Part 3
The Great Salt Lake Cut-off of the Overland Route westward from Ogden is now of course the main line; the old line runs to the north of Great Salt Lake, crossing the mountains at Promontory at an elevation of 4907 feet and rejoining the Great Salt Lake Cut-off at Umbria Junction. Through trains no longer are operated via Promontory and in the march of progress that station which one day held the attention of the entire country as the junction point of two great railways binding together the East and the West is now only a name on a side line. Yet the day of its birth was one of glory. New York City celebrated it with the chimes ringing out Old Hundred and a salute of one hundred guns; Philadelphia rang all its bells in celebration and Chicago rejoiced with a mass meeting where Vice President Colfax spoke, and sent through the decorated streets a parade four miles in length. Omaha turned loose with all of its firearms and paraded with every able-bodied man in town in line, and closed the day with fireworks and illuminations. As usual, San Francisco was fore-handed with its rejoicing, starting its celebration two days in advance of the driving of the golden spike, and continuing it two days thereafter to preserve a proper equilibrium. Bret Harte wrote a poem for the event.
The reasons for abandoning the old historic route in favor of the new mid-sea pathway across Great Salt Lake are more eloquently expressed in the diagram on page 47 than can be done by words.
Westward from Ogden, on the new route passing the Lake stations and then Lucin and Montello, the first place of importance is Cobre, junction point with the new Nevada Northern Railway with its line southward through Cherry to Ely, a distance of 153 miles. At Ely is a mountain of copper, one of the great mines of the world. Vast development work is under way here. The Cherry Creek section has gold and silver; as far back as 1876 twenty carloads of ore were teamed 150 miles to the railway and shipped to a smelter, returning an average of $800 to the ton. Absence of transportation has prevented development until now.
Wells, end of the first section going west, is the source of the Humboldt River. There are some thirty springs, very deep,—some perhaps a thousand feet—and never failing. They made of Humboldt Wells a great camping and watering place in the days of the old Overland Trail, three roads, the Grass Creek, the Thousand Springs Valley and the Cedar Pass, converging here. Wells is headquarters for a great cattle country, with ranges extending into Idaho on the North and Utah on the east, and is the supply town for many rich mining districts.
The little town of Deeth is a trading center with all the promise of several hundred square miles of tributary territory very little developed and very rich in mineral resources.
Elko is picturesquely lively and on the verge of a business renaissance. It has had many ups and downs in a varied life. A million dollars in freight charges were paid here the first year after the railroad was finished, and thirty years ago it had waterworks, a bank, hotels, courthouse, churches, etc., when Nevada was almost terra incognita. Today it has more people (probably 2500 all told) than ever before. The shales near by possess gases rich beyond measure, which may be developed to furnish light, heat and power for the rich two hundred mile section of which Elko is the commercial center. It is a town of attractive homes, good schools and churches. The Tuscarora, Columbia and Mountain City mining districts use Elko as a gateway to the world. There are good mineral springs here, including a “chicken soup” spring, alleged to supply food and medicine to any traveling Ponce de Leons.
At Carlin are railroad shops, and the employees with the assistance of the Company maintain a handsome library. The old emigrant road divided just before reaching Carlin and reunited at Gravelly Ford. Once upon a time Shoshone Indians were plentiful hereabouts.
At Palisade, the Eureka and Palisade Railroad, eighty miles long, delivers its train loads of ore from the iron, silver and lead mines to the south for shipment to the smelters along the Overland Route. Rich oases, such as Pine Valley and Diamond Valley, are along the branch.
Battle Mountain is the junction of the Overland Route and Nevada Central Railway, a line ninety-three miles long, extending southward to Austin, once a famous mining camp and yet the center of a mining district of much prominence. Battle Mountain lies three miles to the south. In the early sixties it was the scene of a fierce fight between immigrants and Indians. The Indians, while admitting they were worsted, claim to this day “heap white men killed.” The town is in the center of a productive agricultural section, and the Galena, Pittsburg, Copper Canyon and other productive mining districts, such as are springing up all over Nevada, help make it prosperous.
At the right of the station in Golconda are several mineral springs of much value, ranging in temperature from cold to hot enough to boil an egg in a minute. A good hotel is connected with the springs, which in any populous country would be visited by thousands of ill people. The great gold and copper deposits of Golconda are now being developed and extensive furnaces built.
Winnemucca, “Napoleon of the Piutes,” was the best known chief of that tribe of Indians, and Winnemucca town was named in his honor. It is a lively place and has perhaps as large a trading area as any city in the West. For thirty years a stage ran between here and Boise City, Idaho, two hundred and fifty miles. Until the building of the Oregon Short Line Winnemucca was gateway to all of Southern Idaho. Today its trade area covers Northern Nevada and Eastern Oregon. The Paradise mines, 25 miles northeast; the Kennedy mines, 50 miles south; and the great sulphur mines, 30 miles northwest, use it as a trading depot. The business done in the enterprising town of 2,000 people is not to be measured by its population.
Humboldt and Humboldt House for thirty-five years have been famous among Overland travelers as a place of delight with shady groves, green lawns and flowing fountains. Apples, peaches, plums, and cherries grow in the oasis. At a point near Humboldt the old Oregon trail diverged from the Overland Route toward Northern California and Southern Oregon. All along through this section of Nevada, the Overland Route takes the way prepared by the Humboldt River.
No longer, however, does it wind with the stream, but burrows through mountains and spans the river as often as need be to save curves, distance and grades. In the last few years $10,531,425 have been spent in recreating this section of the main trans-continental highway.
Lovelock, with its irrigation canals, great alfalfa fields and herds of cattle, is made by the union of the waters of the Humboldt and the fertile soil of its meadows. In a few years Lovelock will be multiplied a hundred fold in Nevada. An hour’s ride beyond is a favored section for the mirage, a summer-time illusion. It is said in the days of the trail many an emigrant thought he saw in the distance a second Lovelock, more lovely, only to be undeceived at even.
At Hazen, the overland trains leave the passengers who are to go fortune hunting in Southern Nevada among the mines. Rawhide, Fairview, Wonder, Tonopah, Goldfield, Bullfrog, Manhattan, Rhyolite, Beatty and a score more of millionaire making camps already well known to prospectors, capitalists, and stock brokers throughout the country, are reached by the Nevada-California branch railway from Hazen, which connects at Mina with the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad. In these regions the scenes of the Comstock Lode days of half a century ago are being repeated. Towns are created overnight—millionaires are made between meals. Stock exchanges ride high upon the enormous output of the mining certificates. Goldfield, but recently a desert, is a city of ten thousand people with good hotels, banks, daily papers, water, electric and gas plants, railroad, telegraph and telephone service, and indeed all the utilities of a modern city. Tonopah is of like history with somewhat smaller population. Here are all the cosmopolitan and adventurous spirits that are lured by gold, making these camps on the human side picturesque beyond measure. Marvelous are the stories, the true ones perhaps most so of all. One man went to Tonopah on $150 he had borrowed; in three years he was worth $2,000,000. Another owned a bed, a tent, and a ten days’ food supply; Goldfield—and today he owns a million dollars. A few men leased a mine; in five months they added to their property two million dollars. Little wonder it is a land of optimism; each treasure seeker has such examples before him to inspire him with hope; and the Nevada camps are the most hopeful and probably the most wonderful mining camps in the world.
Hazen is also the junction point for another railroad, a fourteen-mile branch line to Fallon, the commercial center of the Truckee-Carson reclamation project.
The United States Government has diverted the waters of the Truckee and Carson Rivers by a series of canals, reservoirs and laterals upon 250,000 acres of the bed of an ancient lake with deep rich soil composed of materials washed down from the surrounding mountains. Already water is ready to irrigate about 100,000 acres, of which a large part is Government land and the remainder either railroad or privately owned land which can be purchased at reasonable figures. About 50,000 acres have been settled upon and nearly one thousand farms more are ready for settlement.
The Government has invested several million dollars in the project and guarantees the water supply. The public land may be taken up under the Homestead Act and it is the purpose of the Reclamation Service that settlers shall have farm units varying in size from forty to one hundred and sixty acres, according to the location, smoothness of the surface and quality of land. The average size of the farms is 80 acres. The intensive cultivation possible under an irrigation system makes it most profitable to till a farm of moderate size. The railroad lands are now on sale at an average price of about $5 per acre and other privately owned lands may be secured at from $5 to $20 per acre. The cost of the water system is assessed against the land on the basis of ten equal annual payments and is now determined to be $30 per acre or $3 per year without interest. There is additional charge for maintenance of the canal system, which in 1908 amounted to 40c per acre. The only other charges to settlers are $6.50 for a forty-acre farm and $8 for an eighty-acre farm, the Government fees for filing; save that if the farm is within the railroad grant limit the fee becomes $8 for a forty-acre farm and $11 for an eighty-acre farm. The filing charge before United States Commissioner at Fallon is $1.
With water absolutely assured by the Government and the fertility of the land unquestioned, no one possessed of energy and good health with sufficient money to purchase the actual needs of a residence and farm cultivation, say from $1000 to $2000, need fear failure. The Carson Valley is to be a great garden spot, rich in small fruits such as apples, pears, peaches; rich in surface crops such as potatoes, onions, sugar beets; rich in dairy products, in great fields of alfalfa and herds of live stock. An experimental farm is maintained by the Government and already it has been proved that almost any temperate zone crop can be grown successfully. Probably the highest cash markets in America, the great mines of Nevada, Utah and California, are near at hand and the surplus can be exported to the eastern and western borders of the continent and perhaps yet farther.
The Nevada & California Railway extends southward into the Owens River Valley from Mina, well known for its agricultural oases along the river, for its mines and for its superb scenery, its western wall of mountains being the highest and most impressive in the United States proper.
Reno, the most important and substantial Nevada cities, is 18,000 people and growing rapidly. To it the Virginia and Truckee Railroad brings business from the south, while the Nevada-California-Oregon Railway connects it with Northern California, Plumas and Modoc Counties (now being further developed by new lines under construction) and Southern Oregon. There is much good farming territory tributary; the Truckee meadows and Carson Valley are close by. The Truckee-Carson project will add to its trade greatly. The two factors giving greatest force to Reno’s forward movement are, however, the establishment of great railway terminals and shops by the Overland Route at Sparks, adjoining Reno, and the position of the city as the chief commercial center of the richest, and now the most actively exploited mining area in America. It has all the utilities of a city even to suburban electric railway service, is kept informed by four newspapers and carries $6,000,000 in deposit in six banks. The Nevada State University is one of the foremost schools of the West, and in its mining and agricultural department work ranks especially high. The Mackay Mining Building, dedicated June 6, 1908, is the pride of the university.
Carson City, Nevada’s capital, is a beautiful place of 5,000 people on the Virginia & Truckee Railway, thirty-one miles from Reno. It is the oldest town in the State, has an abundance of good water and good shade, creditable State buildings, and a United States branch mint. It trades freely with Southwestern Nevada and the Inyo Valley of California.
Virginia City, fifty-two miles from Reno on the Virginia & Truckee Ry., and the adjoining town of Gold Hill, are famous places, once the center of tremendous mining activity. The treasure houses underneath held wonderful stores of wealth. Virginia City at one time had 30,000 people, one-third of the population being always underground. The place was built on the steep slope of Mount Davidson, 6200 feet above sea-level. Until the discovery of the Comstock Lode (an ore-channel four miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, along the eastern base of Mount Davidson, eighteen miles southeast of Reno), men worth $200,000 were called rich, and the world’s millionaires could be counted on one’s fingers. In June, 1859, miners (among whom were Peter O’Riley, Patrick McLaughlin, James Finney, John Bishop, W. P. T. Comstock, and a man named Penrod) working in the ravine along the base of Mount Davidson, were much annoyed by a strange blue-black substance that clogged their rockers. Finally a sample was taken to Nevada City, Cal., for assay. It yielded over $6,000 per ton in gold and silver. Since the day of the rush that followed that discovery, work on the Comstock Lode has never ceased. From that ore-channel have been taken more than $700,000,000; the Consolidated California Virginia took out in six years $119,000,000 and paid $67,000,000 in dividends. Of the history of that wonderful time, little can be said here, and such men as William Sharon, John P. Jones, John W. Mackay, James G. Fair, I. W. Requa, Marcus Daly, Adolph Sutro, made famous by their connections with the Comstock Lode, must be passed by with merely mention of names. Mark Twain’s “Roughing It” and contemporary works, provide “mighty interesting” reading about that treasure era.
Reno is at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, the great wall rising to the westward and separating California from the rest of the country. This highest of mountain chains in our country extends several hundred miles north and south. Perhaps no other range of mountains in the world has attractions so great or of such variety. The Sierra Nevada, the Snowy Range, or, as John Muir has more aptly termed it, the Range of Light, has many main ridges extending from 6,000 to 12,000 feet above sea level, with guardian peaks over 14,000 feet high. Highest of all and greatest mountain peak in the United States outside of Alaska is Mt. Whitney, 14,529 feet high. These mountains which the Overland Route crosses on its way to the Pacific have the greatest coniferous forests on earth. Among its peaks nestle the largest and most numerous of mountain lakes. Between its walls are unsurpassed mountain chasms. Its streams, unexcelled in beauty, possess the greatest potential power of all the waters of American mountains.
The Sierra Nevada is crossed by the Overland Route along a scenic pathway associated with much of interest in history and tradition. Here were the greatest obstacles in the way of the pioneer railroad builders. Nature seemed here to have rallied her forces for a final stand. Here Theodore Judah, the pioneer pathfinder of the railway, found his most difficult work. The climb up the mountain side is up the canyon of the beautiful Truckee River, a famous trout stream, a journey lined with beautiful forests of pine and mountain walls.
At Boca, Prosser Creek and Iceland, the “chief crop” is ice; at Floriston, paper; at Truckee, lumber and box stock; and at Lake Tahoe, a very good time. Boca is junction with the Boca & Loyalton road, a forty mile line northward through Sierra and Plumas Valleys—noted for its forests, beautiful little valleys, and lakes. Truckee is a lumbering and railroad town of two thousand people, Thence, a distance of 14 miles farther up the river, runs the Lake Tahoe Railway to the shore of Lake Tahoe.
Lake Tahoe, largest of the world’s mountain lakes, is 23 miles long by 13 miles broad, 6,220 feet above sea-level, and over 2,000 feet deep. It is a body of the purest, clearest, and most wonderfully tinted water imaginable, held in a mountain rimmed cup with its edge crested with ever present snow, sparkling as a jewel. Between snow line and the lake are beautiful pine forests, in which, half hidden, are such famous resorts as Tahoe Tavern, McKinney’s, Tallac, Glenbrook, Brockway, and Tahoe City. The summer climate with great abundance of sunshiny days, the invigorating pine-scented atmosphere, and the cool nights and delightful days, alone make of Tahoe and its neighboring Sierra lakes—Fallen Leaf, Cascade, and others—an unsurpassed summer place. But when are added the forests, the scenery of the Snowy Range, the fishing and hunting, and the out of door sports, the first place among mountain lake resorts must be given to this region. A swift and well fitted steamer circles the lake every summer day from Tahoe Tavern.
The trout of Tahoe, the Truckee river, and neighboring lakes and streams, make good the claim that no place excels this region for the fisherman. Usually they run from three to six pounds in weight, but specimens weighing over thirty pounds have been taken.
Such out of door joys as boating, horseback riding, mountain climbing, and hunting, can be enjoyed under the most favorable conditions. Excursions up Freel’s Peak, and Mt. Tallac, and to Glen Alpine, are very much worth while. Of the hotel accommodations, it is, perhaps, enough to say, that one may be comfortable in a tent or a cabin, or enjoy hotel service unexcelled at any summer resort in America.
West of Truckee on the Overland Route, we pass Webber, Donner, and Independence Lakes. The unfortunate Donner party camped by the lake of that name, snowed in, in the winter of 1846-47, losing 43 of its 83 members before relief came in February. Of these mountain glacial lakes, cups of clear water, there are some six thousand in the region between Truckee and the Tule river to the south.
The summit of the Sierra is reached twelve miles west of Truckee, 7018 feet above the sea-level. Along this part of the journey the track is protected by snow-sheds, but the sides of the sheds are latticed and there are many intervening stretches of clear track, so the scenery is not lost.