DO YOU KNOW? CAN YOU EXPLAIN? WELL, SOMETIMES

Questions are the backbone of my business. Questions and requests. Who was?

Where is? What's that? How come? Why does? And can you explain?

Some questions are more important than others. The Army Corps of Engineers

is asking about a World War II radar base near Goat Rock. That is more urgent,

I'm sure, than a caller's question about why some Santa Rosa streets change

their names every few blocks, or a recent-history question about Sebastopol's

Train Down Main.

(The radar query is difficult. The military was ''covert,'' as we say now,

about its coastal installations. That question could keep me scrambling for

weeks.)

As for other questions. Well, we do the best we can. One at a time.

Q: Sebastopol people still talk about their Train Down Main. How long has

it been since there was one?

A: A timely question. The recent excursions that are the first step in the

revival of the old Northwestern Pacific have produced a flood of train

memories. The death of the Train Down Main, beloved by many but not enough,

seems to be symbolic of the lack of regard for railroads in the recent past.

Heaven knows, those who loved the hoot of that diesel engine tried their

best. From the spring of 1984 to the fall of 1987, private investors and the

city of Sebastopol studied every way imaginable to save the rail line

abandoned by Southern Pacific. SP and its junior partner, NWP, owned the line,

which had been the mighty Petaluma & Santa Rosa line.

When SP announced its intentions, latter-day railroaders descended on the

Board of Supervisors, begging for help. They got none. They went to the City

of Sebastopol where they found sympathy but no money. A committee was

appointed.

The people of Sebastopol were already nostalgic for their signature

railroad. The annual Apple Blossom Festival used the train as its theme. Train

floats and cardboard replicas of the engine followed the tracks along Highway

116 in the center of town.

But cardboard trains were all there would be. Over the next 40 months,

private investors came and looked and, mostly, went away. New deals were

talked about. New plans announced. Nothing happened.

Then, in March of '87, in what the railroad buffs called a sneak attack, SP

sold the rails, ties and trestles to a demolition contractor. Workmen began

ripping up track without warning. Stopped by the cries of outrage, the

contractor agreed to delay while one last attempt was made to organize an

excursion train on those tracks.

In July, the last hope vanished. The Board of Supervisors, which had plans

ready to turn the right-of-way to Santa Rosa into a bike and footpath, had to

make a decision or lose state and federal funds for the trail. By September,

an 18-inch section of train track, imbedded in cement that covers underground

utilities, was all that was left of the Train Down Main.

While all the abortive plans to put trains back on the track were for

tourist trains, the original intent of the old P&SR was far from frivolous.

Built in the first years of 1900, the original P&SR was a ''juice line,''

an electric railroad for freight cars and inter-urban trolleys. It connected,

as the name implied, Petaluma and Santa Rosa, but also Forestville, Graton and

all points between these with a western track going all the way to Two Rock.

The freight cars hauled apples and cherries to the cannery, eggs to connect

with the transcontinental freights, milk to the creamery. And the trolleys

carried children to school, farm wives to town, sick folks to the doctor. It

was the lifeline for much of the West County until 1941, when the last trolley

made its last run, pulled by an NWP diesel engine. By 1952, even the freight

service had switched to diesel power. Now it's a memory. Next question.

Q: I am a newcomer to Santa Rosa, and my question is, why do so many of

this town's streets seem to change their name every few blocks?

This is a question we hear fairly often from people who are understandably

confused when they drive along Brookwood to find it has become North Street

and then it's Franklin Avenue, and then Chanate and then Parker Hill Road and

finally Stagecoach Road.

One lost soul called about driving on Guerneville Road as it magically

became Steele Lane and then Lewis Road and finally Crest Drive. I knew,

literally, where she was coming from.

I suggest to this caller and all the others that Santa Rosa is not unique

in this regard. There are probably multinamed thoroughfares like these in the

cities our questioners came from. They were just used to them. Most cities,

unless they are new and pre-planned, have such confusions.

In towns that have grown as Santa Rosa has from the original one square

mile of 142 years ago to 37.96 square miles as of last month, streets come

together in segments, not all at once. One-time Indian trails became wagon

roads and towns grew up where they crossed. They were extended as the city

grew. Sometimes a subdivision, or ''addition'' as they used to be called,

stood alone, until the town grew into the wheat fields between and the streets

connected.

The names are generational, like families.

Take Lewis Road, for example. This is the root stock, or parent, of that

name-chain. Like Lewis School, it was named for a pioneer family that farmed

on Santa Rosa's northern edge. The road wasn't a long one -- it probably just

provided access to the farm. It started at Healdsburg Avenue, which is what

Mendocino was called after it left College Avenue. Lewis went about a

quarter-mile up the hill to connect to Franklin Avenue.

Later, probably just after World War II, a spurt of growth put houses in

the hop fields across the street from the school. It was land that was owned

by the Steele family. The western extension of the street was named Steele

Lane. Still later, in the 1960s, when Coddingtown was built, the street went

on west to connect to the county road that leads us in the direction of

Guerneville.

Franklin Avenue is the pioneer in the Brookwood-to-Stagecoach arterial. The

north-south remnant of what was once a winding road, it actually pre-dates

Santa Rosa. It was the main road that bordered a town called Franklin on the

north bank of Santa Rosa Creek downstream from the Carrillo Adobe.

Franklin was something of a shanty town built on lots sold by an erstwhile

fur trapper named Oliver Beaulieu. When Julio Carrillo filed the plot map for

the town of Santa Rosa in 1854 and voters moved the county seat from Sonoma,

Franklin faded away. Its few businesses -- store, blacksmith shop, doctor's

office -- and the Baptist Church were hoisted on log rollers and hauled

downstream by ox-teams to land around the plaza. All that is left of Franklin

is the portion of the avenue that led to the cemetery.

The others? North Street was named for Ralphine North McDonald, wife of the

1880s captain of industry who owned the water works (hence, Lake Ralphine),

the fruit packing sheds and the adjoining lots where fancy homes were built.

Chanate was an Indian, friendly to the early Americans. Some say the word

means ''black bird.'' Parker Hill is like Lewis, an early farmer's name. Crest

and Brookwood and Stagecoach are subdivision words.

Although it is confusing, I'm glad we've kept the old names.

Q: You mentioned recently that there was a photo in ''The West'' series on

PBS that is the oldest picture of Santa Rosa. Why don't you stop talking about

it and show it to us?

A. Done. See below. That is Santa Rosa House, built in the mid-1850s, when

the plaza was laid out. It was on Main Street (now Santa Rosa Avenue) just

south of the plaza. The owner was E.P. Colgan.

As you can see, the stagecoach stopped there, and it was considered the

center of town. Santa Rosa's earliest historian, Robert A. Thompson wrote:

''In front of the Santa Rosa House, when the stage came in, pretty much all

the town would gather to get the news, twenty-four hours old, from San

Francisco, but fifty miles off, and to see who came in on the stage. After

staring awhile at strangers, they would drift drowsily back to their affairs

and patiently await the next excitement.''

The building that was Santa Rosa House lasted nearly 100 years, becoming a

blacksmith shop in its second life.