Roaring Camp and Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad

Roaring Camp Railroads

The burned trestle, with damage to sleepers and rails
Reporting mark	RCBT
Locale	Santa Cruz County, California, USA
Dates of operation	1963–present
Track gauge	3 ft (914 mm)
Headquarters	Felton, California

The Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad is a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow-gauge tourist railroad in California that starts from the Roaring Camp depot in Felton, California and runs up steep grades to the top of nearby Bear Mountain, a distance of 3.25 miles (5.23 km) The travel is through a redwood forest.

The steam engines date from the 1890s, and are some of the oldest and most authentically preserved narrow-gauge steam engines still providing regular passenger service in the United States. (The Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad in Colorado and New Mexico has the oldest steam engines, dating back to 1883.)

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers designated three engines at Roaring Camp and Big Trees Railroad as Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark #134 in 1988.

Roaring Camp Railroads operations began in 1963 under the guidance of F. Norman Clark (1935–1985), who was the founder and owner. His purpose was to keep a family tradition of constructing railroads and to "bring the romance and color of steam railroading back to America." In 1958, Clark found the engine Dixiana abandoned near a coal mine in the Appalachian Mountains; he described it as looking like a " rusty pile of junk".Dixiana was reconditioned and began service in 1963 on rails that had been shipped around Cape Horn in 1881. The railway route was laid out so that as few trees as possible would have to be cut on the 170 acres (69 ha) Clark acquired with a 99-year lease of the larger Big Trees Ranch.

The Big Trees Ranch was bought in 1867 by San Francisco businessman Joseph Warren Welch to preserve the giant redwood trees from logging. It was the first property in the state acquired specifically for that purpose. In 1930, the Welch family sold part of the property to Santa Cruz County, which eventually became part of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park.