Page 17 - 2006 DT 12 Issues

I n T h i s I s s u e

Featured Article
Nevada and the Railroads.................1

Special
Quiz...................................................6

Departments
News & Notes....................................2
March 2006 Programs & Hikes.............................4
Desk Schedule..................................6
Bulletin Board..................................8

NEVADA AND THE RAILROADS They finally met at Promontory, Utah

. . . a bumpy but vital marriage. on May 14, 1869 as the Central Pacif-
ic’s 119 and the Union Pacific’s Jupiter
touched noses. Luckily for Nevada, the
by Chuck Kleber
was discovered in 1859, giving birth to route ran through Reno, Winnemucca,
fabled Virginia City. While the Civil Battle Mountain, Palisade and Elko.
ailroads and mining . . . min- War raged in the east, Virginia City The days of harsh hauling of ore by
ing and railroads. It doesn’t boomed to more than 20,000 people. horse and mule began to fade away.
Rmatter which one you put Gold was also found, giving rise to But even before that historic meeting,
first; the fortunes and growth of our mining towns like Bodie and Aurora. freight and passenger travel began in
state were tied to this economic duo. But there was always the handicap of earnest as the Central Pacific reached
Those early days, so highly the Truckee Meadows, the site of
romanticized by writers Reno, in May, 1868.
and the lore of the time, Later, smaller rail lines
are not only filled with linked places like Battle
famous railroad names Mountain and Austin
like the Union Pacific and and Elko with Eureka.
the Central Pacific, when Sympathetically, the en-
the nation was linked by gine of the first train
rail from east to west, Courtesy, Nevada State Railroad Museum to Austin was named
they include the Virginia “Mules Relief.” Some
& Truckee (“crookedest” of these lines lasted long
short line in America), the after the great mining
Las Vegas & Tonopah, the booms ran out, continu-
Eureka & Palisade, the To- ing to run even into the
nopah & Goldfield, and the Engine #25 (second). Virginia & Truckee RR. 1930’s.
San Pedro, Los Angeles & W i t h a l l t h e
Salt Lake Railroad. The latter was the primitive travel and communications. general prosperity and growth
shot-in-the-arm that gave Las Vegas a In the north, just getting to California the railroads brought to the West,
vital boost a hundred years ago. meant crossing the imposing Sierra they brought a special bonus for
Nevada was little more than a few Nevada Mountains. the railroad owners. As James W.
dusty settlements in the mid 1800s. Nevada’s history was dramatically Hulse put it in his excellent book,
There was Las Vegas to the south, with changed when President Abraham Lin- The Silver State, “ . . . the people of
its then abundant supply of water as a coln signed the Pacific Railroad Act the state soon learned that the great
stop on the route to California. In the of 1862. “Railroad Fever” gripped railroad, beneficial as it was to northern
north there was the barren expanse of the West as the Central Pacific pushed Nevada, was an ambiguous and often
the Great Basin . . . until the enormous east from Sacramento and the Union
silver bonanza of the Comstock Lode Pacific west from the Missouri River. Railroads, continued on p 7.