Category: History

Men to Match My Mountains by Irving Stone

I have read quite a bit of American history over the last year. I've enjoyed it and learned a lot. But everything I have been reading took place in the eastern half of the U.S.  So I decided I wanted to read Men to Match My Mountains by Irving Stone about the explorers and early settlers of California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado. I wanted to be able to visit the locations and learn more about the history of the area where I live.

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Men to Match my Mountains was written in 1956. The writing is not as compelling as the best current history writing but the story itself is so compelling that the book is a classic. It took me a long time to read. In fact it is overdue at the library. But Men to Match my Mountains filled the bill and enlightened me about history that I knew little about.

It was fun to read about Theodore Judah who laid out the route for the first train route across the Rockies. I followed that route when I took the train back from Sacramento last week.

It was interesting to read about how California was settled by the Mexicans, how the Americans moved in, the enormous role that John Sutter played in settling the area around Sacramento, and how the American Lieutenant John C. Freemont  in 1844 on one of his exploring trips came south from the Oregon border.

"The next two weeks were spent in this frightening death like country until the party reached a thirty five mile long lake which Fremont called Pyramid Lake and from which his men gorged themselves on salmon trout. On this newly garnered strength they pushed through to the present site of Reno and south of that to the Carson River."

Last summer Duke and I explored that area north of Reno in a wonderful road trip.

Virginia City which is a very short drive southeast of Reno was the center of the silver mining that was done on the Comstock Lode. It was fascinating to read how the rich silver deposits were discovered and opened up.

The miners were looking for gold and ignoring the fact that the Mexicans kept talking about how much silver was in the area. B. A. Harrison  from Truckee Meadows collected some rock from the area and sent it to be assayed. The editor of the Nevada Journal in Nevada City, California split it in two parts and sent it to two independent assayers.

"On July 1, 1858 the Nevada Journal published the results of the two assays: the black rock was incredibly rich. It not only proved the Mexican cry of "Mucho plata" with its one third assay of silver, but also contained high proportions of gold, antimony and copper.

Hundreds of miners walked out of the California mines and made their way over the Sierra Nevada on horseback, muleback and foot. The first legal claim office was setup in V.A. Houseworth's saloon. In Gold Canyon the old timers were lost in a flood of newcomers. By mid July all roads and trails over the mountains were jammed with thousands of men pouring into the new fields."

The money that came out of the Virginia City area is staggering. In 1875 "the Consolidated Virginia and adjoining California mine were the richest producing mines in the history of the world." At that time they paid over $1,000,000 a month in dividends  Today Virginia City is a small little town with an economy that seems to be centered only on tourism. What a change.

I'm looking forward to continuing to read about this area and to traveling around to see the sites I am reading about. Can you recommend any good books?

Reno to Virginia City via Back Roads

If you live in, or are just visiting Reno, a trip to Virginia City is a must. Virginia City is one of the oldest towns in Nevada. It was at the center of gold and silver mining and the rich Comstock Lode in the late 1800s. At its height 23,000 people lived in Virginia City. Today the population is about 1000. Although it is a tourist town it still feels like the old west and is a fun place to visit. If you take the main roads it is probably no more than an hour from Reno. But in the words of Doc Brown in the movie Back to the Future –  “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.” My husband, Duke and I really enjoy exploring by taking old dirt roads.

Today Duke and I went with some friend and took the Jumbo Grade Trail and the Ophir Grade Trail to Virginia City. We came home on the Old Geiger Grade Toll Road. All of these roads are rough dirt roads and I think four wheel drive and high clearance are definitely necessary to drive on them. We had a great time. Ed, our leader, and his wife had done the trip before using the book Nevada Trails – Western Region as a guide.

We left the paved roads about 4 miles south of highway 395 near New Washoe City. You can see where we left the pavement and the road we started up on in this picture.

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In this next picture I am looking west across Washoe Valley. You can see the remains of a giant landslide described in an article titled Catastrophic rockfalls and rock slides in the Sierra Nevada, USA by Gerald F. Wieczorek

“At about noon on May 30, 1983, a large complex rock and soil slide detached from the southeast face of Slide Mountain, Nevada…… Subsequently, along the northeastern margin of the rockslump zone, a rapidly moving rockfall avalanche of large boulders and a debris avalanche of gravelly sand initiated and entered the northern end of Upper Price Lake, a small reservoir….Price Lake, displaced most of the lake water, which overtopped and breached a low dam. The water then breached the dam of Lower Price Lake and sent a torrent down the gorge of Ophir Creek. In the steep canyon the rapidly moving water picked up fine and coarse rocky debris. Emerging from the canyon 6 km downstream, the debris flow spread out and deposited over the alluvial fan of Ophir Creek in the Washoe Valley, destroying and damaging houses, causing one fatality, and covering old U.S. Highway 395.”

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Further along the road we had a wonderful view of Carson City, Nevada’s capital.

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Here are a couple more pictures of us and the road. It was a cool, overcast, beautiful day.

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After lots of rocks, ruts, and stops for pictures we eventually got to Virginia City. 

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Virginia City has a very large Catholic Church. Some guys were in a basket at the end of a very tall cherry picker repairing the steeple. It is not a job I would want to do!

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We had a barbecue lunch at Virginia City Jerky and Smokehouse. My spicy pulled pork had a wonderful smoky flavor and was some of the best I have ever eaten.

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After leaving Virginia City we headed down on the old Geiger Grade toll road. The Online Nevada Encyclopedia describes the road:

“opened completely in 1863 with several toll
stations. Its sharp descent, including hairpin turns and steep slopes,
made it impractical for heavy loads, but it was a popular route for
stagecoaches. Because drivers had to slow in some places, these became
favorite locations for robberies."

Even now it is a very steep and in places very narrow road. It is hard to imagine driving a stagecoach up that road or for that matter riding in one.

Here is a slide show of a few more of the pictures I took on the trip today.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649


Dancing to the Precipice by Caroline Moorehead

I just finished reading Dancing to the Precipice – The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin.

Lucie Dillon, the Marquise de la Tour was a French aristocrat born in 1770. Her father fought with the Americans during the revolutionary war. She was a lady in waiting to Marie Antoinette, witnessed the French revolution, and barely escaped being imprisoned and possibly guillotined. She and her family escaped France on a ship for America and ended up farming in upper New York state. Eventually they returned to France. She knew Napoleon and Lucie's husband was part of Napoleon's government. She was friends with the Duke of Wellington and had played with him as a child. You can see why the subtitle of this book is eyewitness to an Era.

Lucie wrote a memoir and Caroline Moorehead used it as the foundation for this biography. I found parts of the book fascinating and at times even riveting. At other times Dancing to the Precipice dragged a bit. It is a classic example of how a biography can educate you about a period in history. I learned a lot from Dancing to the Precipice about French history, the revolution and Napoleon and I definitely enjoyed reading it.

This is book number 34 for me this year. If you would like to see a list of all the books I have read in 2009 you can find it here.

How to be a Better Amateur Historian

Hackett Fischer

Last Monday I listened to a online lecture by Professor David Hackett Fischer of Brandeis University. He has written several books of history including Washington’s Crossing, Paul Revere’s Ride and Champlain’s dream. He was also my daughter’s adviser at Brandeis. Professor Fischer’s lecture was great. One of the things he talked about was how interest in History is growing among college students and among older people who are coming to History having studied and had careers in unrelated areas. That’s me.

I consider myself an amateur historian. I have always loved History. My college degree was in Computer Science rather than History because my parents always impressed on me how important it was to get a marketable degree and History was considered anything but marketable. So now that I am no longer working for a living but instead I am working at things I love, I have added Historian to my list of current ‘jobs’.

At the end of the lecture Professor Fischer took questions so I submitted one. I asked if he had any advice other than reading books about how to become a better amateur historian. He said that Francis Parkman wrote an essay about being a historian  in which he said you should “Go there”, “Do it”, and “Write it”. He recommended retracing the paths and locations of whatever you are studying. Professor Fischer inspired me and made me think that I should plan some historical travel trips and write about them.

It would be fun to retrace John Quincy Adams trip from Russia to The Netherlands as a 16 year old. Here in Nevada, Duke and I have explored some of the old pioneer routes. I should do some more reading about the pioneers and write about it. Do you have other suggestions?

What other ideas do you have about how to be a better amateur historian?

 

Steamboat Ditch and the Tom Cooke Trail to Hole in the Wall

Back In February Duke and I hiked the Tom Cooke Trail to Hole in the Wall. This hike is on page 233 of the book Afoot & Afield Reno-Tahoe A comprehensive hiking Guide by Mike White. The trail starts right next to the Patagonia Outlet on the Truckee River and heads south and then west along the Steamboat Ditch to where the ditch goes through a tunnel.

If you are familiar with Reno you are familiar with the ditches but otherwise you are probably wondering what I am talking about. Reno has a series of canals that carry water from the Truckee river for irrigation. I wanted to know more about the Steamboat Ditch but had a hard time finding any information. The Reno library wasn't able to help me.

Finally today I went to the library at the Nevada Historical Society. The people there were incredibly helpful and I learned a lot.

As the Reno area was first being settled in the second half of the nineteenth century most ranches got there water by buying shares in a ditch company. About 130 miles of ditches were created in the Reno area primarily for irrigation. 

The last ditch company was formed in 1877. It was the Truckee & Steamboat Irrigating Canal Company. Trustees  hired Chinese labor to construct the 33 miles of canal. White laborers were angry and announced that they would drive the Chinese out by force. In spite of their threats the Steamboat Ditch was opened July 1, 1880. It took two years and $40,000 to build

The Steamboat Ditch starts at the Nevada-California Line near interstate 80 west of Reno. Water is taken out of the Truckee river and is carried in flumes and through canals to an area south of Reno near Steamboat Creek. On our hike we walked along the ditch to one end of a tunnel that was built through a hill above the river. It is a long dark tunnel and you can just see the light at the end of the tunnel.

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During the winter if you ever take Interstate 80 into Reno you can see the flume for the Steamboat Ditch on the other side of the river. The icicles hanging down underneath the flume are beautiful.

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There are other paths to hike along the canal and I am looking forward to exploring more of the Steamboat Ditch and learning more about it.