West Union: The Lumber Town That Vanished

The ground near today's Edgewood Road and Raymundo Drive in Woodside once held a thriving little town called West Union. It began in eighteen fifty-three when Willard Whipple established two lumber mills on West Union Creek, and the workers who ran them built a community around the operations. At its peak the town had homes, a post office, and the infrastructure of daily life.

But the redwoods and Douglas firs of the Santa Cruz Mountains were finite, and when the timber gave out, West Union gave out with it. In time the town simply ceased to exist, absorbed back into the hillside landscape. No ruins remain.

The only evidence that people once lived and worked here is the creek name, the road name, and this marker standing where a main street once ran.