf west of town. Located just north of present-day Palm Beach, the resort was originally called Port Rogers but was not very successful. The weather in those parts is windy and cold most of the time. This picture was taken in 1904. The original company operated the port fitfully until 1911, and then it went bankrupt.

So, the water tanks have something to do with the railroad? Maybe they got the water for their locomotives from those tanks?
Wait! It was an ELECTRIC railroad. No locomotives. No need for water. However, the key date is 1912, because in 1912 a new company rejuvenated the electric railway company, and a new wharf was built. And something new had arrived on the scene. AUTOMOBILES! So, to allow visitors to drive out to the resort, they put a road alongside the electric railway line.

So they used the water in the tanks for automobiles?
Not directly. The platforms were installed, tanks placed on top and wells drilled at each location to pump water up into the tanks so that they could fill water wagons and WATER THE ROAD TO KEEP DOWN THE DUST!

That’s it? All that trouble just to keep down the dust?
It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but prior to roads being graveled and paved, dust was the bane of both wagon and automobile travel. In fact, if you look at the history of the wave motor in Santa Cruz you’ll see that everybody was working very hard to keep down the dust.

Beach Road looking east toward Watsonville, 1920. Obviously taken in the winter, this photograph shows just how muddy and sloppy Beach Road was prior to being paved. During the summer, all that slop turned to dust. If you look in the far distance on the left hand side of the road you’ll see a windmill. That windmill was on top of a water tank that was on top of a concrete platform. During the 1920s, Beach Road was finally paved, and the windmill/water tanks were then used by nearby residents..

During the mid-1950s several of the concrete platforms were torn down, but we still have a few to remind us of those good old days when taking a Sunday drive meant getting a mouthful of dust.

Now if this isn’t a secret history, I don’t know what is….