Wrights, California (also known as Wrights Station) is a ghost town in unincorporated west Santa Clara County, California. It is located near Summit Road in the Santa Cruz Mountains, on the north bank of Los Gatos Creek, east of State Route 17.
The National Weather Service maintained a cooperative weather station on the site of Wrights until May 31, 1986, which recorded rainfall and snowfall. The weather station was above sea level. The location is on the San Andreas Fault, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and it experienced considerable damage in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Geologists observed a lateral displacement of at Wrights.
Wrights is one of a number of ghost towns in the Santa Cruz Mountains that flourished during the last half of the nineteenth century. Laurel, Wrights, Glenwood, and Clems declined when the Los Gatos-Santa Cruz railroad ceased operations in March 1940. Later in 1940, Patchen was bypassed and isolated by the construction of State Route 17; since the late 1960s it has been a Christmas tree ranch. Alma and Lexington were submerged in Lexington Reservoir in 1952, along State Route 17 above Los Gatos.
History
In the 1870s a toll road was built over the mountains from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz that was utilized by stagecoaches. Then, a narrow gauge railroad from Alameda was constructed along the same route, beginning in 1877, by San Francisco capitalists James Fair and Alfred E. Davis, who headed the South Pacific Coast Railroad (SPCRR). One of the stops along the line, just below the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains, was adjacent to the property of James Richards Wright, who had a residence/hotel known as Arbor Villa in Burrell near the summit, and he maintained commercial orchards of fruit trees and grapes. The small community that sprouted around this stop on the railroad became known as Wright's Station, or simply Wrights. The Rev. Wright was the patriarch of a large family that had moved to California from Ohio and the younger brother of the well-known abolitionist Elizur Wright. One of his sons, Frank Vincent Wright, later married Susie Davis, the daughter of SPCRR president Alfred Davis, and another son, Sumner Banks Wright, moved to southern California and established a town in the San Bernardino mountains known as Wrightwood, today a ski resort.
A post office was established at Wrights in 1879, and the railroad was completed in 1880 from Los Gatos, along the Los Gatos Creek, to Wrights Station, about a mile east of Patchen. During the construction of the main railroad tunnel (between Wrights and Laurel), a strong flow of natural gas was encountered, and an explosion followed, which resulted in the death of thirty-two Chinese workers. The main leak was subsequently stopped, but gas continued to escape in small quantities. The extent of the supply was unknown. U.S. Geological Survey maps from 1919 show the railroad running from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz, with stops in Alma, Wrights, Laurel, Glenwood, Clems, Zayante, Eccles, Felton, and Scotts Valley. There were a series of tunnels, including a tunnel between Wright and Laurel, most of which were later blocked when the railroad ceased operations. Wrights itself had a benchmark elevation of .
Wrights Station was an important shipping point for extensive fruit growing areas in the Santa Cruz mountains. By the 1890s, there were about under cultivation. The soil consists largely of disintegrated sandstone and clay, and has the appearance, particularly on the hilltops, of the "white ash" soil of the Fresno raisin district.
Vineyards were planted, providing grapes for commercial wine producers, such as Almaden Vineyards and Paul Masson. There was a thriving timber industry, too, utilizing the redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains. All utilized the railroad. Wrights Station was one of the small settlements that grew up along the railroad.
Alice Matty and her father, Antone, came to Wrights in 1880 from San Francisco. Her father was originally from the Maritime Alps region of France. Antone Matty worked in the general store for eight years. An overheated stove in the town's hotel started a fire in 1885 that leveled the entire settlement. While Wrights was being rebuilt, Antone ran the store from a boxcar parked on the railroad siding.