During the 1930s, tourists from the San Francisco Bay Area could take the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Sun Tan Special right to the Boardwalk. Except for the years 1941 to 1947, trains ran from San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco and also connected Santa Cruz to Watsonville and Los Angeles. In 1932 alone, the train delivered as many as thirty-five hundred people each Sunday to Santa Cruz, where train cars were greeted with a blast of brass from the Beach Band.
Voted the World’s Best Seaside Park
