Saline City
The last ghost town in the Bay Area, Drawbridge (aka “Saline City”) is slowly sinking into the salt ponds of Fremont, CA. The village, built in 1876 as a stop along the South Pacific Coast Railroad route, reached its peak in the mid-1920s as a popular hunting destination with over 90 cabins, but by the 1930s its freshwater sources were being pumped by local townships while sewage from San Jose was deposited into nearby sloughs. Fish and fowl, followed by the inhabitants, fled. By the 1970s, it was officially a ghost town.
Engulfed by marshland, the few cabins that remain have fallen into ruin over the decades, left to the mercy of nature and local pillagers. While structures decay, the natural environment has reemerged. In 2003 the land was integrated into the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay Wildlife Refuge in an attempt to restore the ecosystem to a sustainable balance.
My photo series, taken during summer and fall of 2019, is a means of documenting the both the surviving buildings and the physical environment. As birds and marine life regain preeminence among the marsh and pickleweed, the cabins will likely disappear in the coming years. The railroad, still in daily use with passenger trains, will be the last remnant of one of California’s transitory expansion towns.
