Santa Maria Valley Railway Historical Museum

The museum takes its name from the Santa Maria Valley Railway, organized in Los Angeles on July 14, 1911, with track-laying that fall and a first train on October 7, 1911. The shortline grew from a 3.26-mile stub the Southern Pacific had built in 1899 from its Guadalupe connection to a Betteravia sugar mill, and it ultimately reached from Guadalupe through Santa Maria to Roadamite, with branches serving farms and, from 1943, the Santa Maria Army Air Base. Traffic collapsed by 1925 and the company went bankrupt; Captain G. Allan Hancock, an oil-business principal, bought it for $75,000 at a sheriff's auction and reorganized it in 1926 as the Santa Maria Valley Railroad. The Hancock family held the road for 81 years until its 2006 sale to the Coast Belle Rail Corporation. Steam lasted into 1962, when Hancock — with Walt Disney riding in the cab — took the throttle of his favorite engine, Baldwin No. 21, for its final run; that locomotive is now under restoration in Astoria, Oregon for a return to excursion service.