First floor ceiling of the old Port Costa Community Theater - along with the second floor eves.
Unfortunately, this historic structure is no longer a working theater. However it is well utilized by the locals. An antique store shares space with artist, crafts people, and others.
The charming little village of Port Costa is
well isolated and lost in time. Two restaurants, a huge bar which serves as a social center, a couple of antique dealers and a post office - define the downtown block of buildings. Houses which cling to the adjoining hillsides bring the town's population to 242. Cattle graze less than two blocks from the post office.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, freight trains heading towards the San Francisco Bay Area would reach the city of Benicia, where the train would broken apart and the cars and engines loaded onto barges for a short sailing across the Carquinez Straight to Port Costa. Here the trains would be re-assembled - to continue their trip by rail. Flat-bottomed boats and barges would bring wheat, oats, rice, and other crops to Port Costa warehouses. These commodities would also be loaded onto rail cars here for transport to Oakland and San Francisco.
Construction of bridges over the Carquinez Straight and San Francisco Bay in the 1930's, brought an end to the thriving activities of the the town of Port Costa.
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