Video: 2011-05-19 - Nevada County Railroad Museum and the Empire Mine with John Christensen and Phil Oyung (130 minutes)

Full Transcript of the Video:

We have a few announcements that I can get through as quickly as possible. We have a great presentation tonight. I'm sure John can speak for hours, but we're going to compress his talk into one hour tonight. We'll definitely stick around afterwards and more introductions in a minute. So first of all, we'd like to introduce some folks from Way Down and Refs. Almost a flat land, Smartsville would like to tell us a little bit about Pioneer Days. My name is Kit Burton. I'm the president of the Smartsville Church Restoration Fund, Incorporated. Kathy Smith, she's the vice president, so you've got the top brass here. Smartsville Church Restoration Fund is a nonprofit corporation that the Second Hernal Diocese of the Catholic Church helped form in 1998. The church had not been maintained for a long time. It was 140 years old, but it had fallen into disrepair, and I think they just wanted to get out from under it. So some concerned citizens, not us, but some concerned citizens in Smartsville said, "We would like to see if we can restore the church. " So they deeded with the church and the property to our, and helped us form this nonprofit corporation with the provision that the church be used for community center or other community purposes. So our mission is to save the church first, restore it, and then use it for the community. And the historic church, the entire town of Smartsville is California history. Historic landmark. Just like Rough and Ready, whole town. And the church is a point of historical interest. So we have a lot of history in Smartsville, and we're not a historical society like you guys are, but we really like that sort of thing. We kind of, Kathy, especially, we really dig into it. And Kathy will tell you about Pioneer Day, our showcase event that we do here. Well, this Saturday is our Pioneer Day. This is the fourth annual Pioneer Day. We started it to create some visibility for our project, and to raise some funds, because being a really small organization, we don't qualify for a lot of grants, and it was probably a great day to say that. So we're pretty much a grassroots kind of organization. We raise a little money, and we all do some work. And we've made great strides in the last four years, because we've been able to help with it. And we have to make it like a historical festival, a whole dress festival. And we see some friends here. Frank is our gold canning expert. He does gold canning with the kids on Pioneer Day. We have historical impersonators who come on stage and tell their stories, try to keep it pretty local for people in the area. We have tours of the mining area, which are pretty spectacular. You don't ever get to see this anywhere. You get on a hay wagon, drawn by a tractor, and you go out into the Blue Point mining property, or the Excelsior mining property, or down to Simbuktu. And you can see the remnants of the hydraulic mining. Some of it's actually used, right? You can see the pictures, you can see the buildings pretty much, and they have all the different layers of rock. And the other thing is, it's naturalized. And they also use quite a bit of the landscape. So that's one thing. We have entertainment on stage, we have the record record, and from your name, we have the Nevada County, German 2-Woo, grass-baked. And this is a little offshoot of the Nevada County concert bands, but they formed a single group for us last year and came down, and they're coming again this year. So, you know, all the little old-rich towns had brass bands, and there are some. [Laughter] We, uh, we'll see. Well, tours inside the church, all of you that are interested in old-style wood construction, which our church is a beautiful example of how things were built, probably by, we thank John Rose, who lived very close by in the town. And we had a large hand in construction of the church. It was the original church burned down in 1807, and the one that you see there today was built very next year. But, uh, there are mortarson tenon joined there. Oh, thank you. And, uh, lots of interesting things to see inside the church, and some interesting stories about, of all our struggles, about how to get around the problems of getting a building back on its feet that, uh, that we don't have any money in. How about we have them back for a full hour present day? [Laughter] Would you like that? We'll put them on the next dinner. [Applause] So, how does Saturday and, and check out our festival? We have craft vendors and lots of food and. . . When the hour is? Uh, 9am to 4pm. Great. Thank you. [Applause] So tonight we have, uh, the thank you investment in GAVE for the, uh, donations of the beverages and cookies, so please partake of that after the presentation. Stick around, we bring this for you to enjoy. Also, the Raul Price Night was provided by the Railroad Museum, and as well as a book donated by Wally Henneman from the Firehouse Museum number one, Theodoric Judah, how appropriate. So, um, we have a couple of announcements. I'd like to call on Annette to talk about Museum Days. Museum Days. May the 21st, 10 to 3, Railroad Museum, and all the other museums, part of the historical society, including now the Oddfellas Hall. It's a caravan where families come on Saturday with their children. They go from one museum to another. And, um, two of them, there are picnic grounds available, the Railroad Museum and the Mining Museum. So you can bring a picnic and eat outside. It's free. Uh, and it parallels the children's curriculum for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade. That's when they study their hometown, their county, the end of the state. And that's all right there in our environment. Come see us. Thank you. [applause] While museums are resuming, there's summertime schedule wins. May 1st. And what time will they be open every Saturday at. . . One to 3. In to 3. The Railroad Museum, Mining Museum would be win. 11 to 5. Speaking of the Mining Museum, I have to tell you from a good authority that they're looking for a few more good, qualified docents. And you'd like to have one or two to kind of fill in a roundout. They're per-cad-grade of docents. I hear that there's pregnant involved. They're looking how to be a docent, and the pay is excellent. [laughter] Do you have any questions? Do you want to take this gentleman's hoodie's hand up right now? So he's looking for docents. We operate with two docents. One goes and operates the front office of the cash donations, etc. And the other gets the tours. So we're trying to put experienced people with new people. We can sure use a couple more new ones. Those of you that want to work as a substitute, we'd appreciate that. Some of those are cake vacations. [laughter] Or house number one, weather hours. Anybody know? One to four. Yeah, shorter hours. Plenty of handouts tonight. Make sure you mail yourself to the back table. For instance, if you're not already a member, if you're a member you have gotten this in the quarterly mail-in from the headlamp, from the river museum. So we do have free handouts after tonight. If you're a visitor tonight, please mail yourself to that. I'm going to miss any of the announcements. In fact, open the market and bring it up. Matt, tell us about that. Also on the 21st of May, the Society is hosting a flea market on the old Meeks Lumber Company property. We have 15 by 15 spaces for $25. Health-sized spaces are $45. There are sign-up sheets in the back there. You can fill it out and send it in with your registration money. If you're going to clean out your garage and think about having a garage sale, why don't you do it on our place? Raise funds for the Society and you don't have to pay for the advertising. Thank you. Thank you, Pat. So this time I'd like to introduce John Grishison. As you know, he's a pretty much founding member of the River Museum and has contributed significantly to much of the restoration we're only talking about. What's your current title there, Dale? Right now, restoration. Restoration, there we go. So he's a perfect person to talk tonight. We're competing with a little bit of light for the first day also. I apologize if this screen's going to be a little bit light to start with. We're entering some lights off to get better viewing. We have lots of videos, lots of pictures tonight to share. And of course, John will be doing lots of talking. So, John, you're on. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, being a restoration manager, hopefully you come to the table with a little experience, you know, previous experience working on, in our case, railroad cars. And when I got out, returned home from the Army in 2009 and retired, I went to work and started rebuilding some of the cars out in the yards and trying to be aggressive with it because they were falling apart. And Matt looked and asked me, "Well, would you like to be restoration manager? Would you like to be restoration manager?" It was basically, you know, "Well, I seem to be doing the job, so I might work. " [laughter] So here I am. But anyway, what I'm going to present this evening are things. One, I was asked if I'd be interested in presenting a movie, which was produced by the Historical Society's Video Division in the 1990s. I don't know exactly what year it was produced, but it was produced by the Video Division chairman, Ron Sturgill at the time. And it was also narrated by Ed Schofield. You know, it's a history of the Nevada County Narrate Railroad. Technical data, history data was provided by Tim O'Brien and Ken Yeo. Ken Yeo is sitting in the front seat here. And there's a video, actual video of the Nevada County Narrate Age in operation, you know, a train running on the track, I'd say in the late '30s. And these were taken by late Albert Phelps. And I would say, I'd say probably around '35. Anyway, so what I'm going to do is present that film. And then I'm going to also present a short clip, a three-and-a-half-minute clip, of us loading, number five, at Universal Studios, and then bringing it back home. I finally found this. It was lost for 25 years. I did this video. And we finally found it. And so I had recovered everything on it. But we took 45 minutes and brought it down to about three-and-a-half, just for this. And it's for the museum also, so they can do a loop, an information loop. And then I'm going to do an overview on most of the cars that we've worked on since 1984. And then I'm going to focus on three cars and go in more detail. And anybody who wants to ask questions, feel free. And we'll just go over there. Thank you. I'll turn your mic off. Anish and a thin air. The name Chicago Park is yours. And those who did stay found the land ideal for growing peaches, pears, and apples. And by 1891, we're commanding top prices in the east, the narrow gauge hauling into coal packs for transfer to Southern Pacific refrigeration cars. By 1907, after 32 years of operation, concerns were raised about the safety of the wooden trestles and occasional cave-ins at the U-Bet Tunnel. An ambitious rerouting took place between Chicago Park and Long Ravine. From Long Ravine, a steel bio-duck was built crossing a creek at Highway 40, followed by the new Bear River Bridge standing 170 feet 9 inches above the river. A third wooden bridge was added elevating the railroad through a marsh just high enough to cross over the Colfax Highway where the narrow gauge now entering Chicago Park from the south. And the travel distance to Colfax now shortened by nearly two miles. The station was moved from Orchard Springs to a new location near the intersection of Mt. Olive and lower Colfax roads behind the Chicago Park store. A water tank for the engines was installed, as was a fruit packing shed, where in 1931, enough Bartlett Pears and gross plums bearing the inscription grown in Nevada County, California, were shipped out on the narrow gauge to fill 50 full-size Pacific Fruit Express cars in Colfax, bound for eastern and option export markets. The fruit shed endured to this day, used for many years as a cabinet shop. The new Bear Bridge stood intact until 1963, when it was ceremoniously demolished for construction of the Rawlins Lake Dam. From Chicago Park, the narrow gauge tracks parallel Highway 174, crossing them three times to the intersection of what is now Brunswick Road. Here in the vicinity of Lakewood Lane and Bear River Pines, a huge picnic grounds was set up complete with bandstands and dance platforms. For many years, beginning in spring, every available flat car would be rounded up and benches and canopies installed. Small picnic trains would be assembled in Nevada City and Colfax, carrying jubilant locals to the area for large celebrations, sanctioned by Sunday schools, the minor union, Knights of Pythias, and many other organizations. It was a proud tradition, with usually 1,500 to 2,000 in attendance. Here, near the location of U-Bett Road and the highway was the Buena Vista station. For many years, a lumber loading site for local sawmills later served as a section house for railroad maintenance crews. After crossing the highway, the tracks entered Paredale and the station name for the Hatton family who operated a sawmill here for many years. Following Paredale Road and crossing the highway again here at North Day Road, which itself is the railroad bed, the 2,850-foot summit here at Cedar Crest was the highest point on the railroad before ascending down the long Brunswick Road and through the mine, which is the present site of the abandoned Bohemia Sawmill. From here, the line crossed, then followed Bennett Street to the Grass Valley Depot, which featured a large station, great house, and complete servicing facilities for locomotives and cars. The station was destroyed by fire in 1940, while some of the remaining structures survived intact until 1984. Today, all the remaining, other foundations of the machine and blacksmith shops atop the huge retaining wall built in 1875, an energetic and influential man, was John F. Kitter. Having surveyed, engineered, or constructed 15 other railroads across the U. S. , John and his wife Sarah were overtaken with the beauty and the prosperity of the county and decided to settle permanently. He became the railroad's first superintendent, then second president in 1884 after Coleman. Having immense pride in the narrow gauge, the couple built the palatial mansion on the edge of the Grass Valley Yards, which rapidly became the social center of town. Under Kitter's reign, railroad operations were first class, highly polished and always on time. Complications from diabetes led to his death in 1901, with his shares in the railroad passing on to his wife Sarah, who became the first woman railroad president in the United States, and arguably the world. For 12 years, Sarah improved and maintained the narrow gauge as a showpiece of its kind. There wasn't a financial center in all of San Francisco who hadn't heard of her having deep admiration for her ability to accomplish so much in a job traditionally reserved for men. From Grass Valley, the tracks followed Idaho, Maryland Road, past the mine, crossing Brunswick Road once again, then entering Loma Rica Ranch. A steady climb up town top brought the line to the tunnel through the ridge separating the Glenbrook Basin from Nevada City. The tunnel was excavated in 1963 for construction of the Golden Center Freeway, and site is marked today with a banner lava cop overcrossing. For many years, the Glenbrook Basin was the site of the district fairgrounds, which featured horse racing, dancing, auto racing, as well as swimming, boating, and ice skating on nearby Lake Olympia. The narrow gauge built a 2800 foot spur track to the area in 1887, providing practical transportation of circuses, minstrel shows, and picnic trains. Grass Valley and Nevada City were distinctly differing communities in those days, particularly when it came to politics. Glenbrook was considered neutral territory, and a good time was generally head by all. However, fistic encounters did occasionally occur, especially when a girl from one town fell in love with a guy from the other. Few traces remain today of the former Glenbrook. Only the trapeze, which was used to hurl the young and the old into the Lake Olympia, is still standing. From the tunnel at Townesock, the narrow gauge descended past Pittsburgh Mine, then along Goldfatt Road, crossing the last wooden trestle here before entering Nevada City along what is now Railroad Avenue. The tracks ended here with the corner of Sacramento and Adams Street, where the last spike made of highly polished steel was driven on a rainy May 20th, 1876, in a ceremony that may have rivaled promontory. This 13 star flag, along with hundreds of roses and other decorations adorn the front of engine number one on that day, and is now proudly displayed at the Video History Museum at Grass Valley's Memorial Park. From Nevada City, the narrow gauge indirectly served mining districts further north, hauling supplies from coal facts, which were placed on wagon trains bound for North Bloomfield, Downeyville, and North San Juan. Hydraulic mining was introduced here in 1852. As the easy gold was panned from the rivers and streams, miners turned their attention to the ancient riverbeds located above Nevada City, erecting high pressure water nozzles called monitors. These in turn were fed by mountain reservoir flumes and pipelines, generating tremendous pressure, washing away the hillsides at a rate of 50,000 tons per day into sluices where the gold could be separated from gravel. The runoff from these operations wreaked havoc with the farmers below, prompting a survey in 1878, which revealed that at least 18,000 acres of once-primed farmland along the Uva River had been buried under tons of debris. Finally, a court decision in 1884 brought an end to the hydraulic mining, resulting in the first economic setback from the narrow gauge. The Nevada City Depot survived intact until 1963, when it was rasped for construction of the Highway 20 and 49 freeway. During its 66-year life, the narrow gauge owned 11 locomotives, 9 steam, and 2 gas-powered. The first five burned cordwood for fuel until around 1906, when they were converted to oil burners as wood was becoming costly and in short supply. Undoubtedly, the most famous was engine number five. After serving the narrow gauge for 41 years, she was sold to Universal Studios for use in the John Wayne movie "The Spoilers. " After she starred in a maraud of TV westerns including the Virginian, Alias Smith & Jones, and many more before being relegated to Universal's backlot in 1968, a valiant effort from the Nevada County Historical Society's Transportation Museum Division resulted in her return in 1985. Cosmetically restored for now, she is the proud centerpiece of the museum's display at the northern Queen Inn in Nevada City. Railroad cars included 14 passenger coaches, 60 boxcars, 65 flatcars, 7 gondolas, 20 tank cars, 2 snowcloths, and 1 caboose. A replica of this caboose was built by the museum's division chairman, John Christensen, and is also on display at the northern Queen, as is tank car number 187, looking good as she did in the early 1930s. Will the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad ever run again in the minds of those who still remember? And to those who love history and railroad, the old never come, never go will always be a working line. My name is Ed Schofield, and on behalf of the Nevada County Historical Society and the Grass Valley Video History Museum, I hope you've enjoyed the ride. (lively music) - So we're gonna jump. (lively music) (laughing) (laughing) (lively music) - I thought that was a, well then. (lively music) I thought for a time. (laughing) And next, Dan's loading up the next film. And this one is at Universal Studios. It begins at Robin September. Loading up the truck to the trip down south of Universal and then you'll see it's at Universal. Actually doing the load up on the engine and then pressing it back on. A little music. (laughing) And a little narration. (lively music) On the road. The day began with a transportation museum work group preparing a truck for the trip down to Universal Studios in Southern California during May of 1985. (lively music) On the road. The day begins with a transportation museum work group preparing a truck for the trip down to Universal Studios in Southern California during May of 1985. (lively music) On the road. The day begins with a transportation museum work group preparing a truck for the trip down to Universal Studios in Southern California during May of 1985. Now at Universal Studios, the work group begins the process of loading engine five onto the Robin September load way truck for the trip back home. (lively music) (muffled talking) (muffled talking) Once engine five is been set to loaded, the work group pauses for a photo opportunity by the studio photographer. (muffled talking) (muffled talking) (muffled talking) Engine five is now on the road again. Makes speed up the interstate bike rate by Fort Nevada County. (muffled talking) (muffled talking) (muffled talking) (muffled talking) ♪ Rollin' again ♪ ♪ Like a band of kisses ♪ ♪ We go down the highway ♪ ♪ We're the best of friends ♪ ♪ And it's just in that the world ♪ ♪ We turn our way ♪ ♪ Turn our way ♪ Arriving in Sacramento, engine five pulled into the Southern Pacific looking loaded work yard for a little cleaning before a ride in home. (muffled talking) (muffled talking) (muffled talking) Now back in Nevada City, engine five is delivered to the city public work yard where intensive restoration work will proceed over the next year. (muffled talking) (muffled talking) (muffled talking) Now, 26 years later, engine five listens to his fans in the new home she has spawned in the Vaticanian-era gauge railroad mission located in Nevada City, California. ♪ Turn our way ♪ ♪ It's on the road again ♪ ♪ Just can't wait to get on the road again ♪ ♪ But why my love is making music for my friends ♪ ♪ It's not easy to get on the road again ♪ - All right. (audience applauding) - This is the first public showing of the day. (audience laughing) - Glad you like it. - Who did the music? - Pardon me? - Who did the music? - Well, that's Willie Nelson. - I was told it was entirely legal. (audience laughing) - So we're gonna go ahead and get the slides set up. (audience chattering) - Okay, and here we go. Here we go. And as it states up here, this is an outline of the Vaticanian-era gauge museum railroad car rebuilding program. We started on our first car in 1984, which was the coach, but we didn't get very far, mainly because soon thereafter we got the locomotive. So one thing that occurred early on the first six months was we were trying to decide what kind of group we were gonna be. We weren't really clear what our direction was gonna be. At that time it was the vice chairman and the acquisition officer for the group. So one thing we wanted to do was have some sort of portable facility like a railroad car, where we could put in display collectibles and information. And so I decided on my own to build a boost, a replica of the Vatican-era gauge caboose. My wife was very excited about that, I wanted to know. (audience laughing) 'Cause I built it in the front yard. (audience laughing) Luckily we had two acres, so I would pick front yard. But anyway, this is a photograph of the original caboose. This caboose was the only caboose on the Vatican-era gauge and it was built around 1939 by the railroad's master mechanic, Johnny Nolan. The reason it was built was in the mid-30s, the railroad applied to suspend hash for service because a lot of the hash for service was being taken over by buses and cars at the time. So they got out of the pasture business. But they were using a couple of coaches or a combine as a caboose. And as these cars began to wear out, Johnny Nolan decided to build a boost. So as far as I know, this was probably the last new car built on the Nevada County narrow gauge before it ceased to operate around 1941. So anyway, I'm gonna go into a detailed talk on the caboose. I'm gonna just kinda go through and show you two slides and then finish product and go on to the next slide. Go on to the Vatican-era gauge engine number five and her tender. Once the locomotive arrived in Nevada City, we aggressively started restoring these cars. Here's the engine five, probably shortly after she came from Lake Tahoe, a transportation company, and she's still got her wood burner stack on, and she's got the side boards for the timber, not an oil burner yet. And then here she is in the later years in the 30s. What we found out as we started restoration on this locomotive and her tender, her tender here, of course, was number five's original tender, and then this one, after we cleaned the paint off, sandblasted and whatnot, we found that it was Nevada County number three's tender. So here's number five. What happened at Universal Studios is they converted the locomotive some years later to, they built a new boiler, had it rebuilt, and for a quick fire system, and they built a new tender for it and set the old one aside, and it pretty much disappeared except for the original tank and oil tank and the couplers and of course the trucks. So this is a studio built tender. Here's a top shot looking down at it, with compressors and smoke generators, and who knows what else. As we did some exploring in the back lot, we found the original tender on blocks, so it was a good find. So that was a genesis for restoring the tender back to its original configuration. And here's the tender being framed up, and what we had to do is we went to the California State Railroad Museum, we looked at the tender behind a similar locomotive in the museum, the Sonoma, but also got plans from the railroad museum, and were able to reconstruct fairly accurately the original tender. Oops, excuse me. We had to also fabricate large steel gussets. This guy got in the way, I'm sorry, but it was the only picture I had looking straight down at it, and you can see all the work there was to this small frame. It was quite heavy duty, heavy built, and intricate. And then there was the finished result, so we had to rush to get it ready for the bicentennial. And here we have the tender on Railroad Avenue. So anyway, any questions? - The green paint versus the black, what's in there? - The green paint, you know, there was stories that in the later years, in the 30s that I believe might have been number nine, or they tried out a green paint scheme on one of the locomotives, and we tried something different, you know, but it didn't last long, it ended up being, (laughter) 'cause it gets serious, painted black. Anyway, pushing on, Nevada County Railroad Gage, Nevada County Railroad Gage, Railroad Tank Car 187. This car, we had to actually build, we had the tank, there were two tanks over at the jerk of oil and grass valley that had been set aside, there was a siding there at one time, and so these tanks were owned by Union Oil Company, and they just took them off the cars, and put them on these blocks, and that's where they set until the 80s, at least this one set. This one was just recently moved, but the other tank that we used, we moved it around '85, '86, on that side. So we didn't have a black car for it, and so we had to research, well, what was under this tank? If we want to do accurate restoration, you gotta do a little research and find out what exactly, you know, you're gonna put your tanks on. So what we found was, Flat Car 187 was a former Florence and Cripple Creek railroad flat car, and Florence and Cripple Creek was ran outside of Denver, Colorado, up in the hills, and up there, and then this equipment ended up on, later after 1915, ended up on the Nevada-California Oregon railroad, and then later ended up on the Nevada County narrow-gating railroad, so it was another known man. The original car got scrapped, but we did, we built this car using American car foundry plants, for Florence and Cripple Creek, what we could find, and also we had a Florence and Cripple Creek box car, which had the same type of all-metal bolsters, and this was an expensive part of the car, and fortunately, where we built this car was right next to the blacksmith shop, black parts, so he produced, he made and produced all these parts, metal parts for the car right beside the shop there, and then we just put it together. Did that of you again? (audience laughs) I think so. Here's the tank, and this is the tank after we sandblasted, and then of course, I was gonna go do a more extended review of this in a few minutes, but as you can see, we found original numbers, we found date stamps here and up on the dome, but this tank was built in 1888, so it's an old piece of equipment, and then here's the tank after the flasks are completed and the tank is completed, and the flasks are completed, and the tank's back on, not totally completed here, later, ladders were added and some other hardware. Okay, and here's, this is box car 142 we named it, Nevada County Airgate Railroad box car 142, the railroad had over a dozen of these cars that they got, again from Florence and Cripple Creek, Florence and Cripple Creek to Nevada, California, Oregon outside Reno, and then a lot of these cars ended up down on the Southern Pacific narrow gauge railroad, and they were kind of like nomads, and then the Nevada County narrow gauge picked up a bunch of these cars, so the car we got, here it is down in Southern California on the Southern Pacific narrow gauge as their car 26, originally it was Florence and Cripple Creek 507, and then NCO 26 and SP26. This is one of the Nevada County narrow gauge cars that had the same group of cars, Florence and Cripple Creek bought, had built 200 of these cars, and there's actually only two of them surviving intact that I'm aware of, and ours the 507, and then the 588, which I showed you a picture of, which is at Golden Colorado, at the out there railroad museum. With this car, the difference I think between those two cars is our car was pretty much 100% restored. Here's the car at Universal Studios, and it was used for many years. It was bought from the Southern Pacific narrow gauge about 1955, along with four Southern Pacific narrow gauge black cars, and those black cars were used. They built them into studio coaches. And here's the car over in Pinewoods in Nevada City after it had been moved from Universal Studios, and this would probably around '87, I would say. And then here's the car, it actually had been reframed. The car had been taken completely down. Actually, Kenio was the lead on this car, and the car had to be completely taken down, and lateral seals, the long seals were bad on both sides, so it was taken completely down, the seals, the trucks were taken out from under it, the trucks were completely taken apart, and put back together, painted, sandblasted, painted, and put back together. So this job, this was done while we were still over at the Northern Queen, and we worked out of the tool car, this West Side tool car, as our little shop, and it took three years to rebuild. But it turned out to be a beautiful car, and it was taken back to, I would say, as it was delivered. And what's interesting about this car is, these cars were built to Paul Goldor from Critical Creek down the city of Florence. This car's got, actually, most of the cars had six seals, long seals that run the length of the under body, that's what happened, eight. And then it also has a double roof. It has a metal roof, what they call a Murphy roof, and then the external roof. So this was what I call a third generation box car, it's pretty sophisticated and a very heavy duty box car. And then here's the car at the museum, and numbered as 142, which was an sequential number. The last number of this series of box cars that was on the back, and they're getting it with 140, so we renumbered at 142, although on the inside headers, we have the number 507 and number 26 in there. So the car doesn't forgive its search. (audience laughing) Okay, Westside Number Company. Utility flap 265, this was one of the first cars that we bought in about '86. And we used it a lot, we used it to help build, we put in about 1,000 feet of track initially on Pine Woods in Nevada City, trying to reconstruct the portion of that kind of navigation. This car was used to haul the rail and anything else, and you got it used a lot, and it was already kind of getting near the end of its life. (audience member speaking faintly) So, yeah, and this is originally, it was a logging flap with bunks, and then later converted to a utility flap, 24-foot long, and they would have huge logs loaded on. And this one, this right here, this picture is in Wallamy, near Samara. (footsteps tapping) Anyway, after serving (audience laughing) a hard life on the Nevada Canyon Arrow Gauge, it would, as we were discussing this, in regards to White Pine, and how these, they used White Pine on these cars down south, 'cause that's what they had, and so it tends to rot a lot easier than the Douglas fir, which is to build it. So, the car pretty much was collapsed. We barely got it to this spot, and then we took the long seals, remaining long seals off, and then I just proceeded to build it in place, (audience laughing) and then built new body bolsters for it, and then I've got new long seals, and here we're cutting the notches for it, and here are the metal plates. These cars had metal support plates for the draft here, seals, so they wouldn't get torn out because of all the weight they were hauling. And then here's, what are we doing on time? Here's the car, seen reconstructed, and decked, and there's the car with, it has a simple flat with a single decking, and then the back, with the building flat, with what they call the H-pattern decking on it, so you could put heavy equipment or trackers on it, and haul those out of the woods. So, this car is on display, I think, in the back. We have a lot of Westside Lumber Company equipment, and because of that, we like to focus on the logging railroads. There are a lot of logging railroads in Nevada County, Beers and Smart, Full Brothers, out in the Quilbark Mills, out in the truck heat, and they all use pretty much this, in the early days, use this standard flat. And here's another flat, just like it, 203, which is on its way out. Gondola 10, this is another Westside car. Originally it was a tank car in the 1930s, and it was converted to a Gondola in 1957, and later, by the railroad, it was converted to a Tersion car, and a Glendale of a Taco Bell, a lot of the operation, and turned into a tourist railroad. And here's a picture of it as a Gondola, and here's an earlier picture of it when it was actually a tank car. And then, here's a photo of it as a Scursion car, well, over at the Northern Queen, and they had put seats in it, and why not, here we were doing a repair on again. Here's the car in the shop, already being framed up on sales again, and it's a 33-foot car, a lot longer than the other one, so it could have a lot of space. - John, are those the timber's rooms in the undercut, especially for you for the long? - There was, like this one here, that was one of the timber's, that was donated in the cut by Star Lumber, and a couple of those were, I think, three of them, and I had to order three more, we had them stored under our deck. And there's a car with the uprights, and then there it is with its new sides, and that car is currently on display. And we're going to get another coat of paint and put the numbers on it, just now, probably next month. This is. . . Okay, let's try that little sequence. Okay, and this is. . . - How am I doing? - Time-wise, Dan? - We go? (audience laughs) - First folder? - Oh, well, yeah, okay. Here's something to say, I'm getting a little bit, this is the one I'm working on right now, and this car was also a universal car, bought in 1955, and that's what it looked like when it was a working car, and then, oops, that's, hmm, oh, there we are. And then here's what it looked like, that pine was after we'd hauled it home, and it had been pretty much stripped down, there was much left of it. And then here's an earlier rebuild of the car, in the early, I'd say mid-90s, it was rebuilt down at the Northern Queen. And of course, a lot of the cars that were sitting down there for years, they were all along Gold Rush Creek, and the moisture, it was like 100% moisture on there, and they did a lot of damage. And so, this car was starting to sag on this end, over here on the break-in, and so, we gotta get this lumber off, and I need to evaluate it and see what the deal is. And I was hoping I was gonna be able to do some slicing, and I started to, but as I got more into it, you can see the dry rot here, and how the end seal fell apart, and the draft gear seals, they were made of dug, these, the original draft gear seals were made of oak, and these were dug fir, and they just went, and they couldn't hold the coupler. So here's the car, again, another frame, and heavy duty lateral seals, five by eight cams, 30 foot, so we got those out of Dittlesburg, and then here's the car being decked up. And then, Mark's car, the other West Side car, they would haul these out to the camps, or logging camps, and they'd be full of tools, and parts, and whatnot, whatever they, 'cause they're gonna need when they're out in the boonies, and they had two of 'em. We have the two side window car that you see here. Glenville bought the operation, they turned the car into like a, it was for the contractors, with all the windows, and they had a little table in the back, and they rolled the plans out, and whatever they wanted to do, but that's how we, that sort of looked like when we got it. But what we're doing is we're taking it back to how it operated on the West Side Lumber Company, and plus we're gonna put the bins, tool bins back in the car, and here it is, windows taken out. The frame work, original framework was there, so the, you know, the windows originally were, so that was the difficult figure out. And the back end, we started to have a lot of dry rock bombs. Dan, our gentleman who's working on his car, has a big idea to take the whole land off, and go get right down into the seal, clean everything out, and start putting it back together with the original five doors. And we used the original wood to build those doors, so it's got some of this original. The siding on it. So, and that's, here's a model of the car, built by a gentleman, McAlamrie, an 80 girl, and that kind of shows you what it looks like, you know, the bins, and that's what it looked like when we completed. And it's just waiting for us, we did build our own siding in the building, set up the bits and the augers and whatnot, and to do the special siding, it would have cost $4,000, we had purchased this siding, you know, so we got just standard siding in the middle of the ourselves. (audience laughing) We saved a lot of money. And here's a side logging flat, 203, with logging bumps, and that was a car, it was also turned into an excursion car, this one here, and it ended up on the railroad, looking like this, and it started to die in place, and we finally took it apart, because it was before it fell on Sunday, and it was coming down, it looked like a hazard, and then this is pretty much what it looks like right now, it's in the process of being dismantled down below the shop, and the parts are gonna be stored away, hopefully this will be the winter project, it'll be a fairly simple project, and so what I wanted to do was put the original steel bumps back on this car, so it'll be different from the other. And then here, Lake Tahoe Railway, box car number four, this car was something I had been looking for over five years, and we located one, and did some horse trading with cars in Colorado group, we swapped, we gave them a pair of trucks, they got the car from a rancher, the car body, there it is, on the ranch alongside another SD box car, and they swapped ties, the ranch and saddle tape ties for it, and then we swapped them a set of trucks for the body. This car started its life, it was built by J. R. Hannon in San Francisco, and we started to build one of the, there was another company that recently went out of business, and so then he started building some of these small cars, and this one was built really for the Tonopah Railroad in Tonopah, Nevada, and then about a year later, they Santa Gage the Tonopah, and then this one and its three sister cars went to Lake Tahoe Railway and Transportation, which was essentially a tourist railroad built on trucking to Tahoe City, and these would act like baggage cars behind the locomotive, and anyway, we're working on that car, starting to do some repairs. This is the car we just moved on site a couple of weeks ago, this is originally the Slang Lumber Company number one, the boot is number one, out of Oroville, there were two built, and this one went down to, it went down to Foulome on the west side around 1940, and then we built a standard west side coupla, more squared coupla, and what we're gonna do is take this car back to Slang, and rebuild the Slang Coupla on it, and there's some other undercarriage things we have to do to change it back, and then this is west side number four, this is one that we also picked up, and that's something that will have to be restored to platforms on that one, and we also just picked up this eight ton. - Now are these all at the museum? - This one is getting ready to be moved to the museum, this is an eight ton Plymouth. - Where are you gonna have room for all these? - Well, a couple of the cars I'm dismantling, and I'm also going to make space on this play track for another car, and also, I'll explain it. (laughing) And that's about it. Now how do I get to the. . . (chattering) - Questions for you? - Yes. - How do you get these cars? They run narrow gauges all over the west, or how do you get these cars here? And second, are they all the same narrow gauge? They're all in three-foot gauge. The narrow gauge is anything other than standard gauge, which is about four foot nine. Our narrow gauge is 36 inches, which is inside the rail. We moved everything on rocks and tentress truck. - No, the early stuff that we didn't have trucks for, how did you get them here? How did you do predecessor? - Oh, well, they probably, like, they came from Nevada. - Yes. - Yeah, they put them on the southern Pacific, or central Pacific railroad, just to start on a standard gauge. - That's cool. - Yeah, and brought them over the hill. - Oh, then what happened? But anyway, I was talking about building this car in '84, and what we had to do is, I didn't have a whole lot of information. I had photos on different angles of the car. I also had Herman Darst pictures, which I could scale out, and he diagrammed this particular car to get to it. And then he out, and then here's the temperatures. I got these from Yuba River Lumber. They were excess and they were the right size, like five by eights. And had a little track underneath it, and that's the way I went. (audience laughs) - Yeah, there I am, framing it up. See, this is my first attempt at full scale modeling. I have a model builder. (audience laughs) When you're trying to build a detailed model like this, and there's a lot more to it, that meets the eye. You learn as you go. And a couple of shots, a little dark, sorry. And fortunately, when I got the deck and built, an acquaintance came along, Herman Darst, who was a railroad illustrator, and he had this diagram of the interior of the caboose, and he had gotten it from Johnny Naughan, who was a massive mechanic of the railroad who built the original caboose. So I really lucked out, because who knows what it would have looked like. (audience laughs) It would probably look like house framing, I don't know. But anyway, I didn't have any other cars to look at, and there wasn't anything here in the county. Here's a diagram of the air rate system, a standard air rate system on a car, used with a Westinghouse, just so you know what it looks like. That part you're going on, we say, whoop, dark, sorry. Smaller picture, car, hand framed. Now, you ask, where'd I get the wheels? Well, or the trucks, and well, this is a Westside block car, which was on, it was on its last legs or wheels, and so I bought this down at Flommy, and I disassembled it. And then I took the trucks home, along with all the hardware. And here we are rolling the trucks. Oh, probably one and a half pounds. - You just picked it up, so you can see it. (audience laughs) - Yeah, so we got both cars, and this car here, we still have all the parts for, and the trucks and everything, so someday that could be a project. Maybe for another restoration, I don't know. Anyway, here's the caboose again, and my dad's in my neighborhood, we're out of the tractor, so he helped me move 'em, drag 'em, front and rear, and then, of course, I chained everything, I had to chain that thing up, 'cause I had a little jacket up, I, (laughs) hit the wheels under it. And so, this is not restoration, this is recreation, or recreation. - Now these are at your house? - Yeah, these are at my house. That way, my wife can keep an eye on it. (audience laughs) She knew where I was at. (audience laughs) Yeah, pretty, pretty gutsy, I'm gonna have to tell the dad. (audience laughs) And then, you know, I went through a wet winter, here we are, the siding going on. There's my son, he's fully grown now. (audience laughs) Graduate to college, (audience laughs) graduate to college. There's a carving frame, I mean, siding on it. Fortunately, I got some nice, clear siding from BNC, they had some excess stuff up in their attic, and they sold it to me for a nice price. Son of a good man, yeah. (audience laughs) Yeah, yeah. It turned into a playout, so I was harming, 'cause he helped me with it, some of the information. He was a skinny guy like I was back then. (audience laughs) And then, here we are, build the door, put them together, interior. And then, another interesting thing is, someone came up with the original stencil. It was a metal stencil, and it sang on the wall in the interior of the museum. And it originally had come out of the Grass Valley Depot shop, and somebody had taken home, found out they had it, so we did some horse trading for it, and then we were able to actually put the original tracings on the caboose, the Italian air gauge. I was real happy to see that. So it was the first time, you know, it had the Herald in that caboose, yeah. Getting the anseals on, doors, a lot of work. (audience laughs) Stick to the small stuff. (audience laughs) And then the steps. Then I decided, I think later, that my anseals were too small, so I put the ones on. There the hardware is starting to go on. Here's my super body. Couple of them. - You have to build the hardware or what? - What I did is I drew out a plan for him, you know, just by looking at the original caboose, and I scaled it out, and then I took it to Smoky Smith, who owned Black Bart's, and then he would actually make these parts for me. Yeah, that's the on my paper. It's my wife, she's still barking. (audience laughs) And then here's the boost, we're getting ready to move it. We're gonna take it off the property, and it was gonna go to Colfax, the railroad. So here we are, moving it, laying track and moving it forward. Sorry, the picture. I don't know how he got that truck up there and turned around. You know, that big little boy. - Who's driving? - Could've been Clay Chase, probably was. That's most of our driving, there's my neighbor in practice, and he helped me open that. This is kinda crazy stuff we do all the time. This is one gym, you know. (audience laughs) And there it is on the truck, and then there we are at the Colfax, one of the Northwest Pacific caboose that's on display there. - Oh yeah, thank you, thank you, John. - 1986, well, this was 1986, and of course, there was still hardware, the apply and a few other things. That came a little later. Got the lanterns for it, the real deals. And there it is, the Northern Queen, this was some publicity shots we had taken, and actually got the engine tender, and the tank cart and caboose all lined up, and then we moved them around. Not, fortunately, number five was not steamed up. But it looks nice. This is all with the Northern Queen. - Yeah. - So that's it for that. I think I'll probably run out of time. - Probably run out of time. (audience applauds) - Okay. (audience chattering) - Welcome everybody. This is the May presentation, we have a great speaker tonight. A lot of introductions momentarily on that. First of all, I'd like to have everybody show hands who planted their garden on Mother's Day like 90, I think. (audience laughs) It's June 1st, right? - Yeah, June 1st. - Jordan, welcome tonight. A few announcements, little business news. First of all, I'm pleased to report that we've been working on this well over a year. The Circle Society is in the process of setting up an endowment. So those of you who do that feel so inclined to perhaps leave something in memory of the Circle Society, or museum, or division, we have now the capability of doing that. We're aligning with the Sacramento Community Foundation, and as soon as we created Western Nevada County, our community foundation, which will allow us to accept funds, and those funds will be there forever and ever. And the Circle Society will be the beneficiary of income generated from those investments. So I've come to an exciting new phase of the society. I'm really pleased to announce that tonight. Secondly, we have the flea market coming up. Rick wants to look forward and tell us about that. - Well, I hope everybody's signed up and ready to roll. And anybody that planted before Memorial Day, you aren't locals, you haven't made your own. (audience laughing) One thing I would like to say is everything's kind of rolling pretty well, and it seems like signups for our booths have been a little slow due to weather. Everybody's wondering if winter's gonna ever end, once again with the planning. But everything, I've gotten four or five calls a day, they're buying multiple spaces, so it looks like it should be a wing ding. For those that don't know, Rita has a booth that she is donating stuff, correct, back to the Historical Society. So if you have some items-- - I think we'll walk in. (audience laughing) - Fear not, bring it by, and we can get rid of it. Also, if you got a chance for lunch, you're gonna have a great pulled pork, and a chicken thing going on, and the barbecue sauce, it was made by this little fat boy, and I do like to eat, so you know it's pretty tasty, so come on by. And we'd like to see as many people participate as possible. I was over today setting up, and people drive by, and stopped in, and it looks like we're really gonna get some generation out of this, and it might be a really neat thing. So I hope I see you all. It's Saturday, and it'll start at eight o'clock in the morning, and if you want a booth, you can set up at six a. m. , and we'll go to four in the afternoon. Show 'em the flyers. And we have flyers back here, if anybody wants to. See the beach parking lot? It's real easy accessibility for us folks that don't walk real well. - And mission is-- - A dollar. Which goes to the association, and we've got a historical, society has a little booth there, we're gonna start to generate some information in the public as far as signups, how to become a member, how to participate with us, along with that, railroad museums, doing a little display there. North Star Mine, I understand, is, I understand that also the union's gonna be there, because we worked for a little sidebar deal to just count our advertising, so all that's gonna be is you enter, and it'll be a real neat little event, and I really urge everyone to participate. The phone calls I'm getting are, how come we're not doing this more often? Grass Valley Deetsis, so it's really gonna be fun. - Thank you. - Thank you. - Rick's our volunteer event chair for this, and I think the Firehouse Museum is also gonna have a table. - I believe that. I know, you have some walling to talk about. - So be like me, I have stuff in your rib, so I'm gonna take it down, and I'm setting for you, divide it between the circles, and the Firehouse Museum. Good chance for you to clean out the garage and take it to benefit by it. - That's right, don't sell at all. And if you don't have anything to do, come on, we'll give you a job. (audience laughs) Saturday is also a museum day, do you think everyone talks about that? Any museum directors share one about the museum? Did anyone have one? So he has grandkids' kids, right up there into two of the museums, right? She speaks less. (audience laughs) - My flyer's out in the car. But all the museums, plus the Odd Bellas Hall, and all the art and memory of the old museum day, and the 30-day museum, which was here, and it's to encourage people to visit all the museums, and of course, all the museums are pretty much. And we're gonna do a team meeting, and the down at Firehouse Grass Valley Museum, Norah Baker Over Museum, Norah Starr Mime Museum, and Odd Bellas Hall. Now, what we're encouraging is children to come. We have nurses in all the schools, in our area here, and we have quizzes for them, prizes for them, and to encourage them to get an interest in our local history. So it's a really nice day, and people can go from our museum to the library. - I think it's definitely to bring recognition to some of our volunteers, because the school district helped me out here kind of drop this repair, and we picked it up. And some of our volunteers helped make this happen again this year. - I'm a member of the Utah Honor Railroad Museum, who's been a part of taking care of all of this. - Otherwise, we're coming by the wayside, and it's a great opportunity for youth in the United States. Thank you, ma'am, I appreciate that. Before you sit down, we also, when we don't sell the flame market on Saturday, we're gonna take over the railroad museum on June 4th, because they're having their own yard sales. - Our yard sales. (audience laughing) - But you have flat or sold going through the railroad museum. - June 4th at the museum, June 4th. And if you wanna donate some things to our museum sale, we'd love to have a debate before. And we love it if you're the president, we know that we promise a lot. But it helps our, all of our opportunities there. Thank you. - Thank you, Dr. Holter. I didn't announce who I am or do, so I'm Daniel Ketchum, this is Carol Jodhavar. She's our vice president and president of the Circle Society. Carol has an announcement for us. - Well, I just wanted me to ask you, if you have some information of Chinese history, say if you're here to contribute and listen to Phil, you would like any information you have. And there's some flyers with some information. And he went to get a book, and he's written a couple books in the Chinese industry. And those will be part of the raffle tonight. - Oh, the raffle, excellent, excellent. So have you all bought your raffle tickets? Great raffle prize tonight. Raffle proceeds do help pass the opposite. We're currently here tonight, so we appreciate your participation in that. We're also looking for docents. If you have some excellent time and would like to be more involved in the Circle Society, all the museums and the visions have, I have needs for docents. They offer training in flexible hours and great pay. So, if you have interest talking about history in the right direction or you're interested in life. We also like to thank Matt and Justin. Okay, that helped us with the refreshments tonight. We want to thank A. Connor and Christy Teague for helping us with the raffle prize tonight. Thank you very much. Justin, as usual, helps us with the room facility and brings some temperatures. Let's see, I think that's about it. Any questions, announcements of audience? The business items? I'd like to introduce Lizette, is that correct? She's a docent at the Empire Mine. I've asked her to introduce our speaker tonight and she's well-equipped to be a speaker. So, thank you very much. - Thanks, Dan. Well, I'm very pleased to be here. I know Phillip is too. Phillip and I met at the Empire Mine on the docent there. And this is the grandson of Fu Seng of Yang, in the Gung-Jin, who came over from China. And when the borns first began the mine. And Phillip's father, George, was the gardener at the Empire Mine. And so he's gonna talk tonight and show us lots of wonderful pictures. I want to remind you that the miners picnic comes up in July and Phillip and I will be there at his homestead giving tours and talking about the old days. So, Phillip, come on up. (audience applauds) - My fellow young and my dad came from Guangdong Province, Southern China, back about the 1916 time frame. And granddad built a little cabinet behind the Empire Mine, around the turn of the century, the 1900s. It's right behind the mill, about 200 yards, is a building that my granddad built in the early days. And we had seven kids in our family that grew up at that cabinet. This was taken at the top of the Empire Mine head frame. This was about 1952. I had a little brownie box camera and planted the top of that frame and took a picture. And luckily, it fell off. (audience laughs) The way it looked back in the '50s, the mill was operating and the tramway, I guess it must have never been cars, they brought the Goldie Cross probably to the office and still wouldn't go away for shipping processing. But there was different activities and things going on at that time. It was going full steam in the mill, so it was very noisy. The Empire Mine was bought by a green-born senior back in 1869. And five years later, he had accidentally shot himself and he thought it was suicide, but they later confirmed it might have been just accidental. He would carry a revolver with him when he delivered the payroll to the office and he had dismissed the West Club, the Wells Fargo delivery. So when he had the pistol with him, he made sure that nobody grabbed the cash. But they thought that was because of his death. He played around with the pistol all the time. (audience laughs) Welding and the different shops in the foreground, the machine shop, the welding shops in the middle. They had a weather station right where the hydraulic nozzle is at the center of the outfield. And that was also a fire hydrant area where the nozzle could shoot water in all directions, clear to the office and clear to the shops. So it would protect against fires. Now, this one's the head frame of the wintertime. And it was a cold winter back in the '50s until it snowed. And the bins, the ore are halfway down. When the ore car came up, it had these U-shaped draw bars and the hoistmen could hear the bell signal and no one had stopped the car. When it was up at the lower bin or the upper bins, the draw bar pulled the car and the trap door would open and the load would get dumped into the bin. And the lower levels had a different type of machinery. It was a rock pressure. And some of the larger rocks would run through the rock pressure. And the railroad was underneath. It had the ore cars and they had different vehicles like trunks to haul the ore to the mill. So this was back in probably the middle '50s. Now the hoist room was kind of a sad place to work. When they pulled the ore cars out, one more car went down, one more car went up. It's like a counterbalancing operation. And the hoistmen, what he heard was the bells and lights go on and he had a whole bunch of levers and he had to pull back and forth to control the operation. There's thousands of feet of cable. It goes down into the mine. But this was an operation. We used to go in there when I worked with electricians. I was going to high school at the time. They go in and inspect all the equipment. And it was interesting when they operated. And this is a mill. Up at the top of the mill is a little area. They had a siren. They blew the siren in case of emergencies or what's wartime, they may have had the airway signals come out from the siren. And the electric shop that I worked in was in the upstairs machine shop on the left hand side. You can't see it in this one. But that had the stumps inside. And this is kind of a rarer ship. This was behind the machine shop. They had turned the ship down. It's all obliterated now and sealed. But this was probably one of the original headframes for the Empire of Heine. And that's just a little ways to go over the main headframe. This is the Empire Country Club back about, from the start of 1906. It was built and established by the Grass Valley Country Club people. I learned from the regenting. She was explaining this was the right up in the Historical Society, the Country Club money and people donated to have this built on mining company land. So the state park took over. It wasn't part of the permanent fixtures. So they had to make a special agreement with the Grass Valley people who really owned the Country Club. But there would be a trade. The state park would maintain and operate the building. But the Country Club could get a lifetime lease. So maybe they'd pay a dollar a year to use the facility. And then the state park would be responsible for maintenance. It needs some fixing because of the roof problems. This, I'm wondering how the south side collapsed. And right now there's a patio right where the bowling end used to be. And we sneak in that little window on the cross right in front of it and it was a two-lane bowling alley. And now it's only a half a bowling alley. But the rest of the building stayed about the same. It was designed by Willis Pope and built in about 1904. So tennis courts and there's a cocaine field and dining rooms and stuff. Things that are still intact. So when you visit the mine sometimes they have tours. And you can see, well, fixtures and things inside. I missed that. There should be one more. There's one more front view. Well this is a cabin behind the mill. There's a wing of a cabin that was part of the George Star Mansion. They called it Oford College. And that part on the left-hand side is part of the mansion that didn't get burnt. And that was my bedroom. My brothers had the beds and it was a real nice room. And it was partitioned off where my sister had part of it too. But they rolled up down the hill from the Star Mansion and these logs I guess to get it in place. So the structure was kind of funny shape because of the patchwork and different things added later on. But it's still there and during my escape it kind of displays in front. But it's behind the hill. Can you get your back to look for it? - So who lived there? - That was our place. Granddad, my dad's the kids. So this is from the Star Mansion. The George Star was heard by them part-line. He was a very educated superintendent. So they gave him this cottage. You see the foundations where they go through the park. And the trees are still there. The big trees now. But they up before got fired. And most of it got burned up. But some of it didn't. So one room they saved and they hauled it down to the cabin. And that was kind of the only remnant. - What caused the fire? - Pardon me? - What caused the fire? - Oh, they never had figured out that it had been already in a stove or it couldn't have been anything. They might have electricity in those days. Might have shortened out too. But they never did figure out what it caused. - Pardon me. 'Cause I scanned these pictures. I have a chance to study a bit more. - Okay, the focus. - Oh. - Let me take you back a bit. See that portion right there? - Yeah. - That. - What's part of it? - That's part of it. - There. - Oh. - I don't know what it's here. Right at the bottom. - It's a beautiful wallpaper on it. And gorgeous wood. And Philip tells me you felt like a king. - I don't know. - That's going to be an ambulance. - The curtains were the nicest part. They were going to drinks. Came out of any luxury palace or whatever. But it was a nice room. And it was a grand mall, grand dad. Grand dad went back to China and grand mall stayed. And she always had to fill out the maybe a registration card. And my mom didn't have to have one. My dad got citizenship back in the early days, I guess. When I got married she didn't need an A-Dang card. So this is probably when grand dad was back in South China. - What year was that? - Probably the 1900s. Could've been 1890. And they took a ship and came across the US. I think they had connections with the mine owners to get in because it takes a sponsor. If you didn't know anybody in California or anybody would sponsor you, it's not easy to get in unless it's not in the cover. - What was his position at the mine? Wasn't he a cook? - Yes, he was a cook and he did the gardening. And he worked different jobs. But maybe he got tired of California and just took off and went back home. So, and grand mall stayed. - How was it about grand mall? - Grand mall was really the old fashioned. She had the bob feet and she had all the old fashioned clothing and spoke the Cantonese and the very strip. That's the way it was back in the old country. - Wasn't there something about it? - Kids and they couldn't mess around. - Being a drill sergeant with your kids? - Oh yeah, she was very very strict. - Did you get the vegetable garden going? - She would do vegetables. She had, you know, foot problems. She would be able to sit on kind of like a little box. It was like a powder box. The mines throughout all the old boxes are 50 pounds of glass and powder and cannabis sticks. So she used one of those boxes to sit on and she did the gardening. So there's all kinds of strawberries and tomatoes and all kinds of different things. We gave away lots of the crop to people that came by to the cabin. 'Cause the miners trail started at the Empire Mill area. And the low road everybody used as part of the miners trail. So we had all these vegetables left over at the time. Somebody liked the vegetables that come around the trail. We just had a bag of vegetables. So everybody had to play. That's granddad probably before he left the country. He was probably homesick. And these are my older brothers and sisters. (audience laughing) They're in the 70s and 80s now. That was a typical family photo at that time. My dad had, I think it's like an old Dodge. This was before we bought the new car. It was a 41 Packard from Trump line downtown Grass Valley. And I remember the day we went in to buy the new car. Duck was one of the best cars. It was well in the back of the Chevy's and Ford's. The 41 Packard had a P-51 engine was used during World War II. And was licensed by Rolls Royce to get us for Packard to use in the car. And that thing purred like a cap when it ran. (audience laughing) It was just an outstanding vehicle. Very, very good. At that time, this was a cousin in a dad that was proud of his new vehicle. At that time, this was down there a car that car came as rich. My mom's a alien registration car. It was about 1924. She came to Cross. There was a 1927 date on it. But they had the Fudge Dames. They did her into the country. So she posed as her sister. And then got through immigration. When personating somebody else. But that was way back. And this was back in about 1962 or '63. My dad and this was kind of a portrait. They did these are some of my ancient books. That was important. They brought along with them when they came into the country. There's still copies of these. They're kind of historical journals and classroom books. And this is inside the cabin. This was about 1952. And I'm on the upper left. And I'm on the dad and the grandmother. And my brother George, she's a mixologist and a car owner. George on the bright side. We have wallpaper and all the conveniences in the cabin. We're comfortable. The rent was only $10 a month. (audience laughing) We're a chief living. This is a class of '56. So I graduated. - At high school. - And I'm here again. I'm on the dad and the kids. This photo has, on the left side is cousin Johnny. This gentleman right there. And he had stayed as a cousin for a few years at the cabin. And then cousin Drew, two ladies, stayed there for a little while. But John went back to San Francisco and started Tans restaurant on Grand Avenue. So Tans is still there on Grand Avenue. It caters to the VIP, the richer people and come into San Francisco. So all the vice presidents and anybody in dignitaries would go to Tans. So every time we'd go to San Francisco for visiting Ojani with a plan, so we're to the gold room upstairs. And then the back room, the gold leaf, all on the upper ceiling. Decorated like a cave's castle. And I mean the sort of painting dock and all the cats and stuff. Very nice. So I guess it's a fan to stay around the restaurant in San Francisco. But that picture was probably 1920s in each. And brother Frank, this was, when he was playing tennis, he had won some champion tennis tournaments. The swimming pool had frozen over. Turned out probably 400 miles. We took this picture on the swimming pool. Otherwise it'd be down the bottom. Now it's a reflecting pool. They seem to have, my kid's falling down. So it's only about 15 now. Regardless, I don't think they are saying they're here. This is 'cause Fred Yann went back to San Francisco. He worked out the mines here for a little while. Stayed up the cabin with my dad for quite a few years. Went to San Francisco and then came back. And he was probably working at the apart for three or four turns. And then he went back to San Francisco for good after a long. But he was visiting about, well, that's three or four months ago. He's in his 90s now. He has a lot of relatives enjoying the tour and they come down the ship. But he had the car by glass at that time. It was terrible. - Back at the beginning. - That is the beginning. There was one out of the four dropped out. Anyway, I brought back some of these artifacts that came out of the mine. They come out of the cabin. And these are original items that either my dad or granddad had used. This is a Bristol radio. It's built by the Navy and the way these operate. See, they call this a cat whisker. There's a Galena iron so far, Trisco. And on a Trisco, there's oscillation frequencies coming off. And by tuning it, you have to manipulate your cat whisker to the right spot on the Galena Trisco and you pick up radio stations. This was built by the Navy. Apparently, if they were in trouble, had no power, you can use earphones and an antenna. You can pick up radio signals. So the tune and the foot, the brown and the antenna make these terminals. And it's got the frequency calibrations here. So you heard it by the signal SOS. Tough luck 'cause they don't have the power if they're transmitted to help us. So this is what they use. The AirForm plug is a slow drive plug in the AirForms. - They're built in the back. They always, we used to listen to the Sacramento KFPK with the Trisco set. And it was real clear up here, what it needs, a lawnmower antenna and a good ground and just tune your cat whisker. And you had to pick around for a little while to pretty soon hear the frequency come up. There's oscillation of the Trisco in many frequencies and this was my chance that you could pick up the starboard signals. - Bill, did you ever work at a local radio station? - Well, I worked at, I didn't work at, the KGFN was a local station. But at that time, I think we were picking up Sacramento and better than KGFN and Grass Valley. (audience laughing) I don't know, maybe, I don't know, a thousand watts of power. And it was a little small station. A lot weaker than KNCO and the Norelites. Here is an example of a Ford headlight. Sometimes, I think they might have used a carbide type of a lens. But this is a kerosene canister and the wick, there's two little knobs, is turn up their light, they bring in the wick apart. And there's another one on the order light that's on the side. But later models, I think they put a lens in and they used a kind of like a kerosene carbide mix. And you have to dump water into a carbide lamp. This lamp is a typical carbide. You throw in kerosene carbide crystals into the canister. This is a water container with a little lever that lets the water drip on this little spout. And that goes into the canister and it creates a gas that's acetylene, like they said, like towards gas. And then you have to seal it up and make sure you don't line any matches. (audience laughing) And then you let the water, you know, start coming out the front nozzle with the acetylene and the strudler. And pretty soon the flame, if you put in lots of water under the solution, that flame will come out two or three inches long. Very, very bright, but be careful not to let the gases get a pretty explosion. So it's not too good to have it blow up. (audience laughing) - Yeah. - This was a artifact that was buried deep in one of the trunks. My granddad must have bought the Edison lamp back in the 1890s and 1900s. This isn't original. It's not a copy because now you can go on internet and buy these for 10, 12 bucks. But they're copies. Well, this has a tungsten filament. And if you lower the voltage enough on the input voltage, like 5 or 10 volts, it would last 100 years. They had one full sim burn for probably 100 years. And that is similar type bulb. Very, very dim, but it'll last. (audience laughing) And there's lots of samples of these type of bulbs. You can buy it on the market. Some have a fickering, like a vibrating filament. It looks like a candle. So they aren't very expensive. Put them in your own fashion living room in very decorative type places. But there was another panel. There was another tube I had from an old radio that had lost the ship. But these are the things left to issue during the Mars picnic. So we have all the artifacts from the cabin that were leftovers. And my dad was very inventive of our, he did things. He had a table saw driven with a belt that was attached to the rear end of a Dodge pickup. So you can run your belt by jogging up the truck and getting a rim and then the sardine would that way. That was the old timers cutting wood. (audience laughing) But he was a very, very inventive man. And very jolly. He did lots of gardening up the mine and propagated all the roses. Angie's slipper takes care of that. In the garden, back in the early days, I'd help my dad to mow the gardens and the lawns. And we had a lot of fun with swimming in the swimming pool when the boss wasn't there at the mansion. (audience laughing) There was even the model airplane flying behind the mansion. My brothers built all these planes that fly in a circle with U-control wires. And we start up those planes. You don't go in and down by the sand up. There was no sand there, we'd fly kites. And even though there's pollution products, the state had dropped off all the areas by the sand up. Like the sine and the mercury. And all these pollution products are down there. We used to go in and haul that sand by the truck loads. Use it for driveways and drop walls. And I'm still here, but still. (audience laughing) - Bill, tell us how long your father lived on the mine. - Well, he was there since when he was a kid. When he came over from southern China, it was around World War I, vintage timeframe. And he went to Union Hill School. Union Hill had a one-room schoolhouse. And he was still registered. They'd have reunions there once around. Looked on the register. Daddy's name's still there. He took care of the potbelly stove. When the weather was bad, it stoked up and threw in the wood and the potbelly stowed. But I had taken care of it. Some of the stoves at Country Club Clubhouse. And when I was going to high school, and I stoked up one stove a little too hot. I got the fireplace going in the main room. I got the little stoves going. The men's room stove was a potbelly stove down by the kitchen. And not doing things that had the flue vent clear on open position. And I threw all the wood in and started burning and burning and burning. And it started getting cherry red hot. Half of it, and the stove part was running across room about 12 feet. Luckily, it didn't catch anything on fire, but it was a sharp hit. (audience laughing) Boy, that's a hot fire. If that got away, there'd be no more Country Club. So it kind of scared me a while. So I kept the damper down on the stove. Didn't want to just tear up the place if you get on too hot. Like a blast furnace. And they were very, very unfriendly, unforgiving. But up on top of the hill, we'd have like a ski or a toboggan round between the mansion and the clubhouse, it was a nice hill. So we would take the sleds up to the top of the hill and slide down. So one winter, one of my brothers wanted to do a ski jump. So we made a little ski jump. And we had one sled, the first one that went on the hill, went clear up and came straight down and slid it, slid it, just separated. So I just put it more and patched it up again. Still have it for an antique. - I have a question. When you were born, it was still the Chinese Exclusion Act was still working. Did you experience any prejudice up in this area? - Well, we had good friends in hard places, I guess. There was never a problem. It was like the Bourne family and the Starr family were very close. So we knew all the mining people that came in from New York, like the dress on the building of William Bourne Jr. See, that's his name. It was every time a gentleman came into town, he would always visit my dad. And the Newmont people were very, very close to all the mining people, I guess, 'cause all that money there, millions of dollars worth of money. And Newmont was more than happy to help people out. And so my dad worked at the garden for over 40 years till the State Park took over. And they gave him a pension. And the last one, the final managers and everybody left and the State Park took over. So that was kind of rare because of hourly work and hardly ever got a pension. No retirement benefits at all. But it was an interesting stay when you were young chasing around Empire Mine. And my dad would show me all the big machines and all the mine workers there, they were kind of teasing me 'cause he was a little kid following the dad around, a big-staffed male or a big machine in the machine shop. And hey, dad, come back. (audience laughing) Wonder if you'd get killed by that. They had all the belts running at the time and the machines just moving like everybody was building. He put him in a very interesting time. - Well, the-- - Is it hard to work for Mr. Bourne? - Well, I didn't know the Bourne's by the time. Mr. Bourne passed away in 1935, '36. And I didn't come around to 1938, so he was before my time. But my dad knew the Bourne family and all the cooks and the helpers and the staff. They were very, very interesting people. The knobses, they would be friendly and courteous to my family and anybody else. So I think it was the money. They enjoyed making all that money the mines produced and the vegetables that the dad wrote. We had goats and turkeys and chickens and rabbits downtown. When dad would deliver the chickens, we'd have a plucking machine. He would build up these different things and process the chickens. So we had all these Rhode Island rats and we'd put them in the boiling water and all. And then after a while, the downtown restaurants like the first chickens. We'd haul all the chickens down to the Paris Valley. A place called the Valley Grill. And unfortunately, the Valley Grill, that was part of the town that burned up back in the '50s. It's rebuilt there on the court of Maine and Maryland now. But we'd haul all the chickens to them and enjoy those. Then when SPD came into town, we'd haul all the different things that SPD needed in their department, their coaches and vegetables. So it was a good time for everybody to enjoy helping out doing the work. - Was the Chinatown still in existence when you were being raised here? Was the Chinatown still vibrant when you were here? - It was long gone. - It was long gone, okay. - Yeah, the Chinatown tore out the, well they moved to Georgetown, the Mountain City. And must have been maybe early '40s. 'Cause I don't even remember it. It was always either, Ben Eber, Bennett and Steele had the industrial building for a while. There was a trucking company there. And that was back in '48. It was bogged on in the Chinatown. Everybody left, I guess. - They're killing it. - We've heard so much about the stamp mill noise. How did your family handle the noise level being so close to the mill? - Oh well, you get used to it. It's something that, like, even at an airport, you get used to the noise. I don't know if you have one here or not, but the stamp mill is when they run, the rumbles and the blasting rumbles too. But the mill was shut down at 330. And that was not to threaten the plays because of the pollution. Well, the mill workers did survive. They were lucky to reach 40 years of age. I mean, a lot of them just wiped out by that time. See, there's, it passes in mining, like, silicosis, black lung disease, and the blasting accidents. There was one case, one fellas telling me about the accident of a blasting activity they were doing. It was when you load up all the powder and the dynamite sticks into the holes and drill. And all these fuses come out and they come in from all directions. And there's a big bundle of fuses. And you have to light the fuses all at once because they didn't have the electric blasting at that time. So you got all these fuses to light and you got a car by the way and you start lighting all these fuses. And they look like they're all lit. So you take them off and later on, the explosion started blasting the rock off. But unfortunately, they're likely to have lit fuse in the chain and then suddenly, people would be working around there. Yeah, yeah. (mumbles) And then they switched to electric blasting as you will see. But there are cases where the cable would break and that's not good either. The cable has a north core of main car. It's a fast ride to the bottom of the shaft when the cable breaks. (audience laughs) And it's very unforgiving when the cable starts whipping down the main shaft and you want the other one to shoot. But there was a safety feature along the main shaft. You could grab for a safety cable, no car that held a man in it. We'd go down the shaft and right alongside, there was this big long cable that was connected to a switch and there was a series of these cables. And then they happened, they pull the cable and yank on it and then switch closer. That's a one bell signal to the hoistman to stop the car. That's when you have time to pull and grab the signal and make it stop. 'Cause they used the nine safety order bell signals and the series of signals tell the operator of the hoist what to do. So one bell signal means to stop everything from the accident or something's happening. Or else the horror car is right at the top of the hoist, the head frame and it's dumping the water. So a lot of things can happen when the mind is operated or the, kind of dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. And luckily when I worked there during the summers when I went to high school, we were just dismantling equipment and not renting in this school equipment, the old North Star, the North Star that scared me was being shut down. The North Star center line is near the fairgrounds and had a vertical shaft. And so we went down, do some work one day in the summer. It must be down over 1,500, 2,000 feet of cable. The car was a mad car and they ran down real slow. When it hits a level, we won't stop. Then the car tends to go up and down, oscillates a little foot and a half and you get off. (audience laughing) It's mousy. And the water coming down the shaft would be like a rainstorm. They were pumping the mind with the water. You had to have the raincoat and the hard hat and keep from being drenched by the water coming down the shaft. So other than that, I was pretty secure with doing my work. The old North Star passed the foot mansion. That one scared me a lot. That was an old rippity shaft, an old rippity horse thing machine. And the shaft is real steep and has a rolling, like a roller coaster bumps in it. And we were pulling out that day, real heavy locomotive type machinery, like the batteries and the electric mule, which was a locomotive tied to the mancar. And we come up to the pump, which is real, real steep. And the thing, the morning and groaning and it's just barely pulling up onto the next level and it made it, luckily. And made it up the shaft. So we talked to the hoisting engineering guys and boy, that mortar and the waste was as hot as a firecracker, it burned up. It would have been a disaster. But that was one of the last times I think anybody went down. But we survived all the exciting moments, looking at mines. - That's General Orlard Steele of local fame. Started his working career in the empire as a mucker. Could you ever cross paths with him and your youth? - Well, the word Orlard Steele, there was a vice manager by that day. I don't know if he was related to the same, or he was a vice manager at the end of the Steele family. And he could have been at that time part of the management. - Well, I think he only worked as a mucker before he went on to Stanford for his career. - I see. Yeah, there were a lot of people came to work through the mines in those days. And you remember a lot of them. - Did your father have any association with the North Star Mine at all? - Well, yeah, our air group interconnected. The North Star Mine, I remember when the foot mansion was occupied by the foot people. I went in there one day to take care of the fireplace 'cause I was building the fireplace at the clubhouse, the empire mine. So they needed a little care because they don't build the fire at the foot mansion. So I went and I did the floor places. Yeah, it was fixed up there on Ives at that time. And my dad did miscellaneous jobs over there 'cause a new one going out in the mines. They started all over in Nevada City. There's a merchant and the Alpha Vega towards Spalding and the Bear Valley Mine, which was a zebra. That was at the end of the Bear Valley, the glaciating area. And over at the way past Brown's Valley, there was another one. But they had a lot of holdings all over and some of the mines paid out real well and others were just marginal. So they kind of traveled around and put them back and forth. But while that stuff was auctioned off, we were cheap anyway. It was leftovers from the mining days and not worth a heck of a while. I think they got back to the old hoist for poor water during the auction and put it back into the original '20s. It was kind of keeping it for the stealth purposes. But things were kind of different five times. - When the Empire closed in '56, I believe, what did your dad do? Did he stay on and was paid by Newmont as a caretaker in the rounds? - Yeah, the kids would kind of break into the mansion once in a while. It takes the, they had gold scales that we're missing. Some of them were real fancy, big scales. And the break-ins, they're stealing stuff. So I had to watch real close from these and vandalism. So there were about three or four people and a fellow named Bernie Brokenshire, he was a ship boss. He stayed on on the skeleton curve and two or three others helped take care of our lawns. But yeah, by 1975 came along, it was pretty well shut down. The mansion that people were there to sell by the land of the mansion for about a million. And then Clary had the listing. So a guy named Christian, Christian, Christian, and his wife looked up the old mansion. The wife didn't like it 'cause it was too old and building. Probably full of spooks and everything. So she didn't like that. And then the state court. (mumbles) Yeah, there was a lot of interest for a while. Later on, it got so weird. So right now, just trying to restore the cabin and get things back together. Make it a decent. So they're up there during the finals, we'll have a short tail. - A few more questions for Phil, then we'll have a raffle. Any more questions? (mumbles) - We're gonna do it? - Now. - Oh, just below the green house, the empire mine, on the empire crossroad. Only house on the crossroad, can't miss me. (mumbles) (laughing) - You've been there a long time. - We had other houses, but that one was kind of permanent fixed here, we built it back in the 70s. Had a house in here this year, house that dropped was a lot realistic. Things were real cheap. It could keep me away from Halloween, but at that time, there were so many. But the, you know, some of you, my brothers moved down the towns. They missed out on a good deal, some of those. (laughing) Thanks for coming out. (applauding)