Friday, October 13th, 2023
All aboard the Pumpkin Express! What a way to celebrate fall and Halloween by taking the Skunk Train through the redwood groves! During the month of October, the Wolfe Tree Turn is renamed to the Pumpkin Express and as an added extra, we got Halloween candy and got to take a pumpkin home with us.
I had heard about the Skunk Train in a Visit California magazine. It looked interesting offering different rides on different routes along with different themes. They also had rail bikes that looked fun but I decided to stick with the train ride.
The Skunk Train website had quite a bit of history, the railroad was installed in the 1800s to haul redwood lumber to Fort Bragg as well as transport workers. In the early 1900’s the steam engines were replaced with motorcars that used gasoline powered cars and used crude oil stoves to heat passenger cars. The people along the line said that you could smell the train before you could see it and nicknamed the train, “The Skunk Train”. Eventually, the lines became part of the California Railroad.
My purpose of this trip was to see and experience the redwoods, I chose the route that would take us through the redwood groves. It departed from Willits and headed to Crowley, a former logging camp. As we departed Willits, we were introduced to our singing conductor and to his assistant who would be pointing out places of interest. There were several cars with seats, a bar car and an open air car. The singing conductor spent most of his time singing old train songs while playing his guitar.
As we departed from Willits, CA, we passed the arched Willits sign and were told that the sign was donated from Reno. “The Biggest Little City” replaced their sign with a larger and flashier sign and donated the existing sign to Willits.
About an hour later, we got off the train at Crowley, a former logging camp. We were told that Crowley was a huge tennis fan and at the camp, he had clay shipped in to create a tennis court and when he left, he had it buried in order to preserve the clay. The Skunk Train team had created a pumpkin patch where we got to choose our pumpkins. The kids loved it.
As we headed back, I began thinking about the logging industry which is alive and well and still operates in the area. Obviously, if the guy had clay brought in to create a tennis court, the industry was quite lucrative. The train was built to haul redwood out. Redwood trees can grow for thousands of years, what did this look like before they started logging it?
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