We hopped the Metro down to the American History Museum, our second foray into that area. We did some more of the first floor - our standard 2.5 hours worth before we get overloaded. What's interesting about this trip is what we saw in the part of the Man and machines section, about trains. Here was a story about the effort to connect Santa Cruz to the big train lines in Watsonville in the mid 1800s. Imagine that, featured in the American History Museum. Here's a picture of the narrow gauge railroad engine that did the job.
And right next to that, was a big feature on Watsonville and how its produce was shipped around the country. Also how the growers there imported different nationalities to pick the crops until the Federal government made that nationality's immigration illegal and the growers moved on to the next group. So they went from Japanese, to Filipinos, to Mexicans. And there was a picture of a lettuce field crew from the sixties - I worked in the lettuce fields and I think that might just be me in the third row on the right! :)
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