C & H from the outside

From the outside, it's necessary to cross the river to be able to see all of the C&H property at once. I did that one day and spent a few hours on the shore trying to get a photo, or a series of pictures, that would take the whole thing in, without much luck.



From town, you can see the place in pieces; you can see different parts of the property from various places. It sprawls out under the bridges, where you can see it from the Al Zampa bridge ped walk.



There is a no-man's land in a few places, where you might be able to claim that you weren't
really trespassing. There's one under the bridges, where people fish without being hassled (so far as I know), and where you can look for interesting grafitti on the boxcars on a siding. This one is behind the museum.



The Castle City is an integrated tug-and-barge; I think it transports C&H products from the refinery to the Oakland harbor, but I haven't been able to find that out. It's not possible for the public to visit the dock, and it's hard to get a good look at it from outside the C&H lot.



Crockett cogen is a symbiotic appendage at the refinery's east end, next to the dock. It burns natural gas for electricity, and the leftover steam is used to refine sugar. I don't suppose they like visitors, but I'll try to find out.



No trespassing, no tours, visitors should go away. Private, do ya hear me? I couldn't get on the grounds legally, so I've taken lots of pictures from the outside, looking in. The place seems like a different landscape from the various places where the edge of the lot is accessible.



The place is photogenic, depending on where you look: inviting, even, from a safe distance.



I think these are abandoned silos.



The refinery can be pretty at night. There are hundreds of lights, and in particular: the giant C&H sugar box, and ...



...the C&H sign. You can see this from the highway, and probably from the water, but you can't really see it in town. I'm temped to draw some sort of conclusion (or make a presumption, or something) about the attitude of the C&H management towards Crockett. They built a lot of the town, way back when, and employed most of the people who lived in the homes that they had built. Now they seem more insular.