Forbidden to Visit: The Deserted Town Near San Francisco

San Francisco Bay is one of the largest bays on the Pacific West Coast of the United States. The coast is home to three major cities: San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.

Aside from them, there is an abandoned town, the only ghost town in the San Francisco Bay area.

Drawbridge, formerly Saline City, is a deserted railroad station town at the southern end of San Francisco Bay. Next to Station Island, which is now part of Fremont, California.

Drawbridge is located on the Union Pacific Railroad, 7 feet above sea level, 6 miles south of downtown Fremont.
The Drawbridge was once a hunting village. The city has been abandoned since 1979 and slowly vanishes into the marshes.

It is now prohibited to enter and visit and is part of the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge in San Francisco Bay.

The narrow-gauge South Pacific Coast Railroad built the Drawbridge on Station Island in 1876. The city was a modest cabin for the railroad’s two drawbridge operators, who crossed Mud Slough and Coyote Creek to connect Newark with Alviso and San Jose.

Every day, ten passenger trains stopped there, five heading north and five heading south. The drawbridges remove a long time ago. The only way into Drawbridge is via the Union Pacific Railroad track.
In the 1880s, the village had nearly 1,000-weekend visitors.

Despite the lack of roads, the town had 90 structures. It divides into two neighborhoods by the 1920s, the predominantly Roman Catholic South Drawbridge and the predominantly Protestant North Drawbridge.

After the removal of the drawbridge, the majority of the residents left. Following this event, fake news claimed that the town had become a ghost town, with valuables abandoned. As a result, the homes of the remaining residents vandalize.

Drawbridge’s last resident left the town in 1979.
The only known ghost, Drawbridge, is a San Francisco Bay Area town.

National Wildlife Refuge Don Edwards in San Francisco Bay currently includes Drawbridge. The town is no longer open to the public due to restoration efforts.

On the other hand, Altamont Corridor Express, Capitol Corridor, and Coast Starlight trains can still catch a glimpse of the town.

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