The Lake of the Sky Part 20

Returning to Rubicon we followed the road back to where we had struck it the day before. The old trail from McKinney's used to come over the divide from the east and strike the Rubicon near where we then stood, pa.s.s by the Springs and then follow the river, but to avoid the steep grades the road had to be constructed around by Buck Island Lake.

Those who ride into Rubicon Springs from McKinney's, just as they make the last descent, have a wonderful view of Georgetown Mountain before them. Its sloping side is glacially planed off at a steep angle, and it reveals the vast extent the great ice field must have covered in the days of glacial activity. Many bowlders near the Springs are very strongly marked by glacial action.

About a mile from the Springs we came to a tree on which a "cut-off"

sign was placed. When the road was being constructed the builders started a new grade at this point and after going for a mile or so found it was so steep that it had to be abandoned and a lesser grade found by going around.

From the summit we could clearly follow the course of the Little Rubicon, and also secured an excellent view of the sharp point of Rubicon Peak (9193 feet).

A stiff and cool breeze was blowing from the west so we were not sorry to find shelter from the wind as we entered a wooded park, where the song of the pines cheered us on our way. Soon we struck the road and followed it until we came to the headwaters of Miller's Creek on the right. Miller used to run sheep up in the meadows, which afford a smooth grade for the road for some distance. There are many alders here, which bear mute though powerful testimony, in the shape of their gnarled and bent over ground-groveling trunks, of the heavy winters'

snows.

These meadows clearly were once glacial lakes, now filled up, and Miller's Creek was the instrument of their destruction. Crossing the last of the meadows we came to Burton's Pa.s.s, so called from H.D.

Burton, another Placerville pioneer who used to cut hay here, pack it on mules to McKinney's, and then s.h.i.+p it across to Lakeside, where he sold it for $80 to $100 a ton. We then pa.s.sed McKinney's old cabin, the place he built and occupied in 1863, before he went to live at the Lake. Only a few fragments now remain, time and storms having nearly completed the work of destruction.

Nearby was a beautiful lily pond, soon to be a meadow, and just beyond this we stood on the actual divide between the Great Basin and the Pacific. We were at the head of Phipps Creek, named on the map General Creek, from General Phipps. At the mouth of the creek this pioneer located on 160 acres, which, when he died about 1883, was sold to M.H.

de Young, of the _San Francisco Chronicle_. After holding it for many years he sold it in turn to I. h.e.l.lman, the banker, who now uses it as his summer estate, having built a fine residence upon it.

Near here we lunched at a sheep-herder's camp and heard an interesting story of the relocation of an old mine that had helped create the Squaw Valley excitement forty years before. Owing to new and improved methods of extracting the precious metal it is now deemed that this may soon develop into a paying property.

Returning to the road we pa.s.sed Jock Ellis's cabin, in a similar state of ruin to that of McKinney. Ellis Peak (8945 feet) is named after him. He was a Squaw Valley stampeder. Nearby we saw the largest tamarack I have yet found in the Sierras. It was fully five feet through and fluted in an interesting and peculiar fas.h.i.+on.

From here we made a mile detour to visit Hank Richards Lake, a beautiful crystal jewel in an incomparable wooded setting. Then back to Phipps Creek, over a perfect jumble of granite bowlders and tree-clad slopes until we finally struck the trail and followed it to the Lake, and thence home to the Tavern.

The reader should observe that in this, as in the chapter on "Trail Trips," only a sample is given of a score or more of similar trips.

His host at any of the hotels can suggest others equally interesting.

CHAPTER XVII

HISTORIC TAHOE TOWNS

There have been only three towns on the immediate banks of Lake Tahoe, viz., Tahoe City, Glenbrook and Incline, though Knoxville was located on the Truckee River only six miles away.

_Tahoe City_. Tahoe City was founded in 1864 at the collapse of the Squaw Valley mining excitement, the story of which is fully related in another chapter. Practically all its first inhabitants were from the deserted town of Knoxville. They saw that the lumbering industry was active and its permanence fully a.s.sured so long as Virginia City, Gold Hill and other Nevada mining-camps remained profitable. The forests around the Lake seemed inexhaustible, and there was no need for them to go back to an uncertainty in the placer mines of El Dorado County, when they were pretty sure to be able to make a good living here. They, also, probably exercised a little imagination and saw the possibilities of Lake Tahoe as a health and pleasure resort. Its great beauty must have impressed them somewhat, and the exploitation of these features may have occurred to them.

Anyhow, in 1864, the Bailey Hotel was erected, and, later, a man named Hill erected the Grand Central. The Squaw Valley excitement had attracted a number from the Nevada camps, and when these men returned they took with them glowing accounts of the beauty of Lake Tahoe, and of the fis.h.i.+ng and hunting to be enjoyed there. Thus the Lake received some of its earliest resort patronage. During lumbering days it was an active, bustling place, being the nearest town to which the loggers, drivers, tree-fellers, millmen and others could flee for their weekly recreation and periodic carouses. Yet it must not be thought that the town was wholly given over to roughness. Helen Hunt Jackson, a widely traveled and observant woman of finest susceptibilities, says of the Lake Tahoe House, which she visited in stage-coach days, that it was "one of the very best in all California." It was the stopping-place of the _elite_ who came to see and enjoy Tahoe, and until later and more fas.h.i.+onable hotels were built around the Lake enjoyed great popularity.

As soon as the logging industry declined Tahoe City began to go down, and only the fis.h.i.+ng and tourist interests kept it alive.

When the railway was moved over from Glenbrook and the shops and yard of the Transportation Company were established here it regained some of its former activity and life, and is now the chief business center on the Lake. It is the headquarters of the campers who come for pleasure each year, and its store does a very large and thriving business. New cottages are being erected and it is destined ere long to be a stirring pleasure resort town, for, as the delights of Tahoe become more widely known, every available piece of land will increase in value and where there is now one summer home there will be a hundred.

_Glenbrook_. On the Nevada side of the Lake, Glenbrook used to be one of the most active, busy, bustling towns in the west. It scarcely seems credible to one who visits the quiet, placid resort of to-day that when I first saw it, some thirty years ago, it had three or four large sawmills in constant operation, day and night. It was then regarded, and so designated in the _History of Nevada_, published in 1881, as "the great lumber manufacturing town of the state."

The town was begun in 1860, the land being squatted upon by G.W.

Warren, N.E. Murdock, and R. Walton. In 1861 Captain A.W. Pray erected a saw-mill, run by water-power, but as water sometimes failed, when the demand for lumber increased, he changed to steam-power. He also secured a thousand acres, much of it the finest timber land, from the government, using in its purchase Sioux Scrip.

Up to 1862 the only way to travel from California to Carson and Virginia City, south of Lake Tahoe, was by the Placerville road which came by Bijou and Lakeside and then over the Kingsbury Grade, via Friday's Station, afterward called Small's, by which latter name it is still known on the maps of the U.S. Geological Survey. In 1862, however, a new road was projected, branching off to the northwest (the left) from Small's, and following the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Lake, pa.s.sed Zephyr Cove and Cave Rock to Glenbrook, thence by Spooner's and down King's Canyon to Carson. This was called the Lake Bigler Toll Road (notice the fact that "Tahoe" was then officially designated in Nevada as "Bigler"), and was completed in 1863.

This demanded the opening of a better cla.s.s of hotel for travelers and others in Glenbrook, and in the same year the road was finished Messrs. Winters and Colbath erected the "Glenbrook Hotel," which finally came into the hands of Messrs. Yerington and Bliss, who, later, were the builders of the railway, the owners of most of the surrounding timberlands, and who had practical control of the major portion of the lumber interests. But prior to this a lumber-mill was built by J.H.F. Goff and George Morrill in the northern part of the town. This did a good business, for even in those early days common lumber was worth $25.00 per thousand feet, and clear lumber, $45.00.

The mill was soon destroyed by fire, but the site was bought by A.H.

Davis and Son, who erected a new mill, which they operated for a while and then sold to Wells, Fargo & Co. It was not until 1873 that Yerington & Bliss came to Glenbrook. They revolutionized the lumber industry. While Captain Pray had long used a steam tug to raft logs across Lake Tahoe, the lumber itself was hauled down to Carson and Virginia City. Now, owning large areas of timberland, operating two and then three saw-mills in Glenbrook, and several others in the nearby mountains, Messrs. Yerington & Bliss sought easier means of transportation for their merchandisable product. They constructed dams and reservoirs, with V flumes in a number of places, making them converge as near as possible at the Summit, some six miles from Glenbrook. To this point they built a narrow gauge railway for the purpose of transporting the millions of feet of lumber sawn at their mills.

From Summit a large V flume was constructed down Clear Creek Canyon into Carson City, and into this flume a constant stream of water was poured from the reservoirs which carried upon its bosom another stream of boards, timber, studding, joists and sheathing, the two streams emptying simultaneously just outside of Carson City at a point on the Virginia & Truckee railway, where the lumber was loaded and thence s.h.i.+pped to its place of consumption.

That tremendous amounts of lumber were being manufactured is shown by the fact that the official records of Douglas County, Nevada, for 1875, give 21,700,000 feet as the product for that year.

One department of the lumber business should not be overlooked in this connection. As the timber disappeared from the mountain slopes nearest Glenbrook, the operators were compelled to go further afield for their logs. These were cut on the mountain slopes north, south, east and west, and sent down the "chutes" into the Lake. Where the ground was level great wagons, drawn by ten, sixteen, twenty oxen, hauled the logs to the sh.o.r.e, where they were dumped into the water. Here they were confined in "booms," consisting of a number of long, thin poles fastened together at the ends with chains, which completely encircled a "raft" of logs arranged in the form of a V. The raft was then attached, by strong cables, to a steamer and towed to Glenbrook, where the mills were so located that the logs were drawn up from the Lake directly upon the saw-carriages. The size of some of the rafts may be imagined when it is known that they yielded from 250,000 to 300,000 feet of lumber.

The princ.i.p.al vessel for this purpose at the time I first visited Lake Tahoe in 1881 was an iron tug, called the _Meteor_. It was built in 1876 at Wilmington, Delaware, by Harlan, Hollingsworth & Co., then taken apart, s.h.i.+pped by rail to Carson City and hauled by teams to Lake Tahoe. It was a propeller, eighty feet long and ten feet beam, and cost $18,000.

The first store erected in Glenbrook was placed on piles over the water. This was built in 1874, by J.A. Rigby and A. Childers. One morning the latter partner disappeared, and it was surmised that he had fallen into the water and was drowned. New partners were taken into the firm, but in January, 1877, the store was burned, and it was not re-erected on its original site.

When the lumber interests and the railway were removed Glenbrook declined, until it was the most deserted looking place possible. Then the sons of Mr. Bliss, one of whom was born there, cleared away all the evidences of its former lumbering activities, built a handsome and commodious modern hotel on the most scenic point, and re-established the place as a choice resort on the Nevada sh.o.r.e, as described elsewhere.

_Incline_. It will be a source of interest, even to many who know Lake Tahoe well, that there used to be a town named Incline on its sh.o.r.es. In the curve of Crystal Bay, a few miles from where the scars show where the water escaped from Marlette Lake flume, this town was located in 1882. It was the source of supplies for the lumbering interests of the Sierra Nevada Wood and Lumber Company, and received its name from a sixteen-hundred feet incline up which lumber was hauled. The incline was operated by an endless cable, somewhat after the style of Mount Lowe, in Southern California, the car on one side going up, and on the other coming down one trip, and _vice versa_ the next. The lumber thus raised was thrown into the flume, carried therein around to Lake View, on the line of the Virginia and Truckee railway, there loaded on cars and s.h.i.+pped to Carson and Virginia, largely for use in the mines.

When the logging interests were active the place had quite a population, had its own post-office and was an election precinct. When the logging interests waned the town declined, and in 1898 the post office was discontinued. Now nothing remains but the old incline, grown up with weeds and chaparral. New towns are springing up at Al Tahoe, Lakeside and Carnelian Bay which will soon demand a revision of this chapter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lake Tahoe from Tahoe Tavern]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Steamer Tahoe Rounding Rubicon Point, Lake Tahoe]

[Ill.u.s.tration: McKinney's and Moana Villa, With Rubicon Peaks in the Distance, Lake Tahoe]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Steamer Landing, McKinney's, Lake Tahoe]

CHAPTER XVIII

BY STEAMER AROUND LAKE TAHOE

The ride around Lake Tahoe is one of varied delights, as the visitor sees not only the Lake itself from every possible angle, but gains an ever s.h.i.+fting panorama of country, and, more remarkable than all, he rides directly over that wonderful kaleidoscope of changing color that is a never-ceasing surprise and enchantment.

Tahoe Tavern is the starting point of the ride, the train conveying the pa.s.senger directly to the wharf from which he takes the steamer.

Capt. Pomin is in control.

Not far from where this, the most beautiful and charming hotel of the Lake is erected, there used to be a logging camp, noted as the place from which the first ties were cut for that portion of the Central Pacific Railroad lying east of the summit of the Sierras. A number of beautiful private residences line the Lake for some distance, the area having been portioned out in acre and half-acre lots. Chief of these are the summer home of Professor W.T. Reid, for a time President of the State University of California, and Idlewyld, the residence of Mr.

and Mrs. Frederick Kohl, of San Francisco.

One of the oldest villas of this portion of the Lake used to be owned by Thomas McConnell, of Galt, and it was his daughter, Mary, who first made the ascent of one of the peaks now known as Maggie's Peaks, as a marble tablet placed there testifies.

In the mountains beyond are Ward's Peak (8665 feet) to the right, and Twin Peak (8924) to the left, from the first of which heads Ward's Creek, and the second Blackwood Creek, both entering the Lake two miles or so apart. Just beyond Twin Peak are Barker's Peak (8000 feet), and nearer to the Lake, Ellis Peak (8745 feet), the waters from the former making the South Fork of Blackwood Creek. Ellis Peak, being easily reached by a good trail, is the common point of ascent from Homewood, McKinney's, Tahoe Tavern and other resorts.