contained no seats.  The crowds were so pumped-up at the thought of going to car races driven by drivers such as Barney Oldfield and Teddy Tetzlaff that they probably didn't even care that there were no seats.  The railroad ran these special excursion cars every Saturday and Sunday to bring people to Lakeside and the races.
  The town was doing well because of the influx of vacationers to the Inn, and because of the racetrack and other recreational attractions.  At this time Lakeside had 18 homes, a church (still here at the corner of Maine Avenue and Parkside Street, and now the home of the Lakeside Historical Society), a general store (much remodeled at the corner of Lake Shore and River), a saloon, a blacksmith shop, two corrals, the railroad station, the Castle House (still here), a lumber yard (now the Rodeo Restaurant), the boathouse on the Lake (still here), and the Lakeside Inn (razed in 1920).
  Soon ten trains a day were stopping, plus four freight trains which carried mostly mining equipment for the mines in Julian, and special excursion trains on Saturday and Sunday.  Everyone was happy.  The railroad company had built two picnic areas, which they also maintained.  One was near the bridge just outside town on the way to Ramona.  The other was built at Riverview.  Soon school and Sunday School picnics were being held in the parks.  Also lodges, organizations and ordinary people picnicked there.  According to Flossie Beadle, who was the unofficial historian of Lakeside for many years ". . . the ones best remembered were the butcher's picnics and the Dutch Been picnics where they really rolled out the barrels."
  In 1912 the San Diego Eastern and Cuyamaca was combined with another line and became the San Diego and Southeastern Railroad.
  Everything changed in 1916 when a man named Hat
field made a contract with the city of San Diego to make rain.  Lord knows the city and county needed rain.  No real amount had fallen for six or seven years.  Things got out of hand though, and too much rain fell. I n Lakeside many houses, ranches, small fruit groves and roads wee washed out.  Parts of the railroad track were also washed away.  The line was built back to Lakeside, but never again to Foster which itself disappeared when the San Vicente Dam was built.  The picnic areas were washed out too and never rebuilt.

  In 1917 the line was taken over by the San Diego and Arizona Railroad and is still in existence, but had yet another name change to come.
  In 1927 it flooded again, and again destroyed sections of track, but this time without Hatfield' s help.  The line to Lakeside was not rebuilt and the line ended at Santee.
  Fruit was transported from Lemon Grove and from the packinghouse at El Cajon, plus cattle feed was brought to Santee (dairy cattle).  There was no longer need for mining equipment in Julian as the mines had run out of gold and were, one by one, closed.  Eventually the line ended at El Cajon where it is still in operation.  The tracks to Santee and Lakeside were removed in the 1930's.
  The right-of-way between El Cajon and Santee, and between Santee and Lakeside was sold to various ranchers and fruit grove owners.  Some of that right-of-way became the Gillespie Field airport.  The line grew smaller and smaller being pretty well replaced over the years by trucking lines.  The Metropolitan Transit Development Board currently owns the railroad and is used for the San Diego Trolley.
  All Lakeside has left is the railroad depot on Sycamore.  It's our second depot and no one knows what happened to the first one, or if this is the first one and had been simply reworked from wood to stucco.  Those who hold with the idea that this is our second depot say that the first one was wood and looked so unlike the old depot now on display in La Mesa.  La Mesa would have lost that depot except that our own Flossie Beadle stored it at her place here in Lakeside until La Mesa reclaimed it and it moved back.  Our depot is still on Sycamore Street, although not quite in its original spot.
  Today, Lakeside's narrow streets are almost littered with traffic lights and stop signs . . . how the traffic has grown. W e are no longer served by the railroad, but are served adequately by busses instead.  But, say the old timers, it's just not the same.