San Pablo & Tulare Railroad Archives

The village of Bethany could, once upon a time, be found along the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Martinez-to-Tracy extension, just a few miles outside the latter city’s limits.

These days, few signs remain of Bethany: an old farm road that ends near the tracks is perhaps the most significant remnant. (A reservoir in the nearby Livermore Hills is named for the town, but is several miles distant.)

The Central Pacific Railroad built a depot at Bethany around 1878 along the extension, which was constructed as the San Pablo & Tulare Railroad; in the early Twentieth Century, this section of tracks appeared on USGS maps – including the one below from 1914 – as the Southern Pacific’s “San Francisco and New Orleans Line.”

Today, it is known to railheads as the “Mococo Line.” It was the construction of this extension that led directly to the birth of Tracy at the end of the 1870s.

For decades, oil from Kern County was transported by pipeline and via rail in tank cars (appropriately dubbed “oil cans”) to this Associated Oil storage facility in Tracy, which served as a way station as the oil traveled to Port Costa.

At this facility, oil was pumped into the six large tanks, then piped through heaters in the building (see at right in the photo below) where it was heated then sent on its way to the refinery at Port Costa. Heating reduced the viscosity of the oil, allowing it to flow more smoothly through the pipes.

This facility was built in 1917 as one of a chain of tank farms from Kern County up to San Pablo Bay. It remained in service until 1968, and was dismantled in 1974. Until then, the path of present-day Tracy Blvd. – then known as McKinley Blvd. – ended at the dozen tracks that led from the Southern Pacific’s sprawling yard in downtown Tracy. On the other side of the tracks was the aptly-named Oil Road, which continued out to the west side of town. The two thoroughfares were joined in the late 1970s and renamed as Tracy Boulevard.