Butler Road station

Butler Road station was a train station in South San Francisco, California, in operation until July 1983 on the Peninsula Commute, a commuter rail service run by Southern Pacific between San Francisco and communities on the San Francisco Peninsula. The Butler Road train shelter was built in 1926.^[3]

Butler Road
A train passing the former station site in 2018
General information
Location	Oyster Point Boulevard (Butler Road) South San Francisco, California
Coordinates	37°39′46″N 122°23′54″W
Line(s)	PCJPB Peninsula Subdivision[1]
History
Closed	July 1983 (1983-07)[2]
Former services
Preceding station Southern Pacific Railroad Following station Bayshore toward San Francisco Peninsula Commute South San Francisco toward San Jose
Location

History

The stop was next to the Shaw-Batcher steel mill, which opened in 1913; the mill was purchased by the Western Pipe and Steel Company in 1917.^[4] 200 acres (81 ha) of land were acquired for a shipyard in August 1917,^[5] and Shaw-Batcher was awarded a $30 million contract to build 18 merchant ships during World War I. The worksite population grew from 200 in early 1917 to 4,447 by July 1918, a month after the company's first ship was launched.^[6] After the war, Western Pipe moved shipbuilding operations to San Pedro^[7][8] and continued to produce pipe in South San Francisco, which was used in notable dam projects such as Hetch Hetchy, Grand Coulee, Shasta, and Folsom.^[9] The shipyard was reactivated in 1939 for World War II,^[10][11] and after the war ended, the site was sold in 1948 to Consolidated Steel (later United States Steel and its divisions),^[12] which closed the mill in 1983.^[12] Service to the Butler Road stop was also discontinued that year.^[13]

The Butler Road stop was relatively little-used for much of its existence. In 1958, for example, only four of the 27 total northbound weekday commuter trains stopped at the station.^[14] In 1978, only three of the 22 total northbound weekday trains stopped there.^[15]

Butler Road, the roadway itself, has been renamed Oyster Point Boulevard.^[16][17] The Peninsula Commute service was taken over by the State of California and renamed Caltrain in 1985.