It carried the tracks of the narrow gauge South Pacific Coast Railroad which ran trains from San Francisco to Santa Cruz until the railroad was acquired by Southern Pacific Railroad, which upgraded the tracks to standard gauge and continued operating trains through the line and its tunnel until a major storm in 1940 washed out certain sections of the track in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

After it was determined where the tracks of the future South Pacific Coast Railroad would go in the Santa Cruz Mountains in September 1878, construction of the tunnel commenced in the following October.

However, that flame ignited the high amounts of methane in the air, with the subsequent explosion severely shaking the surrounding area.

Passenger and freight service to Santa Cruz would pass through the tunnel, including the now famous Suntan Special.

Much like how California State Route 17 becomes severely congested on weekends and during the summer in the present, tourists from the San Francisco Bay Area would flock to the Suntan special to spend a day or the weekend at the beaches of Santa Cruz, while others would take the train to whistle stops throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains to hike, picnic, or relax in the redwood forests, both of which have become less accessible to the average person since the abandonment of the railroad.

Kneedler wrote the following about the line in his book Through Storyland to Sunset Seas: The ride is one which rivals anything up the Shasta division or over the Sierras, for tho’ the mountain groups are not so massive, the effects are equally fineAlthough the line was a major success for passenger rail to Santa Cruz, it was also a huge success for freight rail, with numerous quarries, sawmills, farmers, and other industries relying on the Summit Tunnel to transport their products to sea ports in Oakland and San Francisco.

The western portal was also replaced due to the earthquake and a brick ceiling was installed for the first three hundred feet of the tunnel to prevent collapse from the sandstone present there.

Both portals were blasted to preserve the interior of the tunnel, prevent trespassers, and for insurance reasons.

The blast at the north portal caused the portal to partially collapse, a state which remains the same, and is, alongside the concrete piers over the Los Gatos creek, one of the last remnant of Wrights, with the town also vanishing due to the absence of the railroad, although it had been in decline for a couple decades at that point.