Placerville part 2

Following the line through Placerville crossing Coloma Street headed northeast. This part of the line is a straight shot through town, paralleling hangtown creek. Then, a short distance before Bedford Ave the line makes a turn to the east, still paralleling the creek and Union St. 

Mid to Upper Placerville

Looking East toward the center of town. Placerville Creek at left

     El Dorado County Museum photo collection

Where the line turns east, paralleling Union Street, the Placerville Fruit Growers Association in the 1920's  was a prominent part of the landscape. Packing house, precooling room built of concrete block, box shed and icing deck were all there to serve and ship fruit grown in and around Placerville and Camino.  During fruit season this was a very busy place. Normally, Camino, Placerville and Lake Tahoe or CP&LT standard gauge shay #1 and #2 worked the upper Placerville area for the Southern Pacific, but during high fruit season the SP brought on power, usually in the form of  2-8-0 Consolidations, to assist with  building outgoing  fruit blocks.
First,  Bedford to Clay, then the line as it was between Union and Main Streets.
Note at the top of the Union and Main Streets map is the Lambert Marketing Fruit Packing Shed and just beyond that Shell Oil Company. Several photos of this area follow
1. Looking westward upper Placerville Paul Beckstrom Collection

Note that photo 1 was taken before the giant pre cooler room was built
2. Eastward overlooking turntable and in the box sheds in the background. Notice the cooling tower on the top of the precooling room Paul Beckstrom Collection
Note that in this later photograph the cooling tower can be seen atop the concrete blocked pre cooling room
3. 4-8-0 on the Turntable at Placerville Paul Beckstrom Collection
4. PFGA precooling building
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4vGWe2YUX3yVG9ZeG1nVy12Ymc
Note the icing platform in front of the precooling building

Placerville part 1

There is one reason a railroad lays track; profit. And the reason tracks were laid Brighton to Placerville was to ship lumber products from the rich sugar pine forests northeast of Placerville as well as fruit from fall harvests. The history of the Michigan California Lumber Co. or MichCal and the Pino Grande Mill can be found in the well known book by Steve Polkinghorn, Pino Grande.
The history of fruit processing in and around Placerville although not as well known as its timber products, nonetheless provided a major source of freight for SP. A neighbor who grew up on a farm around Pville in the 40's and recalls "30 or 40 loaded PFE reefers" during high harvest season flowing out of town toward Sacramento.
The attached map found in Google Docs will give readers an accurate portrayal of the SP system in June of 1916.

Placerville branch 1906 Sacramento System map
This system map shows the various ownership names under which each line was built, gives the date for completion of the build and the network of rails between the foothill rails east of Sacramento and the CP lines headed to Nevada. It was certainly the start of something big and these connections provided much needed low cost transportation of freight and passengers between early population and business centers.

Now lets talk about Placerville.
Sanborne and Southern Pacific Station Plans often give the modeler enough information to make some decisions about what is possible in terms of prototype modeling in an historic era. In my case 1937.

Track side industries circa 1910
Sperry Flour Co. - if you look up this company on the net you'll find no information relating to it being anywhere but in Santa Clara, Ca. Southern Pacific track maps show it at the corner of Canal and High Street and it looks like it may have its own spur in 1910.
Directly across the right of way was  Globe Milling Company with a large storage building marked "Storage and feed." The Globe Milling Company which later became the Pillsbury Co in Sacramento is another landmark company which had business interests in Placerville.
Proceeding  northeast across Canal Street was the Earl Fruit Co. The Earl Fruit Company of California dominated the packing house landscape. On the Placerville Branch there were at least two Earl Fruit packing locations; Placerville and Folsom
Next to Earl Fruit in what appears on the Sanborne to be in the same building is Lambert Marketing. Another fruit packing company. Under Lambert Marketing it describe occupancy as "Lessee."
Two tracks combine to one and cross Coloma Street.
Opposite, but slight NE is a spur leading to what is described as a roundhouse. Its drawn shape however makes me thinks it was probably a shed.
March 1910 Sanborne map Placerville Ca.
More next time