March 31, 1950 (8 pages)

at ' . :. aaa f \ Traction Line onerville s Nevada County Wasn't “T PLANS CALLED FOR EXTENSION T0' MARYSVILLE; AUTOS AND PAVED ROADS ENDED 23-YEAR HISTORY Nevada City once had a trolley line with four street cars running on its rails. The line ran to Grass Valley and you could travel to the quartz city for 20 cents. : The Nevada County Traction company, . its official . a name, was definitely no Toonerville trolley, although it . j had its quota of power failures, derailments, and over-. ' g . loads. At the time it was built in 1901 plans indicated . the line would be extended # ——————--—-. to Marysville with connec. even talk the company planned . finn tothe bay avea to extend the route into Sierra . Wha of Hné in Wovada City was county to tap. vast timber and . od oe : sa farming land. Some were of the : Zz : ee sii i i wn , we in front of the building now ocbelief the Southern Pacific railPictured above is the pride of the Nevada County Traction at the extreme front end of the interior of the vestibule. The cupied by the Bottle Shop, Larway was behind the traction! Company—street car No. 1, taken near Glenbrook by Photographer motorman standing on the steps is tentatively identified as Ray sen’s barber shop, and Broadway company and wanted to tap an. Moore of Nevada City, on the street car’s.maiden scheduled trip Allen and George Keller is believed to be the other car operator Beauty Shoppe, although the. oo, that was served only by the. Sunday, Oct. 13, 1901. The car had made a trial run on Admission in the vestibule. We have been unable to learn identification of original franchise granted by Ne-. nevada County Narrow Gayge. 4@y. five weeks previously but adjustments were necessary before any others in the picture which was loaned to The Nugget through vada City called eee railway. regular runs commenced. Supt. C. C. Skewes is believed to be the courtesy of Cameron Larsen and Herb Hallett. 7 to “one foot west o ine stree alee eee ee on Broad.” The track was swerved to the curb for its parking place at end of line. At the intersection of Pine and Broad the rails swung to the center of the street, passed down Broad to the Plaza, up Sacramento street and the Lower Grass Valley road. The track climbed the hill behind the Snell home and crossed over the Gold Flat tunnel of the Nevada County Narrow Gauge railway. Here the tracks left the Grass Valley turnpike, as the road was known at the turn of the century and followed the slope of the hill down to Glenbrook. Its route is near the grade of the present highway past the Yuba River Lumber company. Evidence of the old grade is still visible as you go down the highway from Town Talk. Car Barn at Glenbrook The track reached the turnpike . at about the present location of . the Fowler home. The company built passing tracks and a spur to the car barn located at Glen. brook. Swerving back onto the . turnpike. the line went over the. hill on the same route the mod. ern highway takes into Hills Flat . and Grass Valley. Inside the city limits of Grass Valley the tracks! followed Main to Mill, turned south to end of line in Boston Ravine. The traction company was fur. nished power from Bay.-Counties ; Power company, forerunner of ; the Pacific Gas & Electric com. “pany. John Martin, principal fin. ancier of the enterprise, was the . president of the railway. W. E. Osborne of the power company petitioned the board of supervisors of Nevada county . and city trustees of Nevada City . and Grass Valley for franchises! in the spring of 1901. The sa visors granted the franchise for . i . Construction Starts ie ; Plaza. Several spirited horses were met on the turnpike but none of them became unmanageable. Supervisor Fred Miller, who surveyed the route, drove the first pick to start construction at 2:45 p.m., June 5, 1901, at a point : near Richard Noell’s ranch on the. George Keller, Nevada City, Grass Valley road near the Coe . @2d Edward Skewes, Town Talk, mine. Mayor Charles Clinch of; Were the line’s first conductors. Grass Valley, delivered the ded-, E. O. Davis, Oakland, and Allen ication speech. The following day . W¢Te imported as experienced a force of 200 men started con-. ™otormen. . 1 ts struction at: Half Mile House. . The Transcript editorialized at When construction reached the that time on the dangers of urmacadamized streets of Grass Chins playing in the streets and Valley the excavated debris on Particularly on the street car the narrow part of Main street tracks. blocked traffic. Teams to Nevada Generators Installed City were diverted up Murphy After the test run traffic was street and over the road through idle while the generators were Eureka Heights. . . being installed at Glenbrook. All summer long as construcPower in the amount of 500 to tion proceeded the company of-. 575 DC volts were supplied from ficials promised scheduled traftwo 200-horsepower generators. fic by Admission day, Sept. 9, The motors were magnetic type. celebrated in that period as a A city ordinance required reducgreat picnicking day with the ed voltage inside the corporate Narrow Gauge running picnic limits of Nevada City and cars excursions to Glenbrook and Chibarely crawled up Sacramento cago Park. A teamsters strike in street until additional power was San Francisco delayed necessary cut in near the present site of equipment, but the company did Holmes Funeral Home. manage to get one car in the The car barn was a corrugated Glenbrook shops the week before iron building 109 feet long by 47 . the big day—only there were no feet wide. The. barn had three. trucks for the car. tracks and pits for repairs and_ The big trial run day was fast cleaning. . approaching and still the car had While the generators were be-. nothing to roll on. Saturday, ing installed the. final construcSept. 7, the trucks arrived in Coltion work was continued from! . fax and the Narrow Gauge sped the Plaza up Broad street to Pine them to Grass Valley and shop where on Sept. 26, C.J. Brand . crews swiftly placed them under drove the last spike into a silver, the car and all was in readiness. plate placed by Joe Fleming. . “Here She Comes” Scheduled traffic started Sun. The holidaying crowd that had day, Oct. 13, 1901, at noon from! packed Grass Valley that Admis-' the Plaza in Nevada City and sion day had been advised the from the Auditorium in Grass street car’s test run, would be Valley. Hourly schedules on the through Mill street at 4 p.m., but. hour were maintained. a sense of disbelief pervaded the ;, Several steps that day were: throng and the actual approach . made for power adjustment and of the car, its gong clanging fu-' about dusk one of the cars was riously, seemed to surprise the . derailed at the Hieronimus -brewspectators. /ery. The biggest problem the first . Grass Valley cast wheels for the cars and furnished other parts for maintenance of the cars. Keller worked with Archie Odgers as an operating team in the early days of the line. Odgers died in 1919 and Keller died a few years ago. Archie’s brother, John, and his sisters, Mrs. Annie Lewis, Mrs. Lelia Harry and Mrs. Mary German are all living in Nevada City now. George Noyes, 70, who still resides in Nevada City, was electrician and powerhouse operator for the last 18 months: of operation, succeeding Cole Boreham. Born in Placer county, Noyes came here when he was one year old and has remained here most of his life. He, remembers that Joe Phillips was motorman on the last run and that, despairing of getting through the drifts at Town Talk at 1 o’clock in the morning, he returned to the car barns and called Skewes. The superintendent told him to lay off for the rest of the night. The conductor with Phillips was Dick Hodge. The team on the second shift was Hank Tamblyn, motorman, and William Chappell, conductor, who died just recently. Elmer Rondau was_ substitute motorman. ‘ Noyes remembers that’ on the annual Fourth of July celebra; tions all four cars were used and they carried “all hang on.” Other young old. timers recall that towards the end of the street car company’s career, the equipment became worn and adequate brakes were always a problem. who could . Often the motormen just turned the car loose on the hills when lightly loaded. But on the heavy loads the conductor was~ often pulling back on the rear lever7 6—The Nevada City Nugget, Friday, March 31, 1950 idence construction started, was killed at the entrance to. his ranch home the afternoon of May 13, 1915. Noell, a 76-year-old retired Grass” Valley hardware dealer, stepped. from behind” his high hedge that obscured the track into the path of the 1:58 p.m. schedule, and was hurled into the roadway. He lingered for an hour before dying in the Grass Valley Sanitarium. Superintendent Skewes was subbing that day for the regular motorman, his son Charles, and was only 15 feet from the elderly man when he stepped onto the rail. Barreling down the rails not expecting to have a stop for passengers, Skewes was unable to halt the trolley: The impact caved in the front panels of the street car. Sudden End The car line unceremoniously came to a sudden end on Thursday, Jan. 3, 1924, the immediate cause, according to Supt. Skewes, being a storm and drifting snow that blocked the track at several points. ; Skewes gave orders to not attempt to open the line and discontinue service for that day. Later in the afternoon, Martin, president and manager of the company, telephoned Skewes to discontinue service permanently. arrangements for its were completed. Consternation reigned .in the two towns when it was found that the old faithful cars were 'not on the job. Many people were ; marooned in one town or the . . . the distance from Grass Valley . city limits to Nevada City boundary line by adopting ordinance No. 69 April 2, 1901. John F. Kidder, Narrow Gauge ' magnate, held a similar franchise in the 1890’s but never developed a. company. The company estimated construction of the line would cost {the line’s length. had not) arrived by Admission . day and the single car ran from’ ; power supplied by Gold Hill . company and it failed several ‘times on that initial trip. After the car crested the ridge at Town $100,000 and fare between the; two cities was-set at 10 cents. . Talk Motorman Ray L. Allen, he prdinance permitted the San Francisco, clanged his gong But run it did—packed with 60 .few days of operation was pre' passengers—and all 25,342 feet of ,venting boys from 2 ‘{rides on the car. The generators and batteries . “hooking” Although trackage ran up the hill to Broad and Pine the company officials and city trustees felt the Broad street bridge over ,the motorman on the front end ness until increasing automobiles Deer creek was not strong enough . to hold an electric car and while the company and city trustees bickered over the expense of the strengthening of the bridge, the) street cars ran only to the Plaza. type brakes as soon as a hill was! other, particularly here where a crested and descent was started.' large group of workers in the If the conductor was unable to Grass Valley mines had their hold the careening car two clangs . homes. of his bell called for help from . The line did a profitable busibrakes. . drained away a considerable perA serious derailment occurred centage of the line’s traffic. After at the passing track when one of the highway between the two Ah Gin’s pigs was run over and cities was paved the traffic on killed. . the electric cars steadily deFatal Accident . clined. One fatal accident marred the' J. B. Grissell and J. F. Dolan history of the street car line. .all the way in to the end of the company to charge 20 cents. line built at that date only to the g Nevada City granted a fran-! chise June 24, 1901, calling for a five-cent fare inside the city limits. The city was to collect two percent of the company’s gross receipts after the first five years of operation, and the company would lose’ its franchise anytime . " cars failed to run for a ‘24-hour period other than because of elements or power failure. Members of the original board . of directors were R. R. Colgate, John Martin, E. J de Sabla, Jr., W. M. Preison, C. A. Grow and R. M. Hotaling. : Local Contracts Let Contracts for ties and poles remained in the county, with lumber companies supplying 14,000 ties necessary on a pro rata basis. Brice & Smart was a Nevada City firm supplying ties. M. L. and D. Marsh supplied the poles for the trolley wire.Specifications called for 80pound rail, heaviest used at the time on overland routes. The cars were immense coaches, 36 feet long, with a capacity of 32 pas_Sengers inside the car and. 12!. -@he cars weighed 28} outside. tons unloaded. The size of rail ‘used and the bigness of the cars led many county residents to believe the company planned to exbeen completed, and there was . Miners Foundry and Taylor in Richard Noell, near whose reswere granted a certificate to operate an automobile stage line or Pictured above is; the ceremony of placing the first tie in the construction of the road bed June 5, 1901. Supervisor Fred Miller, scene is the north side of ‘the roadway on Spring Hill with the the present gold course. © Miller courtesy of the Nevada County Historical Society and Richard R. Goyne. Richard Noell ranch in the background. It is near the location of has been identified as ‘the man between the two cities the day after the electric line suspended. The city ‘trustees of Nevada City held a called meeting and Mayor E. J. N. Ott sent a telegram to the public utilities commission. protesting the abandonment of the line and demanding re-establishment of service until the holders of the bus franchise could start operation. Most of this information. has ‘been gleaned from the files of The Transcript and The Union. Herb Hallett, who was one of our most prolific sources of information unobtainable from old newspapers informed us the cars arrived wrapped in paper and without trucks. When the bodies arrived at Colfax there was question whether they would clear a Narrow Gauge railway tunnel when mounted on flat’ cars. Shop crews took the measurements of the packaged cars and built a skeleton frame on a NCNG flat car and a clearance test was made. With sufficient clearance the bodies were brought to the Grass Valley freight station and another problem faced the mechanics—how to get the cars the few blocks to the street rails. Temporary trucks were built. and located on the street car track at Bennett and Main streets jin Grass Valley. A temporary Narrow gauge track was laid on Instructions were given to as-. Bennett street and the cars push. semble all movable property of! ed to-the street car line and rethe company at the car barn and . moved to the temporary trucks. maintain a watchman there until Following abandonment of the removal, line three of the cars were set on fire and destroyed at the powerhouse and the fourth went to the China gardens at Glenbrook. Several years later it ended its career as a waiting room for school children. Frank Davis had the contract for removing the rails. and wiring and is reputed to have disposed of them to a Stockton dealer. EDITOR’S. NOTE: The story above is one of a series The Nugget will publish this spring and summer, to be climaxed by a big centennial edition to be published in conjunction with the Nevada City Fourth of July Centennial Celebratiox Many of our pioneer residents of Nevada City are: able to contribute personal recollections and important: historical data to this significant series. We invite manuscripts, diaries, old newspaper clippings, family records, and’ especially local Pictures. Such material will be guarded: while it is being reviewed for possible publication but no payment is offered for manuscripts. Reproduction rights will be requested for old Photographs. The assistance of readers in guiding us along the rocky path of local history will be appreciated. NEVADA CITY—ON THE THRESHOLD TO THE BEST IN SPORTS REORFATION NEVADA CITY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE * GEORGE C.:_BOLES Optometrist 312 Broad St. Nevada City Telephone 270-W DR. WALTER MULLIS A ; behind the transit in the above picture. To his right is John DENTIST _ tend to Marysville on a 37-mile ae surveyed the route, drove the first pick. Mayor Charles Martin, chief backer of the enterprise. The picture is used by 435. ZION ST PHONE 5643 ‘route on which the survey had Clinch _ of Grass Valley gave a short dedicatory address. The : ae NEVADA CITY

at ' . :. aaa f \ Traction Line onerville s Nevada County Wasn't “T PLANS CALLED FOR EXTENSION T0' MARYSVILLE; AUTOS AND PAVED ROADS ENDED 23-YEAR HISTORY Nevada City once had a trolley line with four street cars running on its rails. The line ran to Grass Valley and you could travel to the quartz city for 20 cents. : The Nevada County Traction company, . its official . a name, was definitely no Toonerville trolley, although it . j had its quota of power failures, derailments, and over-. ' g . loads. At the time it was built in 1901 plans indicated . the line would be extended # ——————--—-. to Marysville with connec. even talk the company planned . finn tothe bay avea to extend the route into Sierra . Wha of Hné in Wovada City was county to tap. vast timber and . od oe : sa farming land. Some were of the : Zz : ee sii i i wn , we in front of the building now ocbelief the Southern Pacific railPictured above is the pride of the Nevada County Traction at the extreme front end of the interior of the vestibule. The cupied by the Bottle Shop, Larway was behind the traction! Company—street car No. 1, taken near Glenbrook by Photographer motorman standing on the steps is tentatively identified as Ray sen’s barber shop, and Broadway company and wanted to tap an. Moore of Nevada City, on the street car’s.maiden scheduled trip Allen and George Keller is believed to be the other car operator Beauty Shoppe, although the. oo, that was served only by the. Sunday, Oct. 13, 1901. The car had made a trial run on Admission in the vestibule. We have been unable to learn identification of original franchise granted by Ne-. nevada County Narrow Gayge. 4@y. five weeks previously but adjustments were necessary before any others in the picture which was loaned to The Nugget through vada City called eee railway. regular runs commenced. Supt. C. C. Skewes is believed to be the courtesy of Cameron Larsen and Herb Hallett. 7 to “one foot west o ine stree alee eee ee on Broad.” The track was swerved to the curb for its parking place at end of line. At the intersection of Pine and Broad the rails swung to the center of the street, passed down Broad to the Plaza, up Sacramento street and the Lower Grass Valley road. The track climbed the hill behind the Snell home and crossed over the Gold Flat tunnel of the Nevada County Narrow Gauge railway. Here the tracks left the Grass Valley turnpike, as the road was known at the turn of the century and followed the slope of the hill down to Glenbrook. Its route is near the grade of the present highway past the Yuba River Lumber company. Evidence of the old grade is still visible as you go down the highway from Town Talk. Car Barn at Glenbrook The track reached the turnpike . at about the present location of . the Fowler home. The company built passing tracks and a spur to the car barn located at Glen. brook. Swerving back onto the . turnpike. the line went over the. hill on the same route the mod. ern highway takes into Hills Flat . and Grass Valley. Inside the city limits of Grass Valley the tracks! followed Main to Mill, turned south to end of line in Boston Ravine. The traction company was fur. nished power from Bay.-Counties ; Power company, forerunner of ; the Pacific Gas & Electric com. “pany. John Martin, principal fin. ancier of the enterprise, was the . president of the railway. W. E. Osborne of the power company petitioned the board of supervisors of Nevada county . and city trustees of Nevada City . and Grass Valley for franchises! in the spring of 1901. The sa visors granted the franchise for . i . Construction Starts ie ; Plaza. Several spirited horses were met on the turnpike but none of them became unmanageable. Supervisor Fred Miller, who surveyed the route, drove the first pick to start construction at 2:45 p.m., June 5, 1901, at a point : near Richard Noell’s ranch on the. George Keller, Nevada City, Grass Valley road near the Coe . @2d Edward Skewes, Town Talk, mine. Mayor Charles Clinch of; Were the line’s first conductors. Grass Valley, delivered the ded-, E. O. Davis, Oakland, and Allen ication speech. The following day . W¢Te imported as experienced a force of 200 men started con-. ™otormen. . 1 ts struction at: Half Mile House. . The Transcript editorialized at When construction reached the that time on the dangers of urmacadamized streets of Grass Chins playing in the streets and Valley the excavated debris on Particularly on the street car the narrow part of Main street tracks. blocked traffic. Teams to Nevada Generators Installed City were diverted up Murphy After the test run traffic was street and over the road through idle while the generators were Eureka Heights. . . being installed at Glenbrook. All summer long as construcPower in the amount of 500 to tion proceeded the company of-. 575 DC volts were supplied from ficials promised scheduled traftwo 200-horsepower generators. fic by Admission day, Sept. 9, The motors were magnetic type. celebrated in that period as a A city ordinance required reducgreat picnicking day with the ed voltage inside the corporate Narrow Gauge running picnic limits of Nevada City and cars excursions to Glenbrook and Chibarely crawled up Sacramento cago Park. A teamsters strike in street until additional power was San Francisco delayed necessary cut in near the present site of equipment, but the company did Holmes Funeral Home. manage to get one car in the The car barn was a corrugated Glenbrook shops the week before iron building 109 feet long by 47 . the big day—only there were no feet wide. The. barn had three. trucks for the car. tracks and pits for repairs and_ The big trial run day was fast cleaning. . approaching and still the car had While the generators were be-. nothing to roll on. Saturday, ing installed the. final construcSept. 7, the trucks arrived in Coltion work was continued from! . fax and the Narrow Gauge sped the Plaza up Broad street to Pine them to Grass Valley and shop where on Sept. 26, C.J. Brand . crews swiftly placed them under drove the last spike into a silver, the car and all was in readiness. plate placed by Joe Fleming. . “Here She Comes” Scheduled traffic started Sun. The holidaying crowd that had day, Oct. 13, 1901, at noon from! packed Grass Valley that Admis-' the Plaza in Nevada City and sion day had been advised the from the Auditorium in Grass street car’s test run, would be Valley. Hourly schedules on the through Mill street at 4 p.m., but. hour were maintained. a sense of disbelief pervaded the ;, Several steps that day were: throng and the actual approach . made for power adjustment and of the car, its gong clanging fu-' about dusk one of the cars was riously, seemed to surprise the . derailed at the Hieronimus -brewspectators. /ery. The biggest problem the first . Grass Valley cast wheels for the cars and furnished other parts for maintenance of the cars. Keller worked with Archie Odgers as an operating team in the early days of the line. Odgers died in 1919 and Keller died a few years ago. Archie’s brother, John, and his sisters, Mrs. Annie Lewis, Mrs. Lelia Harry and Mrs. Mary German are all living in Nevada City now. George Noyes, 70, who still resides in Nevada City, was electrician and powerhouse operator for the last 18 months: of operation, succeeding Cole Boreham. Born in Placer county, Noyes came here when he was one year old and has remained here most of his life. He, remembers that Joe Phillips was motorman on the last run and that, despairing of getting through the drifts at Town Talk at 1 o’clock in the morning, he returned to the car barns and called Skewes. The superintendent told him to lay off for the rest of the night. The conductor with Phillips was Dick Hodge. The team on the second shift was Hank Tamblyn, motorman, and William Chappell, conductor, who died just recently. Elmer Rondau was_ substitute motorman. ‘ Noyes remembers that’ on the annual Fourth of July celebra; tions all four cars were used and they carried “all hang on.” Other young old. timers recall that towards the end of the street car company’s career, the equipment became worn and adequate brakes were always a problem. who could . Often the motormen just turned the car loose on the hills when lightly loaded. But on the heavy loads the conductor was~ often pulling back on the rear lever7 6—The Nevada City Nugget, Friday, March 31, 1950 idence construction started, was killed at the entrance to. his ranch home the afternoon of May 13, 1915. Noell, a 76-year-old retired Grass” Valley hardware dealer, stepped. from behind” his high hedge that obscured the track into the path of the 1:58 p.m. schedule, and was hurled into the roadway. He lingered for an hour before dying in the Grass Valley Sanitarium. Superintendent Skewes was subbing that day for the regular motorman, his son Charles, and was only 15 feet from the elderly man when he stepped onto

the rail. Barreling down the rails not expecting to have a stop for passengers, Skewes was unable to halt the trolley: The impact caved in the front panels of the street car. Sudden End The car line unceremoniously came to a sudden end on Thursday, Jan. 3, 1924, the immediate cause, according to Supt. Skewes, being a storm and drifting snow that blocked the track at several points. ; Skewes gave orders to not attempt to open the line and discontinue service for that day. Later in the afternoon, Martin, president and manager of the company, telephoned Skewes to discontinue service permanently. arrangements for its were completed. Consternation reigned .in the two towns when it was found that the old faithful cars were 'not on the job. Many people were ; marooned in one town or the . . . the distance from Grass Valley . city limits to Nevada City boundary line by adopting ordinance No. 69 April 2, 1901. John F. Kidder, Narrow Gauge ' magnate, held a similar franchise in the 1890’s but never developed a. company. The company estimated construction of the line would cost {the line’s length. had not) arrived by Admission . day and the single car ran from’ ; power supplied by Gold Hill . company and it failed several ‘times on that initial trip. After the car crested the ridge at Town $100,000 and fare between the; two cities was-set at 10 cents. . Talk Motorman Ray L. Allen, he prdinance permitted the San Francisco, clanged his gong But run it did—packed with 60 .few days of operation was pre' passengers—and all 25,342 feet of ,venting boys from 2 ‘{rides on the car. The generators and batteries . “hooking” Although trackage ran up the hill to Broad and Pine the company officials and city trustees felt the Broad street bridge over ,the motorman on the front end ness until increasing automobiles Deer creek was not strong enough . to hold an electric car and while the company and city trustees bickered over the expense of the strengthening of the bridge, the) street cars ran only to the Plaza. type brakes as soon as a hill was! other, particularly here where a crested and descent was started.' large group of workers in the If the conductor was unable to Grass Valley mines had their hold the careening car two clangs . homes. of his bell called for help from . The line did a profitable busibrakes. . drained away a considerable perA serious derailment occurred centage of the line’s traffic. After at the passing track when one of the highway between the two Ah Gin’s pigs was run over and cities was paved the traffic on killed. . the electric cars steadily deFatal Accident . clined. One fatal accident marred the' J. B. Grissell and J. F. Dolan history of the street car line. .all the way in to the end of the company to charge 20 cents. line built at that date only to the g Nevada City granted a fran-! chise June 24, 1901, calling for a five-cent fare inside the city limits. The city was to collect two percent of the company’s gross receipts after the first five years of operation, and the company would lose’ its franchise anytime . " cars failed to run for a ‘24-hour period other than because of elements or power failure. Members of the original board . of directors were R. R. Colgate, John Martin, E. J de Sabla, Jr., W. M. Preison, C. A. Grow and R. M. Hotaling. : Local Contracts Let Contracts for ties and poles remained in the county, with lumber companies supplying 14,000 ties necessary on a pro rata basis. Brice & Smart was a Nevada City firm supplying ties. M. L. and D. Marsh supplied the poles for the trolley wire.Specifications called for 80pound rail, heaviest used at the time on overland routes. The cars were immense coaches, 36 feet long, with a capacity of 32 pas_Sengers inside the car and. 12!. -@he cars weighed 28} outside. tons unloaded. The size of rail ‘used and the bigness of the cars led many county residents to believe the company planned to exbeen completed, and there was . Miners Foundry and Taylor in Richard Noell, near whose reswere granted a certificate to operate an automobile stage line or Pictured above is; the ceremony of placing the first tie in the construction of the road bed June 5, 1901. Supervisor Fred Miller, scene is the north side of ‘the roadway on Spring Hill with the the present gold course. © Miller courtesy of the Nevada County Historical Society and Richard R. Goyne. Richard Noell ranch in the background. It is near the location of has been identified as ‘the man between the two cities the day after the electric line suspended. The city ‘trustees of Nevada City held a called meeting and Mayor E. J. N. Ott sent a telegram to the public utilities commission. protesting the abandonment of the line and demanding re-establishment of service until the holders of the bus franchise could start operation. Most of this information. has ‘been gleaned from the files of The Transcript and The Union. Herb Hallett, who was one of our most prolific sources of information unobtainable from old newspapers informed us the cars arrived wrapped in paper and without trucks. When the bodies arrived at Colfax there was question whether they would clear a Narrow Gauge railway tunnel when mounted on flat’ cars. Shop crews took the measurements of the packaged cars and built a skeleton frame on a NCNG flat car and a clearance test was made. With sufficient clearance the bodies were brought to the Grass Valley freight station and another problem faced the mechanics—how to get the cars the few blocks to the street rails. Temporary trucks were built. and located on the street car track at Bennett and Main streets jin Grass Valley. A temporary Narrow gauge track was laid on Instructions were given to as-. Bennett street and the cars push. semble all movable property of! ed to-the street car line and rethe company at the car barn and . moved to the temporary trucks. maintain a watchman there until Following abandonment of the removal, line three of the cars were set on fire and destroyed at the powerhouse and the fourth went to the China gardens at Glenbrook. Several years later it ended its career as a waiting room for school children. Frank Davis had the contract for removing the rails. and wiring and is reputed to have disposed of them to a Stockton dealer. EDITOR’S. NOTE: The story above is one of a series The Nugget will publish this spring and summer, to be climaxed by a big centennial edition to be published in conjunction with the Nevada City Fourth of July Centennial Celebratiox Many of our pioneer residents of Nevada City are: able to contribute personal recollections and important: historical data to this significant series. We invite manuscripts, diaries, old newspaper clippings, family records, and’ especially local Pictures. Such material will be guarded: while it is being reviewed for possible publication but no payment is offered for manuscripts. Reproduction rights will be requested for old Photographs. The assistance of readers in guiding us along the rocky path of local history will be appreciated. NEVADA CITY—ON THE THRESHOLD TO THE BEST IN SPORTS REORFATION NEVADA CITY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE * GEORGE C.:_BOLES Optometrist 312 Broad St. Nevada City Telephone 270-W DR. WALTER MULLIS A ; behind the transit in the above picture. To his right is John DENTIST _ tend to Marysville on a 37-mile ae surveyed the route, drove the first pick. Mayor Charles Martin, chief backer of the enterprise. The picture is used by 435. ZION ST PHONE 5643 ‘route on which the survey had Clinch _ of Grass Valley gave a short dedicatory address. The : ae NEVADA CITY