Historical Clippings Book (HC-03) (210 pages)

ey E31 SN EVN PENI aE TV oor Page BG * THE SACRAMENTO BEE Sunday, January 9, 1966 Persistency Proves Lost Tunnel Of Siskiyou Is Real BY Jack R. Wagner : £33 Spedal to The Bee ‘ : Bo HORNBROOK, Siskiyou Co.— It was some 15 years ago that I first heard the story of the Buck Rock Tunnel. In the Siskiyou Mountain area of Northern California it persisted as somewhat of a legend. I first heard it from an oldtime railroader over a cup of caboose coffee. The story goes that when the railroad was building northward toward Portland, the Siskiyou Mountains promised to be a formidable natural barrier. Samuel S, Montague (Montague, Siskiyou County, is named after him) was at that time chief engineer having succeeded the Central Pacific’s first chief engineer, Theodore D. Judah, who died of Panama fever in 1863. By 1883 the line was being pushed north of Redding through the Sacramento River’ Canyon. August of 1886 saw trains operating as far as Dunsmuir and on May 1, 1887, they reached Hornbrook while simultaneously construction was be. ing pushed south from Ashland, . Ore. All during this period -it was cut as far as bed rock on theof what he said was the Ken-. i cs x Be 2 The author holds rusted relics picked up in Buck Rock Tunnel on the Oregon side of the Siskiyou Mountains. Montague’s theory and dream California side.” that the Siskiyou Mountains So, equipped with food and should be penetrated by a tunwater we started out on the new nel thus eliminating miles of/Supethighway over the Siskiwinding track, steep grades and. Yous. Just past the Oregon line the problems of snow removal! turned off at a side road inwhich he had experienced ear-\dicated by Dozier and we prolier on the Donner Summit. ceeded along a two-lane black“An ambitious and commenda-. top, eventually turning off onto ble plan, yet when the last/a dirt ranch road which became spike on the San Francisco Portsteeper and rougher as we progland line was driven at Ashland,. Tessed. Finally we reached a Ore., on Dec. 17, 1887, the point where a standard passenSiskiyou Mountains were. 6er car could no longer operate. crossed at an elevation of 4,135. At this stage we were assistfeet! Track was laid over cur-/ed in the project by rancher Elvatures reaching up to 14 de-jmer Hopkins who hauled our litgrees on a grade of 3.3 per cent. tle group to the upper end of As for tunnels, they numbered. his property in his four-wheel18, the longest of which was drive truck. From here we were 3,108 feet. Lost Tunnel on our own, hiking, stumbling and pushing our way through ‘What had happened to Monta-. the heavy underbrush. / gue's plan for a low-elevation. Although Dozier was contitunnel? The story persists dent we would find the tunnel among the mountain railroaders. he was a little vague as to Jandof Northern California that the\marks. He pointed out the site tunnel actually was begun with)) Chinese labor and either) through some misfortune or) change of plan was Jeft aban-. ) doned miles from any present-)) day railroad or highway. In 1950, aided by Siskiyou)) County Supervisor Gordon Jacobs and his wife I set out to find what I could learn of the lost tunnel. Although the legend was known _ throughout the. mountain communities the tunnel itself was not located. It was the summer of 1965, 15 years later, that I received a letter from Mrs. Jacobs. She} recalled our earlier attempts} and wrote to tell there was now, living in Hornbrook a former) resident of the Oregon side of the Siskiyous who not only recalled the tunnel project, but thought he could find it. That was all I needed in the way of an invitation and immediately set out for Siskiyou County and what I hoped would be the final) clue in my quest for the lost! tunnel. The guide’s name was Hugh Dozier. He was born in Oregon on Feb. 5, 1886, near what! was then known as the Soda Springs Post Office but is now known as Wopgner Springs. He recalled hearing about the tunnel and remembers, as a child, Chinese laborers stopping by his parents’ place to usk directions to the diggings. At last here was a man who didn’t smile indulently when 1 asked about the tunnel, It was beginning to look like there really was one, . : Was Assured “Oh, it's up there alight,” Dorvier assured nie, “There's a terrible big hole in the Oregon side of the mountain and an epen nedy cabin, but there wasn’t. even a sign of a ruin, There) was also a clearing which he said was an apple orchard when he was a boy. We all believed) him, things can change in 70 years. Finally, after much hacking and climbing Dozier called out that he had spotted the dump. I hurried to join him and sure enough we were approaching the head of a draw and fanning out from a crease in the mountain was a Jevel plateau which looked like it could have been made of fill, We then turned our attention to the end of the canyon. It narrowed down to what could have been a dry water fall. There were rocks, bushes and trees enough to hide the entrance to a tunnel if it was there. Hopefully we made our way through these obstructions to be rewarded by the sight of a gap(attention to the end of a gaping hole in the mountain. The}, en trance was smaller than ‘might have been expected, but this was due to a caye-in caused by rotting timbers. After gin. perly climbing over this rubble} we could see that the tunnel entered a solid rock formation. . and blossomed out to a full rail-)) road-sized hole in the mountain. There was some loose rock on } ‘the floor, many were boulder). jsize having fallen from the ceilling, but for the most part the ‘ground seemed stable enough. The tunnel ran into the mountain on a southwesterly heading for some 300 feet, dry and completely sterile without even an animal sign, just total darkness and complete silence deep under the Siskiyous somewhere between Oregon and California. Found Shovels . The story goes that when the! word was given to cease work . the crew quit the bore at once) leaving tools and even shots un-. fired, As for the latter I can’t) be sure, but I did bring back some rusted shovels, handles long since rotted away, relics of a by-gone era. If the legend of the Buck Rock Tunnel is to leave the realm of fantasy the story must be documented, So for the benefit of skeptics and future historians I record that the tunnel is on property owned by the Elk Lumber Co, of Medford, a subsidiary of the Boise Cascade Corp, of Boise, Idaho. It lies in Section 14, township 40, range 2 east, on the Oregon side of the Siskiyou Mountains —a hitherto unknown, inaccessable and unfinished monument to Samuel S. Montague, engineer.

ey E31 SN EVN PENI aE TV oor Page BG * THE SACRAMENTO BEE Sunday, January 9, 1966 Persistency Proves Lost Tunnel Of Siskiyou Is Real BY Jack R. Wagner : £33 Spedal to The Bee ‘ : Bo HORNBROOK, Siskiyou Co.— It was some 15 years ago that I first heard the story of the Buck Rock Tunnel. In the Siskiyou Mountain area of Northern California it persisted as somewhat of a legend. I first heard it from an oldtime railroader over a cup of caboose coffee. The story goes that when the railroad was building northward toward Portland, the Siskiyou Mountains promised to be a formidable natural barrier. Samuel S, Montague (Montague, Siskiyou County, is named after him) was at that time chief engineer having succeeded the Central Pacific’s first chief engineer, Theodore D. Judah, who died of Panama fever in 1863. By 1883 the line was being pushed north of Redding through the Sacramento River’ Canyon. August of 1886 saw trains operating as far as Dunsmuir and on May 1, 1887, they reached Hornbrook while simultaneously construction was be. ing pushed south from Ashland, . Ore. All during this period -it was cut as far as bed rock on theof what he said was the Ken-. i cs x Be 2 The author holds rusted relics picked up in Buck Rock Tunnel on the Oregon side of the Siskiyou Mountains. Montague’s theory and dream California side.” that the Siskiyou Mountains So, equipped with food and should be penetrated by a tunwater we started out on the new nel thus eliminating miles of/Supethighway over the Siskiwinding track, steep grades and. Yous. Just past the Oregon line the problems of snow removal! turned off at a side road inwhich he had experienced ear-\dicated by Dozier and we prolier on the Donner Summit. ceeded along a two-lane black“An ambitious and commenda-. top, eventually turning off onto ble plan, yet when the last/a dirt ranch road which became spike on the San Francisco Portsteeper and rougher as we progland line was driven at Ashland,. Tessed. Finally we reached a Ore., on Dec. 17, 1887, the point where a standard passenSiskiyou Mountains were. 6er car could no longer operate. crossed at an elevation of 4,135. At this stage we were assistfeet! Track was laid over cur-/ed in the project by rancher Elvatures reaching up to 14 de-jmer Hopkins who hauled our litgrees on a grade of 3.3 per cent. tle group to the upper end of As for tunnels, they numbered. his property in his four-wheel18, the longest of which was drive truck. From here we were 3,108 feet. Lost Tunnel on our own, hiking, stumbling and pushing our way through ‘What had happened to Monta-. the heavy underbrush. / gue's plan for a low-elevation. Although Dozier was contitunnel? The story persists dent we would find the tunnel among the mountain railroaders. he was a little vague as to Jandof Northern California that the\marks. He pointed out the site tunnel actually was begun with)) Chinese labor and either) through some misfortune or) change of plan was Jeft aban-. ) doned miles from any present-)) day railroad or highway. In 1950, aided by Siskiyou)) County Supervisor Gordon Jacobs and his wife I set out to find what I could learn of the lost tunnel. Although the legend was known _ throughout the. mountain communities the tunnel itself was not located. It was the summer of 1965, 15 years later, that I received a letter from Mrs. Jacobs. She} recalled our earlier attempts} and wrote to tell there was now, living in Hornbrook a former) resident of the Oregon side of the Siskiyous who not only recalled the tunnel project, but thought he could find it. That was all I needed in the way of an invitation and immediately set out for Siskiyou County and what I hoped would be the final) clue in my quest for the lost! tunnel.

The guide’s name was Hugh Dozier. He was born in Oregon on Feb. 5, 1886, near what! was then known as the Soda Springs Post Office but is now known as Wopgner Springs. He recalled hearing about the tunnel and remembers, as a child, Chinese laborers stopping by his parents’ place to usk directions to the diggings. At last here was a man who didn’t smile indulently when 1 asked about the tunnel, It was beginning to look like there really was one, . : Was Assured “Oh, it's up there alight,” Dorvier assured nie, “There's a terrible big hole in the Oregon side of the mountain and an epen nedy cabin, but there wasn’t. even a sign of a ruin, There) was also a clearing which he said was an apple orchard when he was a boy. We all believed) him, things can change in 70 years. Finally, after much hacking and climbing Dozier called out that he had spotted the dump. I hurried to join him and sure enough we were approaching the head of a draw and fanning out from a crease in the mountain was a Jevel plateau which looked like it could have been made of fill, We then turned our attention to the end of the canyon. It narrowed down to what could have been a dry water fall. There were rocks, bushes and trees enough to hide the entrance to a tunnel if it was there. Hopefully we made our way through these obstructions to be rewarded by the sight of a gap(attention to the end of a gaping hole in the mountain. The}, en trance was smaller than ‘might have been expected, but this was due to a caye-in caused by rotting timbers. After gin. perly climbing over this rubble} we could see that the tunnel entered a solid rock formation. . and blossomed out to a full rail-)) road-sized hole in the mountain. There was some loose rock on } ‘the floor, many were boulder). jsize having fallen from the ceilling, but for the most part the ‘ground seemed stable enough. The tunnel ran into the mountain on a southwesterly heading for some 300 feet, dry and completely sterile without even an animal sign, just total darkness and complete silence deep under the Siskiyous somewhere between Oregon and California. Found Shovels . The story goes that when the! word was given to cease work . the crew quit the bore at once) leaving tools and even shots un-. fired, As for the latter I can’t) be sure, but I did bring back some rusted shovels, handles long since rotted away, relics of a by-gone era. If the legend of the Buck Rock Tunnel is to leave the realm of fantasy the story must be documented, So for the benefit of skeptics and future historians I record that the tunnel is on property owned by the Elk Lumber Co, of Medford, a subsidiary of the Boise Cascade Corp, of Boise, Idaho. It lies in Section 14, township 40, range 2 east, on the Oregon side of the Siskiyou Mountains —a hitherto unknown, inaccessable and unfinished monument to Samuel S. Montague, engineer.