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Tuka Gafari, puts a crew of Roaring Camp visitors to work on the handcar Saturday. Sentinel photo by Bill Lovejoy

FELTON - When the whistle blew, 4-year-old Zachary Dutzen stopped dead in his tracks. He couldn’t wait to get aboard the train at Roaring Camp.

"It’s a dream come true for him," said his mother, Hamiyte, who came from Seaside with her husband and their three children for a Labor Day weekend outing.

Roaring Camp and Big Trees Railroad, a popular tourist attraction that opened in 1963, is abuzz with activity as the summer is about to end.

"Business from Memorial Day to Labor Day supports us for the rest of the year," said owner Georgiana Clark.

Clark, a petite woman with a broad smile, has run the place since her husband Norman died in 1985, turning it into an "almost $3 million" business.

Dressed in a red shirt and kerchief and blue denin culottes, she fits right into the atmosphere of Roaring Camp, which looks like an Old West town in the 1880s.

The town is peopled with a variety of characters, such as High-Card Johnny, a gambling man with a goatee and curling mustache who offers visitors a game of "faro."

At an encampment outside the town, men cook over an open fire while women in long dresses and pantaloons sit at their sewing machines.

Next to one of the shops, Cathy Walls and Carol Fontana sit at their spinning wheels. Under the trees 13-year-old Matt Humphrey shows visitors how to pan for gold out of an old wooden trough.

"The gold is heavier than the dirt," he explained, scooping up mud and water into a pan and swirling it deftly until a few golden flecks were visible.

Other visitors line up to eat barbecue and watch the Roaring Camp players, a troupe of men dressed in vests and string ties and women wearing bonnets and flouncy skirts.

"The best part about this show is the audience participation," said Dan Barnett, 42, of Zayante, who installs sprinklers and likes to sing and dance on the side.

Tucked into the redwoods outside of Felton, Roaring Camp has about 250,000 visitors a year, which is about the size of the county’s population.

The main attraction, of course, are the trains, a narrow-gauge that goes up to the redwoods on Bear Mountain and the standard-gauge that runs to the beach in Santa Cruz.

This year, the 110-year-old "Kahuku" steam engine is up and running again after having been little more than a pile of parts. Named for a sugar cane plantation in Hawaii, it’s the oldest piece of equipment at Roaring Camp.

"This engine used to run in front of my house," said Clark, who grew up in Hawaii.

She still can’t believe how she managed to acquire it when the Disney company wanted it, too.

Roaring Camp employs 100 people in the summer, many of them drawn by the steam trains.

"We’re all model railroad buffs," said Kent Jefferys of Felton, a full-time conductor and brakeman whose arms are covered by soot. He has worked at Roaring Camp for 18 years after starting as a volunteer.

Tuka Gafari, 31, is a computer engineer in San Jose during the week, but on weekends, he’s the guy demonstrating the railroad handcar.

"I’ve always loved trains and I’m finally doing something about it," he said.

After 15 years at the helm, Clark is getting ready to turn more of the operation over to her thirty-something daughter, Melani, who knows everything from the accounting to how to drive the locomotive.

"It’s been a love affair," said Clark. "It’s growing a lot but it needs new blood to keep the old ideas going."

Contact Jondi Gumz at jgumz@santa-cruz.com

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