Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, January 14, 1868

The Central Pacific Railroad.

The first train of Cars reaches the Summit of the Sierra Nevada, and passes through the Tunnel.

Special Correspondence of the Chicago Tribune. Sacramento, Cal., Dec. 9, 1867.

THAT which was declared to be impossible by nine-tenths of the people of this coast four years ago, and by none so strongly as by those whose opinions were supposed to be valuable, has become an accomplished fact. The locomotive has climbed to the summit over our Sierra Nevada Mountains, and has passed through the great summit tunnel and for some distance beyond, on the line of the Central Pacific Railroad.

On Saturday last, the 7th instant, the great pioneer feat was accomplished. I say pioneer feat, for though a private preliminary trip was made to the summit a few days before, yet the locomotive did not then pass through the long tunnel, the western mouth of which is about 500 feet east of the point of greatest altitude (7,042 feet above the level of the sea), or nearly 1,000 feet higher than Mount Washington in the White Mountains.

The trip of Saturday last was a special one, upon which the members of the State Legislature (now in session) and the members of the San Francisco and Sacramento Pioneer Societies were invited, along with a host of the outgoing Union State officers and a like number of the lately-installed Democrats, who kindly relieved them of further trouble in discharging the duties of their respective offices. A large number of prominent citizens of Sacramento and San Francisco also accompanied the tourists, with a large company of ladies, and the usual delegation of members of the press.

Ten passenger, one open, and two baggage cars (the latter improvised into lunch cars), drawn by two powerful locomotives, left the Pacific Railroad depot at Sacramento at a quarter past seven o'clock A. M. The locomotives dashed along the level plains, over the American River and adjoining flats; past ranches and gardens; past herds of cattle and live stock of all kinds; over the fifteen mile tangent or straight line which occurs in the road; past Rocklin with its granite quarries and the company's splendid repair shops; past the towns of Newcastle and Auburn, and through Clipper Gap where an immense amount of excavating was necessary, until the town of Colfax was reached, distant fifty-four miles from Sacramento. This town, as your readers are doubtless aware, was named after Speaker Colfax who was here with his party when the road was opened up to it in 1864. Colfax was then the headquarters for the teamsters who carried goods from the railroad to all parts of the country, but this transitory glory was soon taken from it by the extension of the roads eastward. The town is still in a healthy condition, however, for it is the depot from which is shipped all the supplies for the unsurpassedly rich quartz and gravel mines of Grass Valley and Nevada City. No stoppage was made at any station, but we rushed along past them all, and were greeted with the heartiest cheers and waving of handkerchiefs from the people, who had gathered on the platforms to see the cars pass and get a glimpse of the company in them.

Just above Colfax the American Canon and Cape Horn were reached, and a picture was uncovered to the tourist, the equal of which perhaps does not exist in the world. The canon is about five miles long and about four miles across from summit to summit. At the bottom it narrows down to a width just sufficient to allow the American River a passage. The depth of the canon from the railroad line is 1,600 to 2,000 feet perpendicularly. The sight is one of the grandest, and to weak-nerved persons the most terrifying, that can be imagined. It is a gigantic rift in the mountains, caused undoubtedly by a strange freak of volcanic action. Each side of the mountain is covered with the loftiest and straightest of pine trees, and in between their serried ranks the eye can discover, in the depths of the chasm, the brawling American River, faintly traced in what nature made a line of silver, but which prosaic

miners in their washings for gold have made a line of light mud-color.

Admiration of this wild and most magnificent panorama of nature's painting came audibly from each member of the company, and many calculations were made as to what would become of us if the cars got off the track and ran over the precipice, upon the edge of which the rails are laid. But Cape Horn and its startling views were soon passed, and up, up we went, our steam-fed horses waking up the echoes of the mountains with the clangor of their bells and the unearthly shrieks of their whistles. The great trestle bridge at Secret-town, one thousand feet long, and ninety feet in the center, was soon after reached, sixty-two miles from Sacramento. Just beyond it is one of the heaviest cuts on the road (Tunnel Hill Cut). This cut is 500 feet long and 115 feet deep on the highest side, and 450,000 cubic yards of earth had to be taken out of it.

Above Secret-town we passed the towns of Gold Run and Dutch Flat, both of which are supported by cement mining claims in their vicinity, which are worked by hydraulic power.

But higher and still higher is our motto, and onward we go, through heavy cuts, over immense fills, past deep precipices and towering peaks; through the first tunnel on the road, at Grizzly Hill, seventy-six miles from Sacramento. Just west of this tunnel the line passes so closely to the banks of a steep precipice that an immense retaining wall of the best granite masonry, 300 feet long, and seventy-five feet high, had to be erected to hold up the grade. Blue Canon is passed here, and some of the grandest views on the road are seen in its vicinity. In coming up from Dutch Flat to this point, we attain the highest grade upon the road, 116 feet to the mile. The longest continuous stretch of this—the maximum grade allowed by government—is but 3 1-5 miles.

And now we have reached Emigrant Gap, where is yet seen the old trail, used by the pioneers who crossed the plains to the Pacific, in the early days of California. Many pioneers are aboard, and they have been watching for this spot, the difficulties of which tried their strength and patience to their utmost. In many places the trail winds up and down points that are but a few degrees removed from being perfectly perpendicular. Wagons had to be let down by check ropes wound round the largest trees, and had to be tediously pulled up ascents by the same laborious and tedious process. “Tongue cannot tell,” says a grizzle-bearded old man of the company, “what our party suffered in ’49 in gittin’ into California from the lake above (Donner Lake) and down through that place over there. We were short of provisions, and it was November, and cold enough. We felt the bottom of our stomachs and the end of the grease in our elbows often enough before we reached the Sacramento Valley below, I tell ye. It’s easy to ride by these places on a railroad, but it was another matter to cross them in an emigrant party, with women and children to see to.” Admiration of the men who encountered and overcame the more than Herculean difficulties that lay in the way of a railroad, all the way up from Colfax, was loud and constant, and all alike felt proud and grateful that the men who have had the work in charge were Californians.

But now we have reached Cisco, 92 miles above Sacramento, and within 12½ miles of the Summit Ridge. A few minutes’ delay and we are off again. From this point the eye rests on little but rocky desolation. True, the hardy pines still point their tapering fingers to the skies, and yellow-green moss fills the interstices of the rocks—both striving ineffectually, however, to hide the desolate face of nature. The road here runs along the granite walls of the Great Yuba Valley, which seems to have been chilled into stone by the keen air and snows of this Alpine region. Away beyond us granite peaks stretch upward, and away below us they are also discernible. Seven miles above Cisco we pass over two Howe-truss bridges, with arches. The main truss of the first is 208 feet long from center to center of abutments, and the whole structure rests on the best of granite masonry. The approaches are ninety feet long. Both bridges cross deep chasms, and are 120 feet perpendicularly above them. This was the first time a long train of cars had passed over these chasms, and the nervous, as they peeped down into them, doubtless asked themselves, “Suppose a bolt is loose, or timber unsound, and an accident happens, in what condition would we be picked up away down there?” But all such fears were needless. Each of the bridges is capable of supporting at least eight times the load that we put upon it, and the Central Pacific Company does not leave bolts loose nor use unsound timbers.

Two miles further on we reach Summit Valley, at the opening of which the whirr and noise of a large saw-mill is heard. This mill is capable of cutting 50,000 feet of lumber per day, and is one of a dozen large mills used in the service of the railroad. These mills are generally kept running day and night.

The road-bed, for some miles below Cisco up to the summit, is cut through solid granite, and is an everlasting one. It will require no repairs, and no slides can ever occur upon it. The work was expensive at the outset, but once built, it is done forever.

The weather, which had turned to a drizzling rain at Cisco, changed here to a storm of snow which mostly melted as it fell. The atmosphere was rendered dull and impenetrable by it, but still as we ran along Summit Valley, heads were kept out of the windows, and the platforms of the cars were crowded with passengers, eagerly peeping through the snow to get a glimpse of the Summit Ridge. A new questioner came up every moment to know, “Is that point the Summit?” “There it is just ahead,” at last was announced, and the folds of the Stars and Stripes planted on it came into view. As the locomotives rolled up the highest altitude upon the road, there arose such an exultant, patriotic, full-voiced American cheer as would have warmed the blood of the most cold-hearted person alive. We halted a moment at the Summit, and at the invitation of the Chief Engineer of the road I joined him and a few others to make the passage of the great Summit tunnel upon the pilot in front of the locomotive. We held on as best we could, for every place to which we could cling was wet and slippery with sleet. We were hardly fixed in our places, when the clanging of the bell beside us and a whizzing of escaped steam betokened motion again. A few turns of the wheels and we were rolling into the darkness and piercing air of the great tunnel. At first the novelty was pleasant, but when we had accomplished about a third of the distance through the gloom, it became oppressive, and in the thick darkness the wheels seemed to be going round but not propelling us forward. A ray of light could be seen at the eastern mouth of the tunnel, but it seemed no larger than a man’s hand, and one felt as though he would never reach it. The whole affair was unearthly, and it was almost made devilishly so by the incessant clanging of the huge bell of the locomotive, the sound of which, striking the granite roof immediately above, came bounding back and made a clatter that our ears in vain sought to escape. But in a few minutes, in reality, though it seemed an hour while we were in, we reached the far end of the tunnel and passed on through three others, making our final halt about a mile beyond the summit.

And so the trip was made, the summit of the Great Sierra Nevada range reached and passed, and the great tunnel passed through. The difficulties in the way of the Central Pacific Railroad are all practically overcome, for the road is nearly completed to a point thirty-six miles east of the summit, out of the Sierras altogether. From thence, to the western base of the Rocky Mountains, no difficulties worthy of the name are to be encountered. Soon, Virginia City and her mines, and Austin and Central Nevada will be reached, and ten quartz mills will be heard where one now is. Nevada’s mines have gone ahead under a load of expenses that only the richest mines could bear up under. That State has been praying for the railroad for years, and now it nears her doors. Her progress will soon astonish the world, and she will be able to ship to China all the silver that Asia demands, and turn the tide of Asiatic supremacy from English into American channels.