Categories
Tahoe Characters

#244 HARRY JOHANSON: LEGENDARY TAHOE LAWMAN

TAHOE NUGGET #244: HARRY JOHANSON: LEGENDARY TAHOE LAWMAN

It was a sad day for the small community of Tahoe City in the spring of 1932. Citizens dressed in black were in the process of burying the town’s first constable, the revered pioneer Robert Montgomery Watson.

Watson had arrived at Lake Tahoe in the 1870s and was appointed Tahoe City’s first constable in 1906. Constable Watson served his community until 1932 when he died of pneumonia at the age of 80.

When Harry E. Johanson rode into town on that fateful April day, he observed a somber funeral procession and Watson’s casket being drawn across the snow-covered meadow towards the Tahoe City Cemetery. Businesses were closed and school bells tolled.

 

First Tahoe City constable, Robert Montgomery Watson, was a noted horseman who helped re-open and mark the old Emigrant Road over Squaw Valley. Today it is known as the Western States Trail and site of a 100-mile-long horse race and also a world-famous ultra endurance foot race of similar length.

Born in Sweden in 1899, Johanson had demonstrated exceptional youthful athleticism by taking top honors in many skiing, swimming and long distance running competitions. He ended up winning a total of 84 medals and trophies, including a third place finish just behind future Finnish Olympic gold medalist Paavo Nurmi.

Johanson studied architectural drafting at the University of Upsala and after graduation he joined the Swedish Army Air Corp. In his late 30s, Harry decided to immigrate to the United States, but the quotas were full and instead he sailed for Canada. He took on a variety of jobs as he worked his way west, traveling the wilds of northern Canada to hunt, fish, and compete in sporting events like long distance swimming contests.

The versatile Swede eventually became an officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. While serving three years with the “Mounties” he learned horsemanship and dog sledding, skills that would serve him well at Lake Tahoe.

Like his predecessor Constable Watson, Harry Johanson was an accomplished horeseman.

Finally Johanson received the long-awaited paperwork that allowed him to legally enter the United States and he briefly worked as a draftsman in the sweltering Imperial Valley of Southern California. It didn’t take long for the Scandinavian-born, back-country expert to decide that it was the upper elevations of the Sierra Nevada where he would feel most at home.

Johanson came to Lake Tahoe to take a caretaker position at a West Shore estate. He didn’t expect to permanently settle in Tahoe City for long, but once he saw the stunning scenery decided to stay. Residents found the newcomer polite and well-versed in the skills necessary for travel and survival in a snowbound environment.

During Tahoe’s long, snowy winters, dog sled was a better form of transportation than cross-country skiing. In addition, sled dogs could also pull the injured or ill to safety.

In late 1934, he received his citizenship and shortly after became Tahoe City’s second constable. It soon became apparent, however, that “Harry Jo” as locals liked to call him, would be much different than Robert Watson. Watson was known as a quiet, reserved family man; Johanson was a confirmed bachelor with a flamboyant personality that defined him as a confident, self-made man.

Despite a well-deserved reputation as a “ladies man,” Harry Johanson always said he preferred dogs to women. Photo courtesy North Lake Tahoe Historical Society.

Harry Jo covered his beat of 200 square miles by horseback in summer and dogsled in winter. Harry loved dogs. One of his favorite quotes was “A man’s best friend is his dog, better even than his wife.” Johanson kept up to 15 dogs at a time, most them malamutes, to pull his sled. Despite heavy winter storms that buried the region in deep snow, Harry made his rounds checking on year-round residents. Blessed with incredible endurance and an expert on cross-country skis, in 1937 he circled Lake Tahoe in one day.

During the 1930s, Hollywood directors filmed many of that era’s adventure movies at Lake Tahoe, including such epics as “Call of the Wild” (Harry stood in for Clark Gable), “White Fang,” and “Rose Marie.” 

Johanson’s dog sled team always drew a crowd.

Harry Jo preferred the devoted companionship of his dogs over any commitment to a woman, but the handsome constable with wavy blond hair certainly enjoyed the “fairer sex.” His brief marriage to local schoolteacher Dorothy Zaharias produced a child, but Harry argued that he was not the father and she angrily left town with the baby. Afterward, Harry said, “The more I see of women, the more I love my dogs.”

Despite his well-publicized sentiments regarding marriage and women, he nevertheless flirted with many of the eligible females in Tahoe City, always wearing his dashing uniform and service revolver, even while drinking in the local taverns. Harry was a bit short in height and often wore lifters in his shoes, but he still charmed the ladies. Rumor has it that the beautiful actress, Jeanette MacDonald, star in “Rose Marie,” was one of his conquests.

 

The beautiful actress Jeanette MacDonald starred in the movie “Rose Marie” filmed at Lake Tahoe in 1936. Legend has it that Harry Johanson (who did stunt work for her co-star Nelson Eddy) successfully seduced MacDonald during her stay at the lake. 

Constable Johanson played an active role in regional law enforcement, not only capturing crooks (once nabbing a murder suspect in Tahoe City), but also in confiscating slot machines and shutting down local gambling operations. Johanson wore other hats too, simultaneously performing the duties of deputy sheriff, deputy tax collector, and deputy coroner.

Harry Johanson lived in the house that is now Wolfdale’s Cusine Unique restaurant on the main street in Tahoe City. This structure was originally built in Glenbrook, Nevada (near South Lake Tahoe) and towed across the lake to Tahoe City. In July 2012 a few of Johanson’s relatives visited the restaurant and owner/chef Douglas Dale gave them a tour of the building and showed them the jail Johanson designed.

Tahoe City was such a tiny community back then, when Harry bought his house, some locals complained about why he lived so far out of town.

 

As a trained architect, Johanson designed this “new” jail located on Tahoe City’s Commons Beach. The old jail was a dank, concrete bunker built nearby.

Prisoners’ view from Johanson’s Tahoe City jail.

After 32 years of service to his community, Johanson resigned in 1967. More than 200 people attended his retirement dinner at Sunnyside Lodge. Harry Jo eventually moved to Reno and died in 1980, but was buried in Tahoe City’s Trails End Cemetery, which he had renovated in the 1950s.

 

Special thanks to my friend Mickey Daniels — California’s last constable; Captain of Big Mack II

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Categories
Tahoe Sightseeing Uncategorized

#243 SQUAW VALLEY TRAM: A RIDE INTO HISTORY

TAHOE NUGGET #243: SQUAW VALLEY TRAM: A RIDE INTO HISTORY

The aerial tram at Squaw Valley will lift you effortlessly up into the Sierra high country, where ice-carved cirques, extruded thrusts of volcanic rock, and stellar views of Big Blue will take your breath away.

Squaw Valley’s aerial tram whisks passengers up to elevation 8,200 feet, where an array of fun activities await summer guests. A bonus this year is that the rides are free for anyone holding an active 2012-13 season ski pass at Squaw-Alpine.

Yes, there are lots of summer activities on this legendary skiers’ mountain, including hiking, swimming, roller skating, and poolside eating and drinking, but a trip to Squaw Valley is also an historic gateway to days gone by when pioneer emigrants traveled through its lush valley and over its craggy peaks on their way to California.

Squaw’s tram offers family explorers of all ages access to big mountain scenery; a perfect outdoor classroom to observe wildflowers, geology, and climate-driven vegetation. Hiking boots aren’t necessary, but people I saw wearing flip-flops had made the wrong choice. Sneakers or comfortable walking shoes should do the trick if you intend to stick to the maintained trails.

For thousands of years, American Indians from the ancient Washoe tribe summered at Squaw Valley, which they considered a sacred place. There the men could hunt game in the upper elevations, while the women wove intricate baskets, dug out roots of medicinal plants, fished, and watched their children play.

Noted basket weaver Washoe Mary at her craft, circa 1913.

After the long winter in the high desert of today’s western Nevada, the Indians looked forward to foraging in Squaw Valley’s verdant marshes for wild onions, berries, and other tasty edibles. The women also used the large granite boulders nearby to grind their harvest of seeds. The first Euro-Americans to pass through the valley observed that there were only women and children in the meadow (braves were away hunting), so they named it Squaw Valley.

 

A fine display of Washoe Indian baskets, tools, and weapons at Donner Memorial State Park.

The valley itself was scoured out by glaciers that advanced and retreated in successive waves. The terminal moraine deposited at the eastern end of the valley by advancing ice acted as a dam and created a lake filled by melting ice. Over time the lakebed was filled with eroded sediments, the moraine breached and a valley-meadow created.

At one point, the Squaw Valley glacier dammed up the Truckee River draining Lake Tahoe, forcing the lake’s water level hundreds of feet higher than today. These powerful geologic and climatic forces left behind, “The most beautiful valley the eye of man has ever beheld,” as Placer County surveyor Thomas A. Young described it in 1856.

Before Squaw Valley’s Olympic-driven development during the 1950s, the valley was primarily used for cattle and sheep grazing. The meadow provided lots of nutritious grass and Squaw Creek supplied plenty of fresh water.

During the California gold rush, 49ers began using Squaw Valley as a short-cut to the Mother Lode in the western Sierra foothills. First known as Scott’s Route, the trail climbed from the meadow up the mountain and followed the ridge line towards Auburn, California. In 1852, $13,000 was appropriated to improve the trail, renamed the Placer County Emigrant Route, but it never gained the hoped-for traffic.

Historic plaque on the Emigrant Pass monument tells the story.

In his 1915 book, The Lake of the Sky, author George Wharton James explained why the trail was abandoned: “…a forbidding prospect. Only brave men would ever have dared to contemplate such a plan. The mountain cliffs, separated and split, arise before us as impossible barriers…We now begin to ascend this road at the head of Squaw Valley and in five minutes, or less, we are able to decide why it was never a success. The grade is frightful, and for an hour or more we go slowly up it, stopping every few yards to give our horses breath…It is hard enough for horses to go up this grade, but to pull heavily-ladened wagons—it seems impossible.”

At nearly 9,000 feet elevation, this granite monument at Emigrant Pass marks the highest point on both the original Placer County Emigrant Road and the current Western States Trail.

In 1931, Robert Montgomery Watson, Tahoe City’s first constable and a pioneer horseman, marked the trail from Lake Tahoe to Auburn. Today it is known as the Western States Trail, where each summer a world-class, 100-mile endurance footrace is held, along with the Tevis Cup, the toughest horse race in the West.

Dedication of the Emigrant Road monument at Emigrant Pass along the Sierra divide, circa September 21, 1931. The volcanic feature in the background (located between Squaw Peak and Granite Chief) was named “Fort Sumter” by Squaw Valley miners during the Civil War. The patriotic men torched a huge bonfire on top of the rock on July 4, 1863. 

In 1862, Squaw Valley was designated Federal land and opened for settlement. Four enterprising men, Fish, Ferguson, Smith and Coggins, set up a small ranching operation in the meadows. They named their spread Squaw Valley Ranch.

That same year, prospectors John Keiser and Shannon Knox, decided to leave the exhausted gold diggings in California, to head east for the bustling Comstock mines at Virginia City, Nevada Territory. They coaxed their well-packed mules along the Placer County Emigrant Route to Squaw Valley. When the two men reached a flat near the Truckee River, just northwest of the mouth of Squaw Creek, they noticed some outcroppings of rich-looking reddish ore. Squaw Valley had never been known for gold, but prospectors are nothing if not optimists.

The news of potential veins of gold at Squaw Valley started a stampede of Placer County merchants, miners, and saloon owners. Early assays from supposedly gold-bearing quartz veins reported up to $440 worth of gold per ton with “strong potential for great profit.”

By 1863, there were four mining districts established, with at least 1,000 claims staked out along the Truckee River and in Martis Valley. But there was trouble in paradise. Late that fall, word came back on ore specimens sent to Sacramento that the rock was worthless, with no gold content at all. The strike was a bust. The bonanza was over and within a few days the region deserted —all except for Tahoe City that is. The fledgling settlement eventually became the gateway to the Tahoe Basin, first by stage, then by narrow gauge railroad and steamer.

In 1912, Marian and Pauline Chamberlain explored the remains of the Knoxville Tavern, a relic of the Squaw Valley gold rush.

A few frustrated miners gave up the search for gold and settled along Lake Tahoe. Each lent their name to the geography of the region — Ward Creek is named for Ward Rush; Blackwood Creek for Hampton Craig Blackwood; McKinney Creek for John McKinney; and Burton Creek for Homer D. Burton.

When I hiked up to Emigrant Pass on July 10, 2012, there was still a large patch of snow in the deposition zone below the ridge. I suspect that this snow was deposited during the 2011 winter, not last year.

In 1931, Wayne Poulsen and Marti Arrougé took an extended camping and fishing trip into the mountains above Squaw Valley. Marti had often camped in the valley with his father, a Basque sheepherder who grazed flocks in the lush meadow there. It was then that Poulsen, an avid skier who was still in high school, fell in love with the place and began to dream that he could develop it into an excellent winter resort.

After further exploration, Wayne decided his life goal would be to acquire and develop Squaw Valley as “a mountain community dedicated to skiing as a way of life.” During World War II, Poulsen bought Squaw Valley. He and his wife Sandy built their home there and raised a family.

Founder of Squaw Valley, Wayne Poulsen (far right), with his family celebrating Christmas in the valley.

In 1948, Poulsen went into a partnership with an investor named Alex Cushing. Due to sharp business and philosophical differences between them, the partnership broke up and Cushing took control of the company.

By 1955, the ski resort was financially broke, but Cushing pulled off a miracle and coaxed the International Olympic Committee to award the 1960 Winter Games to Squaw Valley.

Against all odds, Alex Cushing convinced a slight majority of International Olympic Committee delegates to vote yes for holding the 1960 Winter Games at his “glorified cow pasture” in California. It’s a remarkable story that I included in my award-winning book, Longboards to Olympics: A Century of Tahoe Winter Sports.

The 1960 Winter Olympics were a spectacular success that changed Squaw Valley forever and catapulted the Lake Tahoe region into an internationally recognized sports destination. Learn more at the free Olympic Museum at Squaw Valley’s High Camp!

Despite some environmental concerns, the Lake Tahoe Winter Games Exploratory Committee has set its sights on the 2026 Winter Olympics, with events to be hosted at Tahoe, Reno, and Sacramento.

                                              SQUAW VALLEY HIKING MAP

 

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Categories
Donner Party

#242 FATE OF LANSFORD HASTINGS & BRAZIL

TAHOE NUGGET #242: FATE OF LANSFORD HASTINGS & BRAZIL
If you ever hear about Portuguese-speaking Brazilians dressing up in American Confederate uniforms, waving the Rebel flag, wearing Southern-belle skirts, and playing the banjo at a Fourth of July barbecue, one of the people you can blame is Lansford W. Hastings. Anyone familiar with the Donner Party story will remember Hastings. He is often cast as the villain in that tragic tale.

Young Brazilian, descendant of an American Confederate family, circa 1998.

In early November 1846, members of the Donner Party were trapped east of the Sierra Nevada by deep snow. One of the reasons that their wagon train was attempting to cross the mountains so late in the season is because Lansford Hastings, a California land promoter and lawyer, had convinced leaders in the Donner group to take his untried shortcut through the Wasatch Mountains in Utah.

In 1845 Hastings had published a popular overland trail guide to the Pacific, a book that promoted the virtues of the land, climate, and health found in California and the Oregon Coast. He traveled from Ohio to New York City giving lectures and hawking his book, “The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California.”

Lansford Hastings’ guidebook to California contained just about everything you needed to know to travel west in a covered wagon. In person, however, Hastings persuaded three wagon trains to try an untested route which was only suitable for horses or pack animals. Following Hastings was a mistake that cost the Donner Party dearly in lost time and provisions.

In New York City he met Mormon leader Sam Brannan who was preparing a ship to carry Latter Day Saints to the West Coast. Hastings tried to persuade Brannan to bring his followers to California’s Sacramento Delta region where Hastings was hoping to establish a settlement on a Mexican land grant, in the manner of John Sutter’s fort.

Mormon Sam Brannan and nearly 250 Latter Day Saints sailed from New York City to San Francisco onboard the ship Brooklyn, arriving in July 1846. Brannan and his followers were hoping to start a Mormon settlement in California, but the Mexican-American War foiled their plans. As a professional printer and journalist, he started the California Star newspaper in San Francisco. After gold was discovered in early 1848, Brannan became California’s first millionare, a boozer, womanizer, and an ex-Mormon.    

Lansford Hastings’ message was perfectly timed as it fit in with a growing political push toward westward expansion, and an almost religious exhortation that inspired frontier families to search out new land. Everyone was swelling with the notion of American Exceptionalism and driven by the concept of Manifest Destiny.

In the years between 1840 and 1845, the total number of emigrants that traveled from the United States overland to the Mexican province of California was just 325. But in 1846 alone, at least 1,500 people took on the grueling, often deadly California Trail.

 

Spirit of Manifest Destiny, an 1872 painting by John Nash, represented the modernization of the new West. Columbia, who’s stringing telegraph wire and carrying a school book, illuminates the darkness of untamed wilderness and leads progress, technology and civilization westward.

There were plenty of people involved in the Donner Party’s trajectory to disaster, but historians often label Hastings as the “bad guy.” Technically, there should have been nothing wrong with Hastings promoting a new cutoff that would save time and distance. Others were also developing alternate routes and parts of the California Trail changed frequently during the 1840s, but Hastings failed to lead the late arriving Donner Party through his cutoff and they were abandoned to their fate. Hastings tendency to improvise as he went and overstate his knowledge of geography led directly to the Donner Party tragedy and tarnished his reputation.

 

The Hastings Cutoff navigated steep canyons in the Wasatch and crossed the barren, virtually waterless Utah Desert. Note Hastings lack of awareness about topography with the big detour around the Ruby Mountains.

Hastings arrived back in California just in time to join Major John C. Frémont in the war against Mexico. Fighting in California was short-lived and in 1847 Hastings moved to San Francisco where he practiced law and invested in real estate. He was elected to the School Board and later appointed a judge.

In January 1848, James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s sawmill and Hastings was soon plucking nuggets out of the American River. That summer, 29-year-old Hastings married 19-year-old Charlotte at Sutter’s Fort. (Hastings’ abandoned first wife had either died or divorced him by then.) Hastings formed a partnership with Sutter and opened a miner’s supply store, and then later ran a ferryboat operation.

John A. Sutter. Lansford Hastings hoped to emulate Sutter’s success at obtaining a Mexican land grant to develop and create his own fiefdom.

Over the next eight years, Charlotte Hastings gave birth to five children, four of whom survived. In 1858, Lansford moved his family to Arizona Territory, where Hastings became postmaster, practiced law, and in 1860 was again appointed a judge.

Although raised as a “Northern Yankee” in Ohio, Hastings saw opportunity in aligning with the Confederacy at the start of the American Civil War. He devised a scheme to annex Southern California and Arizona Territory with an occupation by anti-Union recruits from the Golden State.

During the Civil War, Hastings sided with the South. He dreamed up a scheme to separate California from the Union and unite it with the Confederacy. His plan didn’t work.

When Charlotte died in 1861, Hastings placed his children in the care of friends near San Francisco and travelled to Texas, Louisiana, and finally to Richmond, Virginia, where he met Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America. For his efforts, Hastings was commissioned a major in the Confederate Army.

After the South’s military defeat in 1865, Hastings headed for Mexico and then journeyed to Brazil to obtain permission from Emperor Dom Pedro II to establish an American colony for disaffected Southern families seeking relief from the victorious Union government. After choosing a large land parcel near the Amazon River, Hastings returned to Alabama to publish his next book, “Emigrants Guide to Brazil.”

Even today, Brazilian descendants of Southern Confederate families assemble near the town of Americana to dress in antebellum-era attire and honor their ancestral traditions.

In 1867, 115 ex-patriots sailed with Hastings to Brazil to develop tropical plantation lifestyles free from interference. In less than a decade, Hastings’ colony consisted of 22 families with more than 100 workers. But Hastings life-long dream of ruling his own settlement was dashed in 1870 when the 51-year-old died at sea while on another voyage from the U.S. to Brazil. He’s buried in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Brazilian cemetery where American descendants of the Confederacy are buried.

Overall, up to 20,000 ex-Confederates immigrated to Brazil after the Civil War where today their some of ancestors live in the community of Americana. Proud of their heritage, descendants gather four times a year and still celebrate Dixie traditions and the Fourth of July.

Read more about Lansford Hastings in my Sierra Sun column:

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Categories
Truckee History

#241 DONNER PASS 20 MILE MUSEUM

NUGGET #241: DONNER PASS 20 MILE MUSEUM

Tahoe’s summer weather is so beautiful why would anyone want to spend one of their precious days at a museum? Well, the Donner Summit Historical Society wants to show people that the Society’s “20 Mile Museum” concept is one of the most rewarding outdoor experiences in the region.

Blessed with accessible terrain and unique geologic and transportation features, visitors of all ages can interact firsthand with the kind of American history most have only read about. Concentrated along the historic Route 40 corridor (Donner Pass Road west of Truckee), volunteers with the DSHS have installed interpretive signs at many locations that offer a reference map, a brief history of the area, and suggestions for things to do there.

Members and volunteers with the Donner Summit Historical Society have installed a bunch of these interpretive signs along the historic Highway 40 corridor for those unfamiliar with the region’s history.

The Donner Pass region is at the crossroads of a nation, where Native Americans traveled for thousands of years; early immigrant wagon trains made their way to California: and where the country built its first transcontinental railroad and highway. The train and auto traffic encouraged the development of an early ice harvest industry, the construction of tourist hotels, and gave birth to our region’s first alpine skiing.

Among its many “exhibits” the 20 Mile Museum boasts an impressive array of visible physical evidence showcasing two of the most dramatic construction projects in the West. The transcontinental railroad, built by Chinese laborers in the 1860s, was considered an engineering marvel in its day. Also on display is the original layout of the Lincoln Highway, the United States’ first coast-to-coast interstate highway, completed in 1923.

Road crews built the Lincoln Highway about 55 years after the construction of the first transcontinental railroad. Note length of wooden snow shed erected to protect trains and track from deep snow and avalanches.

This low point along the Sierra crest is where the 1844 Stephens-Murphy-Townsend Party became the first California-bound wagon train to successfully cross the Sierra. In addition, members of the Donner Party were snowbound near here during the winter of 1847. Donner Memorial State Park and Emigrant Trail Museum at the east end of Donner Lake are still open while the new $6.8 million High Sierra Crossing Museum is being constructed, slated to open next year.

 

Diorama showing how the 1844 Stephens Party took their wagons apart to get over the cliffs and boulders below Donner Pass. All 50 emigrants survived the trip to California and two babies were born along the way, including Elizabeth Yuba Murphy who was born at Big Bend (Yuba River) shortly after this Herculean effort. Mary was the first American born in the Sierra Nevada and her mother was in her final term of pregnancy during this final push.

The best approach for exploring the 20 Mile Museum by car is to drive west on Donner Pass Road past Donner Lake and up towards the parking lot at Rainbow Bridge, built in 1924. The bridge’s name comes from its architectural arch, designed to accommodate an elevation change. This is a good location to get your bearings for visiting nearby Indian petroglyphs and the impressive “China Wall.”

 

Donner Pass Road Bridge (Rainbow Bridge) with Donner Lake in background.

After enjoying the parking lot views of Donner Lake and the snake-like concrete railroad sheds hugging the steep slope below Donner Peak, backtrack down Donner Pass Road (drive or walk) about 150 yards to access the glacially polished granite apron west of the road. Walk past the DSHS information sign and head for the cryptic petroglyphs scrawled into the rock by Native Americans who used this mountain pass for trade between California and Great Basin tribes. Click here for short video of petroglyph site.

The Indian petroglyphs are faint, but easily discernible. Note that in addition to the original carvings there may be some newer drawings made by indigenous high school students.

Farther up the rock slope you will see the China Wall, a 75-foot-high road-support, constructed of stone blocks without mortar or cement. Like most of the western portion of the first transcontinental railroad, the wall was built by Chinese workers. In aggregate, the diminutive Chinese performed the work of giants to force a railroad through the Sierra Nevada.

As you approach the China Wall and pick an easy route up the granite slope bearing west (right), a small underpass can be observed. Head for this historic underpass, completed in 1913 to allow automobiles and trucks to safely pass under the train tracks. The older system forced early motorists to drive through a wooden snow shed which caused collisions between vehicles and moving locomotives. The underpass location also indicates the trail near where the Stephens Party pushed and pulled their covered wagons through the rocky defile.

This portion of the 20 Mile Museum is the most exciting, but also the most challenging. With a little patience and occasional helping hand, most people can reach the abandoned track bed and tunnel system. It’s possible to drive your private vehicle here via Tunnel #6 accessed near Sugar Bowl Ski Resort, but you’re also more likely to get a warning from Union Pacific that the track bed is private property.

Once through the underpass, bear right and it’s an easy walk up onto the track bed built for the original transcontinental project. No worries about train traffic here as this stretch of the line was abandoned in 1993, and the rails and ties removed. This portion of the railroad is quiet, but Union Pacific maintains an active line through a tunnel system to the south that was completed after World War I. (Note: You may encounter mountain bikers, motorcyclists, and even private vehicles at times.)

The level grade makes for easy walking or mountain biking. Loose rock ballast can make for some squirrely steering at times and a helmet light is needed for any of the longer tunnels, especially #6. These concrete snow sheds were installed by Southern Pacific in the mid-1980s as a replacement for the original fire-prone wooden sheds.

Once on the graded, level roadbed, on your left (west) there is the brief Tunnel #7 followed by Tunnel #6. Tunnel #6 (Summit Tunnel) is the highest along the railroad line, and at 1,659 feet long, also the longest of the 15 Sierra tunnels. The progress of blasting and chipping away the obdurate granite here was so slow that in August 1866 a vertical shaft was dug at the midway point between the east and west tunnel leads, which enabled Central Pacific Railroad to run four headers instead of two.

The cap of this vertical shaft is located just west of the Sugar Bowl Academy parking area further up the road at the top of Donner Pass. A commemorative plaque at the site describes the challenge of boring out the Summit Tunnel. 

Thousands of Chinese workers painstakingly hand drilled, then blasted the granite rock with black powder and newly invented nitroglycerine. The 1,659-foot-long Summit Tunnel took 15 months to drill. Their effort has been called “The Work of Giants.”

Summit Tunnel has a lot of history, but it is also very dark and often riddled with puddles inside. Better to head east (towards Donner Lake) into Tunnel #8, which is also a bit dark but your eyes will adjust and a flashlight is really not needed once you take off your sunglasses. Continue into the tunnel for 5 to 10 minutes and there will be an open door in the concrete shed on your left.

 

The tunnels themselves are dark, but the concrete snow sheds were designed with open slits to allow in light and to help locomotive emissions dissipate.

Step out into the sunshine and enjoy unique views of Donner Lake, and the transportation history of the Summit, including evidence of the Dutch Flat Donner Lake Wagon Road, a toll road constructed in 1864. Old Highway 40 (Donner Pass Road) follows much of that alignment. Note the large timbers which were used for the original wooden snow sheds before the railroad replaced them with pre-formed concrete in the 1980s. Wooden sheds were prone to fire and maintenance expensive. In the distance is Interstate 80, the award-winning, modern superhighway completed in 1964.

Note the various roads built over time, starting with the early Dutch Flat Donner Lake Wagon Road, the Lincoln Highway (U.S. 40), and finally Interstate 80 in the far distance. I-80 is located several miles north of the original Donner Pass.

There are other “exhibits” to enjoy along the 20 Mile Museum, including the Summit Valley overlook and the Rainbow Tavern/Lodge located along the Yuba River. The 20 Mile Museum is now included on the National Geographic’s GeoTourism map, but it doesn’t have the historic details and suggested activities. To get your own free guide brochure visit the Donner Summit Historical Society research cabin on Donner Pass Road at the blinking light in “downtown” Soda Springs. They are also available at the Soda Springs General Store.

A mountain load of thanks to Bill Oudeqeest, a member of the DSHS Board of Directors, for his yeoman’s job of producing the interpretive stands, writing the historical text, securing necessary permits, and soliciting financial contributions. Without Bill’s efforts, the 20 Mile Museum would still be a figment of someone’s imagination.  

You can download a printable version here: Donner Summit Historical Society

If you enjoy Donner Pass history, sign up for the DSHS Newsletter with Subscribe in the subject line.

Read more about railroad construction over Donner Pass in Tahoe Nugget #147

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Categories
Nevada Scenery

#240 BIKE TAHOE FLUME TRAIL!

TAHOE NUGGET #240: BIKE THE TAHOE FLUME TRAIL!
It’s official. Lake Tahoe’s spectacular flume trail is open for mountain bike enthusiasts. This 14-mile ride is one of the most popular back-country cycling excursions in the basin, one that offers stunning views and requires a nominal amount of technical ability (you can always walk the bike past the scary parts).

Portions of the flume trail have steep drop-away margins, but for me the exposure was more exhilarating than threatening. No texting or distracted cycling on this ride!

The main trail itself is nearly level, but the final approach past Snow Valley up a sand and gravel mountain slope does require a level of physical fitness. I walked my bike up the final portion of the climb, but ardent cyclists in better shape than me engaged their “granny gear” and pedaled the whole way. The pitch is steep (1,100 foot vertical gain in a half mile), but once you get that grunt out of the way, the rest of the trip is level or downhill and it’s smooth sailing on one of America’s most scenic rides. (Google for maps and info before you go.)

Birds-eye view of Nevada’s Sand Harbor State Park from the flume trail. Sand Harbor boasts some of the best beaches at Lake Tahoe. Swimming, kayaking, and boulder diving are favorite activities for all ages.

Every summer and fall, mountain bikers flock to this 19th century logging flume trail 1,600 feet above Tahoe’s idyllic east shore beaches. The narrow pathway hugs the steep face of the Carson Range’s west slope overlooking the lake. The first water flume in the eastern Sierra was built in 1869 to move wood efficiently from the mountains down to the Nevada valley floor where it could be hauled to the bustling Comstock mines.

For more than a century, the Truckee Tahoe region supported a commercial logging industry. When I moved to Truckee in 1978, the town’s lumber yard was still in action as shown here. 

The long, winding flumes were built in sections tight enough to hold water, and strong enough to carry cord wood for Comstock boilers as well as cut lumber up to 40 feet long. In some of the steeper areas, loggers used dry chutes to move the timber. These were made of cut-out logs that were firmly staked to the ground and greased daily. The dry chutes were shorter than the water flumes, but the big logs flashed down so quickly that the friction often produced a bright trail of sparks, flames and smoke.

Sunday outing for local family near a dry flume. The flumes and lumberjacks were quiet on Sundays and the only safe time to explore the loggging operations. Note the tree trunks stripped of bark, ready for the saw mill.  

By 1879 there were 10 flumes operating in the region totaling more than 80 miles in length. One of the most spectacular flumes was owned by the Pacific Wood, Lumber and Flume Company. It wound its way for 15 miles before ending near the Virginia & Truckee Railroad tracks. Called the Bonanza V Flume it was an engineering marvel in its day. Construction required two million feet of timber and 56,000 pounds of nails, but it was built in only 10 weeks.

Timber baron Duane Leroy Bliss and his wife Elizabeth. Bliss made a lot of money investing in the timber and flume industries, wealth that he used to adavnce Lake Tahoe’s tourism industry. He launched the luxury steamer Tahoe, built the famous Tahoe Tavern Hotel, and constructed the narrow gauge Tahoe Truckee Railway that connected Tahoe City with the main transcontental line at Truckee.

In 1875, H.J. Ramsdell, a New York Tribune reporter, was out on assignment, touring the various Comstock mining operations. One day Ramsdell asked silver baron John Mackay, part owner of the Bonanza flume, how the timber for underground tunnel support was transported out of the mountains. Mackay suggested a visit to his company’s operation.

Once there, Mackay and his associates challenged Ramsdell to join them in a trip down the flume by hog trough, a crude narrow boat 16 feet long with a V-shaped keel. The 200-pound reporter could not believe what he was hearing, but he thought, “If men worth 25 to 30 million dollars apiece could afford to risk their lives, I could afford to risk mine which is not worth half as much.” For a bit of comfort, two small boards were installed as seats.

The men were well-dressed, but apparently not concerned about their clothes or their lives. While stout workmen held the two boats over the rushing current, the daring city slickers were told to jump in as soon as the boats were dropped. They were also warned that: “A flume has no element of safety. You cannot stop, you cannot lessen your speed; you have only to sit still, shut your eyes, say your prayers, take all the water that comes…and wait for eternity.”

Lumberjacks often floated small wooden V-shaped boxes called Go Devils down the flumes. The Go Devils carried tools, supplies, and sometimes lunch from worker to worker. Image is an artist’s line drawing rendition of  two brave souls riding a flume. Published in Harper’s Weekly, June 2, 1877.

The boat was lowered and suddenly they were off. When the terrified reporter finally opened his eyes, they were already streaking down the mountainside. The trestle was 70 feet high in some places, and since Ramsdell was lying down, he could see only the aerial flume stretching for miles ahead. The second boat crashed into the first and the men were thrown into the rushing water. The tangled confusion of splintered wood and terrified adventurers slid 15 miles in just 35 minutes, scaring the daylight out them but saving themselves a whole day of traveling by horse-drawn carriage.

The experience enabled reporter Ramsdell to write a good story, but his main satisfaction came from the fact that his wealthy hosts were so battered and sore, they could not get out of bed the next day.

Like the miners working the dangerous Comstock Lode, loggers worked hard and played hard. Here’s a lumberjack taking the fast route to the saloons and brothels in Virginia City. The artist took the liberty of painting a tree trunk, but usually the timber had been sawed into lumber by the time it made its way down a water flume.

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Tahoe Snapshot History

#239 CALIFORNIA-NEVADA BORDER WAR

TAHOE NUGGET #239: CALIFORNIA-NEVADA BORDER WAR

After the United States’ victory in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), both countries signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo giving the U.S. more than half of Mexico’s original sovereign territory.

U.S. expansion into the West began with President Jefferson’s 1803 Louisiana Purchase and culminated during President Polk’s administration with the annexation of Texas and victory in the Mexican-American War. It was a controversial and unpopular war and considered a land grab by many, but it brought California and much of the Desert Southwest into the American fold.

When the question of California’s geographical size and official borders came up at the state’s first Constitutional Convention held in Monterey in October 1849, there were two main options considered. One called for including all of what Mexicans called Upper California, which included a big chunk of the Great Basin as well as portions of present day Utah and Arizona.

Many of the delegates, however, preferred a more manageable border in the Sierra Nevada, for both political and practical reasons. The possibility of an uber-state later being politically carved into slave territories was one serious concern.

Among those pushing for a state line along the Sierra Range was none other than John C. Frémont, credited as the first Euro-American (along with his cartographer Charles Preuss) to see Lake Tahoe. Frémont was also a strong proponent of California entering the Union as a free state, not slave. Considering that Frémont had already seen the size and beauty of Tahoe (he called it Lake Bonpland), the topographical engineer probably assumed that the important lake would be totally included on California’s side of the boundary.

John C. Frémont’s 1848 map illustrates the general contours of the Sierra Nevada. Courtesy Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps, Inc. 

Finally, one of the delegates called for an eastern border fixed in the mountains, but based on longitude and latitude, not geography. The delegate himself had no concept of Sierra Nevada topography and hydrology when he made his suggestion and despite the lack of a survey the convention submitted to Congress an eastern state border based on an imaginary grid, not the ground. This ill-conceived action by a few has caused headaches and confusion for Nevada and the federal government for decades. Bi-state water rights issues on the Truckee River continue to this day.

Two of California’s boundaries were no brainers; 42nd degree latitude for the northern border (based on an earlier agreement incorporated into the Oregon Territory treaty when Great Britain relinquished all claims to the present-day Pacific Northwest), and the Pacific Coast (including all the major bays, harbors and offshore islands). California’s southern state line would be run right down the middle of the Colorado River and then along the 35th parallel on the border with Mexico, but it was the eastern boundary that gave everyone fits.

Shaded area indicates trouble zone for California and Nevada’s shared border. Nevada Territory was established in 1861 (after the 1859 discovery of the Comstock Lode) when the federal government split Utah Territory in half. Note how additional Mormon land was ceded to Nevada, which gained statehood in 1864. Map courtesy John P. Wilusz from his article published in Professional Surveyor, January 2002.

On October 11, 1849, the youngest delegate attending the convention, James M. Jones, offered a land description of the eastern border which was adopted and incorporated into the state constitution. The description started at the northeast point of the state at the intersection of the 42nd degree latitude at the 120th degree longitude, and then “…running south along the 120th degree longitude until it intersects the 39th degree of north latitude [an intersection that falls within Lake Tahoe]; thence running in a straight line in a southeasterly direction to the Colorado River… “

Jones description placed Lake Tahoe and its water, which flows into the Great Basin, not the Pacific Ocean, directly in the crosshairs of dispute and disagreement between California and the future state of Nevada. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo not only described the new international boundary between the United States and Mexico, it required each government to commission a survey to run and mark the boundary line on the ground. The California convention delegates skipped this important step. When the first survey to mark the state’s eastern boundary was completed in 1863, they were surprised to find that only two-thirds of Lake Tahoe actually fell within the new state border, with one third in Nevada.

Running the state line through Lake Tahoe (see Nugget #238 for the history behind the name) generated controversy and conflict between California and Nevada over water rights.

More surveys were undertaken in the 1860s and 1870s and each found discrepancies with previous work. In 1872, the federal government hired astronomer and surveyor Alexis Von Schmidt to improve the results. Part of the challenge for these early surveyors (besides rugged topography, hostile Indians, lack of funding, and an aggressive schedule) was the difficulty of locating geographic coordinates, especially longitude.

Of the two coordinates, latitude is the easiest to determine using astronomical observations and scientific instruments, but longitude is a function of time based on global meridians in relation to Greenwich, England. At the 39th degree latitude (Lake Tahoe) a clock error of only one second would cause a surveyor to post his longitude marker nearly a quarter of a mile out of position. Von Schmidt faced challenges similar to his predecessors, but he had an important advantage when it came to determining longitude. By 1872, accurate time signals could be transmitted by telegraph from San Francisco. The wires followed the transcontinental railroad tracks and crossed the border near Verdi, Nevada.

Diagram defining the border calculations. Courtesy John P. Wilusz, PE, published in Professional Surveyor, 2002.

In addition to the technological challenges, Nevada caused more problems when it passed the Organic Act. Instead of simply recognizing California’s existing eastern border as its western margin, this act demanded California give up any land associated with waters that “did not flow into the Pacific.”

The congressional acts that created Nevada Territory (1861) and the State of Nevada (1864) provided for a western boundary at the Sierra Nevada crest line if the California state legislature would agree to change its existing boundary from 120 degrees longitude. California, however, declined to relinquish any territory, particularly its portion of Lake Tahoe which is located east of the Sierra crest line.

North Lake Tahoe survey monument from Alexis Von Schmidt’s 1872 survey.

Lake Tahoe was not the only casualty from this early confusion. The so-called Roop County War took place when residents near the disputed state line around Honey Lake near Susanville in northeastern California proclaimed themselves in a separate territory. Their independence freed them from California law and taxes. It took a heavily-armed, 90-man militia from Plumas County to enforce California’s jurisdiction, but after two days of fighting the defeated rebels became part of Lassen County.

A hydrological border along the Sierra crest would have mitigated many of the controversial issues of watershed management along the eastern Sierra front, with Nevada having control over vital water sources emanating from the “California Mountains.” Fortunately, over the past 150 years bi-state agreements and federal decrees have solved many of the problems associated with a state boundary that does not take into account physical features like streams, lakes, and rivers.

Special thanks to Guy Rocha, retired Nevada State Archivist, for his prior research into this topic.

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Tahoe Historical Tour Tahoe Snapshot History

#238 TAHOE: WHAT'S IN A NAME?

TAHOE NUGGET #238: LAKE TAHOE: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

For generations, Lake Tahoe has inspired untold numbers of people fortunate enough to view its pristine waters and forest-cloaked mountains. For countless summers, American Indians of the Washoe, Maidu, and Paiute tribes foraged, fished and hunted the region’s natural bounty.

Their ancestors, prehistoric nomadic tribes who spent their winters in the high desert and California valleys, also took advantage of the mild alpine summers in the Sierra Nevada to collect edible and medicinal roots, seeds and marsh plants. In the Truckee area, there is archeological evidence of Washoe villages dating back at least 8,000 years. The Washoe had named the Truckee River “a’wakhu wa’t’a,” and they called Lake Tahoe “da’aw.”

Known locally as “Big Blue,” Lake Tahoe never fails to impress. A lake of superlatives.

The region’s nomenclature changed dramatically in 1844 when Captain John C. Frémont led a small expedition into present day Western Nevada. Frémont had earlier surveyed the Rocky Mountains, but this was his first mapping mission of the geographical region he later named the “Great Basin.”

The Paiute chief Truckee was certain that the Anglo-Americans were the tribe’s ancestral white brothers and he greeted them warmly. In his journal, Charles Preuss, a European cartographer with the Frémont expedition, noted one of their first encounters with the tribe: “January 15, 1844. During a short day’s march we reached a deep lake [Frémont named it Pyramid for the giant pyramid-shaped rock near its eastern shore], but do not yet know whether it is Mary’s Lake or not.” [Mary’s Lake was the name for the end of the Humboldt River. Pyramid Lake is the terminus of the Truckee River.]

In January 1844, Frémont and his men reached Pyramid Lake which the explorer named for obvious reasons. Today Pyramid Lake is the site of a Pauite Indian Reservation. Note the field artillary piece. The group lugged their trusty cannon along for months until they lost it in the deep snow near Walker Pass in February 1844.

Preuss continued: “The lake has no outlet, but a small river flows into it. Near where we are camping, the river is swarming with magnificent salmon-trout. We traded a few trinkets for a whole load of fish from the Indians and I almost ate myself into oblivion. The winter is rather mild here, if only the wind would not blow so often.”

There are no known photographs of Chief Truckee, but this is his son Chief Winnemucca.

After observing the abundant fish in the desert stream, Frémont called it “Salmon-Trout River.” The name would be changed to Truckee River later that same year after Chief Truckee helped the first immigrant wagon train (Stephens-Murphy-Townsend) in their epic overland crossing into California.

Captain Elisha Stephens successfully led the first wagons over Truckee’s Pass in the fall of 1844. Later the pass would be renamed after the 1847 Donner Party tragedy.

Frémont and his band continued their journey south, where they came upon two more streams emanating from the snow-covered mountains to the west. Frémont named the first one “Carson” after his friend and guide Christopher “Kit” Carson. The third and most southern of the rivers was named for Joseph Walker, a noted mountain man accompanying this expedition. He blazed Walker Pass in the southern Sierra, the first snow-free route to the Pacific Ocean.

Christopher “Kit” Carson (left) with Capt. John C. Frémont. The two men explored much of the western United States together during a series of mapping expeditions from the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean.

Frémont spoke to the Indians about reaching California. One of the tribal elders told him that “before the snows fell it was six sleeps to the place where the whites lived, but that now it was impossible to cross the mountain on account of the deep snow.

In desperate need of supplies available at Sutter’s Fort (Sacramento), Frémont decided to tackle the mountains despite the warnings. He wrote: “In the morning I acquainted the men with my decision, and explained to them of the beautiful valley of the Sacramento, with which they were familiar from the descriptions of Kit Carson, who had been there some 15 years ago, and who had delighted us in speaking of its rich pastures and abounding game. Carson drew a vivid contrast between the summer climate less than 100 miles distant, and the falling snow around us.”

Terminus of the Truckee River which drains Lake Tahoe, Pyramid Lake has a surface area almost as large as  Tahoe. Pyramid Lake is the largest remnant left over from the ancient Lake Lahontan, a huge inland sea that once covered much of Nevada and the Great Basin.  The lake is part of the Pyramid Lake Pauite Tribe’s reservation and is a productive fishery. Anglers flock to Pyramid Lake year-round to try their luck catching the world’s largest cutthroat trout that thrive here.

The men prepared for their Sierra crossing as best they could by dressing in leggings, along with moccasins and heavy clothing to resist the snow and cold. Frémont’s men were uncharacteristically silent, but they pushed on using large wooden mallets to break the snowpack’s crust. Pruess complained, “This surpasses all the hardships that I have experienced until now. Here all we have is a buffalo hide on the snow as our bed.”

On February 14, 1844, while climbing an isolated peak, Preuss and Frémont “discovered” Lake Tahoe. Frémont named it Lake Bonpland in honor of Aimé Bonpland, a French botanist. But for once Frémont’s official appellation didn’t stick because in 1854, supporters of California’s third governor John Bigler named the lake for him.

Approximate view of Lake Tahoe from Red Lake Peak as seen by John Frémont and Charles Preuss on Valentine’s Day 1844. Although the expedition was reduced to eating mules, peas, and dog meat, all the men survived the trans-Sierra journey to Sutter’s Fort in the southern Sacramento Valley. Photo courtesy David Antonucci.

During the Civil War, Union sentiment objected to calling the lake Bigler because the former governor was an outspoken secessionist, and a political movement was started to designate the phonetically-sounding Washoe name, “Tahoe” meaning “water in a high place” or “edge of the lake.”

California did not restore the lake’s original Native American name until 1945, when the State legislature officially renamed it Lake Tahoe in honor of the first Americans to call it home.

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Nevada Characters

#237 HANGING OF LUCKY BILL

TAHOE NUGGET #237: THE HANGING OF LUCKY BILL

Fate had been kind to William J. Thorington. Although a short attention span had hindered his formal education in New York, young Bill was smart enough to join the thousands of Forty-Niners rushing to the California gold strike.

Thorington trekked overland during the summer of 1850, traversed the rugged Sierra Nevada at Carson Pass and then headed for the gold diggings. After three years placer mining in the Sierra foothills, Bill Thorington bought a fine farm for only $600 in the fertile Carson Valley near Genoa, Utah Territory.

Nevada Territory was split off Utah Territory and incorporated in March 1861. The region gained statehood in 1864 when President Lincoln needed more electoral votes for re-election. It’s motto is the “Battle Born State” because it achieved statehood during the Civil War.

By 1855, a financial windfall from a short-term loan had netted him the prosperous Eagle Ranch and ownership of the Clear Creek Canyon toll road to Lake Tahoe. The industrious Thorington also planted Nevada’s first fruit trees and dug the first irrigation ditches in the Carson Valley.

Big and burly, with mirthful eyes and curly black hair, Thorington earned the Lucky Bill moniker from his legendary skill as Nevada’s first professional gambler. He excelled at shell and card games.

Gambling has always been a tradition in Nevada, going back to the early mining days of the 1850s.

Over the years Lucky Bill helped many friends and road-weary travelers, as well as strangers fleeing from justice. Historian H.H. Bancroft noted that Thorington was “Benevolent in the sense of Robin Hood; he robbed those that had money or property, and good-naturedly gave of his easily gotten gains a small portion to those who had not, when they appealed to his sympathies—a trait which often distinguishes the gambler.”

Bill was also a devout Mormon and suspected of practicing plural marriage, an issue that generated suspicion and animosity among the increasing number of anti-Mormon residents in the region.

The first permanent settlement in Nevada was established in the Carson Valley in the spring of 1851 by Colonel John Reese, a Mormon who planned to open a trading post on the overland trail. Shortly after the Mormons built Mormon Station, later named Genoa, the first town in Nevada. By 1850 the trans-Sierra route near Donner Pass had been eclipsed by the more popular Carson trail just south of Lake Tahoe. 

Lucky Bill’s reckless risk-taking eventually led to his downfall. In the spring of 1858, William Edwards, a newcomer to the Carson Valley, asked Thorington if he could live at Eagle Ranch for a while. Lucky Bill was unaware that his unassuming guest had just murdered a man in Merced County, California, and was fleeing the hangman’s noose.

After lying low for several weeks, Edwards drifted north to Honey Lake in eastern California. A few days later, Edwards and two accomplices killed Honey Lake rancher, Harry Gordier, for his money and small herd of cattle. When Gordier’s body was found tied up in a sack, floating in the Susan River, community vigilantes took the law into their own hands. The outraged citizens of Honey Lake wrongly hung an innocent man named Snow for the killing, but they soon began to suspect Edwards.

View across Jack’s Valley north of Genoa. Job’s Peak in the distance is located along the eastern front of the Carson Range. A mountain range, river and nearby valley are named after Christopher “Kit” Carson, who came through the region with John Frémont during the winter of 1844. 

Edwards stole a fleet-footed horse and galloped back to Thorington’s ranch. Claiming innocence, he explained to Bill that there had been “trouble back at Honey Lake” and he wanted to sell the valuable steed to escape to South America. Always a champion of the underdog, Lucky Bill agreed to hide Edwards and sell the stolen horse. However, both men underestimated the determination of the Honey Lake mob. Two vigilantes, William Elliott and John Gilpin, pursued Edwards to the Carson Valley where they convinced Edwards and Lucky Bill to sell them the stolen horse. Edwards also told the vigilantes of his escape plans.

This steaming, geothermally-heated creek feeds David Walley’s Hot Springs Resort established in 1862. Nevada has 312 hot springs, the most of any state. 

On June 14, 1858, Lucky Bill was arrested. A quick search of the ranch failed to turn up Edwards. Despite threats of death, Thorington refused to help the authorities locate Edwards, but Bill’s 12-year-old son Jerome was persuaded to reveal the killer’s hideout. Both Edwards and Lucky Bill were taken into custody.

A citizen’s trial took place three days later. Mr. Elliott acted as sheriff, John Cary as judge and eighteen jurors were convened. On the stand Edwards acknowledged his own guilt and swore that Lucky Bill was innocent. William Edwards was condemned to death and ordered hung at the scene of the murder in Honey Lake Valley. Wasting no time, Edwards was escorted back to Honey Lake and by early the following week he was swinging from a hemp rope. (Ironically, Edwards’ two accomplices in the Honey Lake murder were only fined $1,000 each and ordered to leave the territory.)

Mormon Station State Park. Mormon leader Brigham Young sent Orson Hyde to Mormon Station in 1854 to survey a town site, determine the California boundary, and set up a government. Hyde changed the name to Genoa, allegedly in honor of Christopher Columbus’ birthplace in Italy. The name is pronounced “Jen-o-ah” in Nevada. Some might consider it ironic that the Silver State, today renowned for gambing and prostitution, was founded by Latter Day Saints.

Everyone agreed that Thorington was only guilty of aiding an escaping criminal, but vengeance was in the air. The jury ruled Bill Thorington an accessory to murder after the fact and sentenced him to die. The verdict was no surprise to the residents of Carson City since the hanging scaffold was built before the testimony ended. Bill’s luck had finally run out.

Frontier justice was often swift and permanent.

Two days after the trial, William Thorington was hanged at his farm at Clear Creek. The vigilantes placed him on a wagon with a noose around his neck. At 4 p.m., the crack of a whip startled the horses and ended Bill’s life. With a gambler’s resignation to fate, Lucky Bill faced death singing his favorite song, “The Last Rose of Summer.”

Lonely Nevada gravesite. 

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Categories
Climate Change Weather History

#236 CLIMATE CHANGE & SNOWPACK DEPLETION

TAHOE NUGGET #236: CLIMATE CHANGE & SNOWPACK DEPLETION

In response to a provocative prediction for accelerated California climate change that I read in the Sacramento Bee newspaper last week, I felt compelled to contribute the following blog to the dialogue.

Warnings about regional climate change were kicked up a notch earlier this month with the recently released report by Robert Shibatani, a Sacramento-based hydrologist who is also CEO of The Shibatani Group Inc.

This new analysis offers dire predictions for the Sierra snowpack based on projected warming temperatures in California. The report, “Accelerated Climate Change: How a Shifting Flow Regime is Redefining Water Governance in California” focuses on the challenge of managing the Golden State’s water resources as snowmelt and river flow patterns are altered in forced global warming conditions.

It should be understood from the start that according to the Shibatani Group website, the company is “an international leader at assessing, documenting, and explaining the implications of forced climate change, climatic variability, and what that means to water supply and water resource[s]…” Since the group provides professional services and preemptive planning for watershed management based on climate change, the company has a vested interest in the field.

If Sacramento-based hydrologist Robert Shibatani’s projections verify, California is in for some “interesting times.”

Shibatani’s projections are derived from numerous sources that include a 2011 U.S. Bureau of Reclamation-released document on western climate risk assessments. In his base assessment, Shibatani assumes a rapid 2 degree Celsius (3.6F) warming over the temperature averages from the 1961-1990 timeframe. Air temperature is expected to steadily increase in the 21st century, but this report assumes that a dramatic temperature departure “is likely to occur in the next decade,” which explains the “accelerated climate change” reference in the title.

Based on such quick warming over the next 10 years or so, Shibatani anticipates a greater than 50 percent reduction in the Sierra snowpack’s April 1 water content (known as the snow water equivalent (SWE)), by the early 2020s. As a hydrologist, it’s an event he considers of “Katrina-esque proportions.” He states that the only difference between a catastrophic flood event and his prediction of a significantly depleted snowpack within a decade or so “is that it will happen every year and with increasing severity, representing a permanent change.”

The Sacramento River drains Northern California’s main snowpack producing regions. North State provides much of the water that Southern Californians rely upon. Climate change may impact that established system.

Climatologists are not predicting a significant shift in the average amount of precipitation California receives each year, but Shibatani argues that much more of it will be in the form of rain as rapidly warming temperatures drive the freezing level (snow level) much higher. His forecast for future decades is even more ominous. By the 2050’s, the report projects a 76 percent reduction in April 1 SWE for the Sacramento watershed fed by the Sierra and northern mountains.

The amount of water that falls in the Sacramento watershed is expected to remain more or less the same, but the snowpack will cover less terrain and the timing of peak Sierra runoff will be earlier and of shorter duration. 

If Shibatani’s expectations are realized,  by the 2070s April 1 runoff will drop 90 percent compared to the 1990s.

An accelerated change of this magnitude would be disastrous for California and create tough challenges for Tahoe resorts, but Shibatani may be getting ahead of himself with the rapid extinction of the Sierra snowpack. Yes, over the past 100 years daily air temperatures at Tahoe City have trended warmer, with overnight lows up more than 4 degrees F. and daily maximums up almost 2 degrees since 1910.

However, over the last 10 years temperatures in Tahoe City have actually trended cooler, a change that was reflected in the updated 1981-2010 climate “normals” released in July 2011 by the National Climatic Data Center. The average daily temp in Tahoe City dropped a half degree; not much but not a warming trend either. At the Truckee Ranger Station, the new normal is cooler by one full degree.

Note the parabolic downward trend over the past decade in Truckee’s daily temperatures.

The new precipitation values have also changed. At Tahoe City precipitation has increased during the last decade, with the new normal up 1.6 inches to 32.66 inches, reflecting very wet winters during the early 1980s and the mid-1990s, which offset the worst drought in history during the late 1980s and early 90s. Average precipitation at the Truckee Ranger Station also increased, but only about half an inch. (Precipitation includes rain plus snow melted for liquid content.)

What NOAA calls “normal” is actually based on the most recent 30-year time span, not the whole period of record. Similar to the decadal Census Bureau cycle, every 10 years NOAA drops the oldest decade and updates new station “normals” by adding the most recent decade and adjusting the average.

 

At the Central Sierra Snow Lab at 6,900 feet near Donner Pass, the duration of the snowpack on the ground has not changed meaningfully since measurements began in 1946.

There were some other noteworthy adjustments in this most recent climate update which, at least temporarily, contradicts Shibatani’s conclusion that the Golden State is on an accelerated pace for warmer temperatures.

The NWS took a look at 6 key climate stations in California, ranging from Redding Airport south to Modesto Airport. Daily temperatures went down at 4 of the 6 sites, averaging about half a degree. Only Modesto and Redding were warmer.

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Weather History

#235 2012 TAHOE WINTER WRAP UP

TAHOE NUGGET #235: 2012 WINTER WRAP UP

The 2012 water year for the Sierra Nevada won’t officially end until September 30, but for all intents and purposes Tahoe’s lackluster winter is over. It should be no surprise by now that precipitation last season was significantly below normal.

After this early season snowstorm blanketed the Central Sierra on Oct. 7, 2011, Tahoe skiers and resort managers hoped that another big winter was on the way. 

Despite an impressive battery of storms in March that dumped up to nine feet of snow on Tahoe resorts, followed by a wet April, it would have taken something closer to the “Miracle March” of 1991 to raise this year’s disappointing snowpack values to near normal.

The final snow survey of the season indicated an anemic snowpack averaging about 40 percent of normal for early May, varying from 77 percent in the north, 35 percent in the central region, to 20 percent in the Southern Sierra. The recent measurements were in stark contrast to 2011 when the Sierra was still buried under a snowpack 190 percent of normal on May 1.

Lack of natural snow forced Tahoe resorts to rely on snowmaking well into the winter season. Note barren Sierra Crest north of Alpine Meadows ski run.

Fortunately, that huge, late season snowpack a year ago will help mitigate this year’s paltry water supply because California’s major reservoirs are close to or exceeding capacity. With the crucial exception of certain farming districts, no water restrictions are anticipated for the 25 million Californians that rely on the Sierra snowmelt. Locally, reservoir storage in the Truckee River Basin stood at 128 percent of average on May 1.

Ironically, a little more than one year after California Governor Jerry Brown declared the end of a three-year drought in March 2011, the state’s driest winter in 50 or 60 years has desiccated the landscape and more than 60 percent of the Golden State is back to abnormally dry or severe drought status.

Juicy storms in March and April boosted Northern Sierra precipitation values out of the basement, but ultimately they were too little and too late to bump Tahoe to average for the year.

It wasn’t just the West Coast that suffered last winter. The United States ski industry was seriously impacted in 2011 by lack of snow combined with one of the mildest seasons on record that hampered snowmaking. At Lake Tahoe, skier visits at Northstar and Heavenly were down 24 percent compared to 2011.

Skiing conditions were fine in March and April, but the magic came too late to save a busted season. A lack of snow during the all-important New Year holidays and negative publicity about Tahoe conditions took its toll. With such a poor start, there was no way regional resorts would be able to compete with the epic 2011 winter, in my opinion the most hyped ski season in modern times.

Some Tahoe resorts picked up 9 feet of snow during one storm in March.

At the Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, station manager Randall Osterhuber reported that as of May 3, 322 inches of snow had been measured so far. That total of 26.8 feet puts winter 2012 at the 50th least snowiest in 66 years of record keeping.

Precipitation-wise, the 42 plus inches of rain and melted snowfall rank 2012 as the 55th driest since 1946. Not too bad when you consider that at the beginning of March, this year was among the top 10 driest in well over a century.

Skier Dan Scarcia hucks a Squaw Valley cornice on April 2, 2012. Conditions look pretty good here don’t they? Courtesy David Carmazzi/www.egidio.com

Looking ahead to next ski season, the cool water readings of 2011 and 2012 have dissipated and transitioned to neutral conditions. In their latest diagnostic discussion released May 3, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center stated that La Niña conditions are unlikely to re-develop later this year, and that half their computer models predict the onset of El Niño and warming sea surface temperatures.

Dan Scarcia struts his stuff at Squaw Valley on April 2, 2012. Courtesy David Carmazzi/wwwegidio.com

Regardless of whether ENSO conditions are positive, negative or neutral next winter, even a normal season of precipitation will be better than last year and should offer plenty of white stuff for locals and visitors alike.

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