The Ocean Shore Railroad was supposed to run all the way to Santa Cruz. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and money troubles stopped it, and it operated as two disconnected segments between 1905 and 1920. Trains reached Half Moon Bay in 1907 and Moss Beach in 1908.
The railroad created resort towns. Its backers commissioned Daniel Burnham to lay out El Granada, and the line made Moss Beach a tourist destination. A short tunnel built in 1908 near Devil’s Slide was destroyed during Prohibition so smugglers could not use it.
In 1914 Pedro Mountain Road opened a better route to San Francisco, which probably contributed to the railroad’s failure. The line was gone by 1920.
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