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In 1876, James "Slippery Jim" Fair and Alfred "Hog" Davis saw the potential of connecting the Bay Area to Santa Cruz via railroad - a connection that robber baron Leland Stanford and his Southern Pacific Railroad had not yet made. From Newark, the rail would wend into the Byzantine waterways of the bay to Alviso & San Jose & intermediate stops on the way to Santa Cruz - 80 miles of narrow-gauge track. This project was in direct competition with the ruthless Leland Stanford which made it a bold venture indeed.

When the plan went forward, a problem presented itself in the form of two navigable waterways - Mud Creek Slough and Coyote Creek Slough. By law, the waterways were required to remain open for shipping. The S.P.C.R.R.'s solution called for a drawbridge over each waterway operated by a lone bridge tender. The speck of land between the two waterways, where the rail crossed, was Station Island. The bridge tender lived in a small cabin on Station Island - the first inhabitant of what was to be called Drawbridges or Drawbridge.

Fruit, vegetables, and other products of the land were shipped across the Bay to San Francisco in "scow schooners" - two-masted boats with a hinged centerboard, and a "fishermans sail" to catch the wind when the sloughs were at low tide.

The red line on map indicates the route of the railroad coming from Newark into Drawbridge (Station Island) and then on to Alviso.

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