Downtown Saugus as it appeared in about 1900 — pretty much all of it. The view is to the northwest. Bouquet Canyon Road is in the middle of the photo.

Real photo postcard postmarked Surrey, mailed Feb. 3, 191? (early 1910s) to Nelson Gilbert of Fellows, Calif., which is northwest of Taft in Kern County.

Saugus was originally named for Henry Mayo Newhall's birthplace in Massachusetts. A post office was established inside the SPRR Saugus depot on Aug. 5, 1891. In 1906, for reasons unknown, the post office changed its name to Surrey, and the "downtown" area of Saugus changed with it. It changed back to Saugus on Sept. 4, 1915.

This postcard was sent while it was still Surrey. The image on the postcard is older. The hand-written inscription on the front reads: "These are old pictures, taken before the new hotel was put up. The pump house looks awfully small."

"The new hotel" would refer to the Surrey Inn, erected in 1911 by Ore Bercaw on the west side of the road (Bouquet), amid the row of buildings shown here.

Bercaw arrived in 1906 and first opened a general store on April 25 of that year. It's probably the building seen in the middle of the row with either two or three peaks. He built the 2-story hotel in the space next to it.

The Saugus cafe is either the building at far right in the row, or it is even father, obscured by the tree and the roof of the SPRR Saugus depot, seen at right. Just beyond it is where the former Highway 126, now Magic Mountain Parkway, intersects with Bouquet Canyon Road.