Mining was the main reason Nevada was developed as a state, what with the very rich Comstock Lode at Virginia City and numerous other communities and camps such while Delamar and Pioche. Exploration was equally important in California like well and had been since the gold rush there of 1849.
Railroading was also important as a faster means associated with transporting the particular gold, silver, lead, copper, zinc, borax, etc ., even salt to various camps, stamp mills and processing plants, as well as receiving the necessary supplies for the mining industry.
By 1880, Nevada did have the transcontinental railroad that was along much of what today is Interstate 84, but not really much anywhere else except for a few spur lines like the train between Va City plus Truckee, the particular V& T, and a small spur between Austin and Palisades.
In the mining town of Candelaria — a ghost town now — near Hawthorne inside Mineral County, and other mining camps just across the border in California the work was booming.
Something else that was very much needed was borax plus salt, which came from the nearby Teals’ and Rhode’s marshes. A few enterprising men came up with the idea of building a narrow-gauge railway plus connecting using the V& To at Mound House at Carson City and extending south by way of Yerington, south of Walker Lake, Hawthorne, Candelaria and on into Keeler in Owens Valley, Ca.
In 1893, an economic depression in the U. S. halted investment in the mines and many closed as the booms ended. Thereby the lucrative freight and passenger business so eagerly anticipated on the particular C& C faded badly to something less than skimpy.
Historians have noted that the coach and smoker car of the train often had but only one passenger in the 1890s. The train crew do their best to entertain any passengers on the long and lonely trip. It was very often a most monotonous trip and it was said that only a minister from the gospel could make the journey in either direction and not finish it as an expert in poker, pedro and pinochle.
Young lady travellers received still more attention. The story was told of a young Virginia Town school teacher who made the vacation to Keeler on a holiday break, but was therefore exhausted talking to six men at once during the whole trip that she was more in need of the vacation on her return in order to Virginia City than when she started.
Indians were allowed to ride for free, yet had to be inside the shipping cars if the train had a mixed group of passengers. A stop at the particular station within Schurz usually picked up half a dozen or so Paiute families and many of them were told they had to ride outside or on top of the shipment cars as far as Yerington or Hawthorne.
In summer months the little teach chugged together in a cloud of dust and sand. Traveling along the shores of Master Lake it was common for that train to stop at a particular spot and let everyone go down in order to the lake to cool off along the beaches. Historians don’t mention if some of the crew plus passengers went for the swim. Some probably did though for a little bit, especially the younger children.
Some of the leaders in Nevada government got a start on the small railroad. Gov. Fred Balzar (1927-1934) was a conductor around the train whenever he has been courting a girl in California, whom he later married. She used to drive a buggy to a spot where cattle had been loaded within the railroad and Balzar would meet her there and the two might take the buggy back to the particular nearby ranch where she lived and have lunch. Surprisingly, the train would wait for him to return.
In the fall, it is stated the crew members would certainly bring along shotguns for duck and sage hen hunting when the teach passed through the particular Mason Valley country, hiding themselves in among the willows and tules, waiting for the flight associated with ducks to arrive.
Time schedules for your train were very liberal as would happen with such goings on, so the arrival time at any given stop was almost useless to count on.
Within 1900, the particular Southern Pacific Railroad bought the C& C with regard to $2, 700, 000 and almost immediately the new mining booms and Tonopah and Goldfield paid off the original investors within the little narrow gauge line many times over. Eventually however , the town continued in order to decline plus finally the Candelaria post office closed within 1935 as well as the one-time mining town became one of Nevada’s numerous ghost towns remembered occasionally from its colorful past.
(Adapted from a story by Harold’s Club, Reno, 1952)
Dave Maxwell is a Nevada news reporter with more than 35 years in print and broadcast journalism, and greatly interested in early Nevada history. He can be reached from [email protected] com.
