Casmalia, a healing beauty

Just off of the Vandenberg Air Force Base reservation we turned inland and rode through this hidden valley of oaks and sycamores surrounded by rolling green hills. I’d never been through Casmalia, and it looked like a hidden gem.

But this beautiful place has a rough past. It had been a railroad boomtown when the Southern Pacific first came through, then an oil boomtown when the oilfields nearby were still producing. Finally, just over the hill in the background somebody opened a toxic waste dump in 1973 that wound up polluting the groundwater. The EPA shut the dump down and took it over in 1992 as a Superfund site, and the effort to remove some 4.6 billion pounds of toxic waste is still underway.

The town is starting to return to normal, but I can see a time in the future when, the ground water once again clean, more life will come to this beautiful little valley.

March 19, 2023 0

Southern Pacific Caboose

Superseded by advances in technology and railroad management, the noble caboose no longer rides the rails in the United States. Southern Pacific #1886, shown here, has not only been saved from the scrappers by the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum, who have spruced her up to like-new condition inside and out from the wheels to the chimney.

Riding past this, I added the museum to my bucket list.

March 10, 2023 0