Enter a name, company, place or keywords to search across this item. Then click "Search" (or hit Enter).
Volume 057-3 - July 2003 (8 pages)
Go to the Archive Home
Go to Thumbnail View of this Item
Go to Single Page View of this Item
Download the Page Image
Copy the Page Text to the Clipboard
Don't highlight the search terms on the Image
Show the Page Image
Show the Image Page Text
Reset View and Center Image
Zoom Out
Zoom In
Rotate Left
Rotate Right
Toggle Full Page View
Flip Image Horizontally
More Information About this Image
Get a Citation for Page or Image - Copy to the Clipboard
Go to the Next Page (or Right Arrow key)
Page: of 8
Can you Hear the Whistle Blow?
by Maria E. Brower
W5 ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE TIMELESS STORIES
of the thousands of pioneers who crossed our great
country for one or more reasons, in a quest for a better life,
adventure, land, opportunity, gold or other reasons perhaps
known only to the pioneers themselves. Fortunately we
have hundreds of diaries, journals, letters and newspaper
accounts written by those who experienced the journeys to
give us window back in time.
After the first big Gold Rush was over, people continued
to move west, but in lesser numbers. Within a few years
another event in history would have an impact on the country, especially the West and California. With the opening of
the Transcontinental Railroad, linking the East and the West
at last, and for the first time in our young nation’s history,
people would be able to cross the country with a reasonable
assurance they would reach their destinations safely.
A Short History
There were three major forces that pushed the railroad
and many groups who fought it. Among those of the later
were the canal men, stagecoach lines, industry and business. All realized that if the railroad was built across the
country their monopoly on business and freight would end.
y™, = The three major forces were: acquisition of Oregon in
1846, acquisition of California in 1848 and the subsequent
Gold Rush, and the Civil War. Once the South left the
Union, Congress enacted and paid for the Pacific Railroad
Act in 1862. It authorized two roads to be built, one from
the West coast (Central Pacific) and one for mid-continent
(Union Pacific) to meet somewhere in-between. The building of the Transcontinental Railroad was an undertaking so
vast for the time that few people thought it could be accomplished at all.
Each company was given 10 miles of public land (later
increased to 20) in alternate sections on either side of its
right-of-way for each mile of track laid, plus a loan of
$16,000 per mile on the plains, $32,000 through the Great
Basin and $48,000 through the mountains.
It is said that the photograph which captures the spirit of
the west (two locomotives facing each other, one headed
west, the other east) is perhaps the single most important
photographic record of the United States in the 19th century. Soon after the Golden Spike was struck at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869, a tourists guide entitled
Trans-Continental Tourist’s Guide was printed. It sold
quickly, but another edition was soon published, because of
changes that were taking place in every town, city and village along the “road.”
Recently the Doris Foley Library in Nevada City acquired an original “Second Temporary Revise” of the guide,
printed in 1870. While the tourist’s guide gives “a full and
la >
Nevada Gounty Historical Society
Bulletin
JULY 2003 . YOuME 57 NUMBER 3
authentic description of over five hundred cities, towns, villages and stations,” I thought you would enjoy a trip into
the past with me as we travel west and enter California,
after we have left Verdi, a station 11 miles west of Reno,
Nevada. We are on our way to the Colfax Station—this is
how we would travel to Nevada County, before the Nevada
County Narrow Gauge Railroad (NCNGRR) was built. (We
will only be visiting towns in Nevada County, due to space
limitations.)
Can you hear the whistle blow?
BOCA,
A station, 16 miles west of Verdi. Elevation, 5,560 feet. The
lumber interest is well represented here, huge piles of ties,
boards and timber lining the roadside. The river seems to be
the means of transportation for the saw logs, immense numbers of them being scattered up and down the stream, with
here and there a party of lumbermen working them down to
the mills.
We pass on, through deep gravel cuts, along the base of
black masses of rock which tower far above us, past sloping
pine-clad hills, for eight miles, when we stop at
TRUCKEE CITY,
Elevation 5,866 feet. It is situated on the north bank of the
Truckee river, in the midst of a heavily timbered region.
The principal business of the place is lumbering, through an
extensive freighting business is carried on with other points
in the mountains. One can hardly get around the town, for
the pile of lumber, ties and wood which cover the ground in
every direction. Some fine stores and a good hotel are the
only buildings which can lay claim to six and finish corresponding with growth and business of the place. The town
is built of wooden buildings—mostly on the north side of
the railroad. A narrow, crooked, muddy street separates the
first row of buildings—the business portion of town—from
another string of carelessly arranged houses, which stretch
along the foot of the mountains. The company has a very
large depot and sheds here, which attest the heavy freight
interest of the town. The very sharp roof of the buildings
point out the fact that the snow falls deep and moist here,
sufficiently so to crush in the roofs, unless they are very
sharp and strong. The town contains about 2,000 inhabiI