And Then the ‘Sparkle’ Faded into Contra Costa Lore

Half a century ago, when I was a young news reporter, I was doing research at the Pleasant Hill Library when an old map stopped me. There, among familiar names from Central Contra Costa County, was one I had never heard before: Sparkle.

“What in the world was Sparkle?” I asked myself. I don’t remember what story brought me there. Reporters chase hundreds of stories, and most little side discoveries quickly disappear from memory.

But somehow that delightful name – Sparkle – stayed with me.

More than 50 years had passed, but recently I found myself musing about it again. So, I went looking.

Sparkle was real. We can prove that. An early 20th century Sacramento Northern Railway employee timetable lists Sparkle as an operating point near present-day Pleasant Hill. Another identifies it as a spur. But don’t imagine a town.

There was no Sparkle City Hall, Main Street or post office, apparently just little more than a railroad sign and freight loading spur.

The Sacramento Northern was a remarkable California electric interurban railroad between Oakland and Chico. Its cars rolled through a Central Contra Costa landscape we’d scarcely recognize today – orchards, fields and scattered farmhouses.

And that brings us to the irresistible question: Why Sparkle? Here we cross from history into folklore that says the track curved there, and contact between the trolley and overhead electrical wire sometimes sent blue-white sparks flying.

So, imagine a dark Contra Costa night. An electric train approaches through the orchards, its headlamp glowing brighter. As it rounds the curve, sparks dance overhead. And perhaps, people who gathered the history say, the best guess is somebody at Sacramento Northern decided to call the spur Sparkle and put it on the map.

No one has located a document establishing the name’s origin, though maps list Sparkle. The sparks, then, are lore.

Lore presents a fascinating problem for anyone rummaging through the past. There is reality we can establish with timetables, photographs and newspapers. Then there is another kind of “reality” surviving in someone’s mind – remembered, interpreted and sometimes embellished as one teller passes it to another.

Sparkle contains both. The more I dug, the more that peaceful orchard landscape I had imagined began to change.

Nearby were the pear and walnut operations of Philip Bancroft, son of California historian Hubert Howe Bancroft. During the Great Depression, California was convulsed by struggles over wages, unions and economic power.

In 1934, longshoremen struck Pacific Coast ports. Police killed two men on San Francisco’s “Bloody Thursday.” A general strike followed, largely shutting down Oakland as well as San Francisco. Meanwhile, Contra Costa agricultural wages had fallen to about 17½ cents an hour. Workers demanded more. Growers resisted. Unionists picketed roads and orchards.

The growers organized, too. Seventy-five were deputized during one confrontation said to have been at Sparkle, and in some accounts implying it involved Bancroft’s pears. So those peaceful-looking orchards around Sparkle weren’t always peaceful.

And here Sparkle accounts again slip back into lore, raising a question about Bancroft’s role, since his pears were associated with the Sparkle spur and the labor clash in stories. But researchers found Bancroft apparently didn’t own the land where Sparkle stood. His operation had another Sacramento Northern spur farther to the northeast.

Plus, a photograph taken at Sparkle during pear-harvest season in August 1952 shows refrigerated railroad cars on the siding. But were they Bancroft pears? Or, with no identification on the cars or in the newspaper caption, did someone later just assume Bancroft was involved in the 1934 confrontation?

So, again, here are two stories of Sparkle: the one we can document and the one people “remember” and pass along.

Eventually, the Sacramento Northern stopped running. The wires came down. Orchards disappeared beneath houses, roads and offices. But transportation didn’t abandon the corridor. BART arrived in 1973, running on the basic path of the abandoned rail line between the present-day Pleasant Hill and Concord stations.

So, the next time you board a BART train at Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre, stop for a moment. You are standing very near where Sparkle once was. In your mind, erase the freeway. Take away BART, the buildings and subdivisions. Put back the orchards and open fields. Let night fall.

Now listen. An electric interurban approaches through the darkness. Its headlamp appears. The wheels grow louder. And perhaps – just perhaps – blue-white sparks dance overhead as it rounds the curve. Or is that just a fable someone left us?

Some places live on maps. Others live in people’s minds. And some, like Sparkle, manage to live in both.

If you’re interested in California’s electric railways, the Western Railway Museum in Solano County holds vintage Sacramento Northern cars and equipment. It also runs heritage train rides on original SNR tracks.

Tom Debley can be emailed at debleytom@gmail. com