[Russell Towle's journal]
“10/25/84 [...]
I may go skiing today. There have been some good storms, and I can see snow up there. How much, I can't be sure, but, if I can get the Toyota running halfway decent I'll probably take a cruise up there and skid around a bit.”
[Russell Towle's journal]
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 07:47:25 -0800
To: [name]@aol.com
From: Russell Towle
Subject: Re: Truckee Trail
Cc: Rex_Bloomfield, Jerry Rouillard
>Thank you for the information. I have passed it on to a number of trail
>experts.
You're quite welcome. A couple of additional points about the Old Emigrant Road from Emigrant Gap through Alta, Dutch Flat, Gold Run, Colfax and Auburn:
1. The trail, like the main Donner Trail, followed an existing Indian trail. The only reasonable trans-Sierran travel routes in the middle and lower elevations follow ridgetops. This trail follows the divide between the North Fork American and Bear rivers. Here and there in the heavy coniferous forest were more or less natural openings, where, as at Mule Springs on the main Donner Trail, there was too much groundwater to allow pines. So natural meadows arose. This Indian trail went from meadow to meadow, all of which have signs of Indian occupation. One of the meadows became known as Dutch Flat.
2. This "Old Emigrant Road" is mentioned by name in old newspapers and deeds. For instance, a record of sale of the Dutch Flat Sawmill in 1859 describes one of its boundary lines as "the Old Emigrant Road." A newspaper article {Placer Herald, 6/30/55) records a missing man as having been seen walking along the Old Emigrant Road; another refers to "a route through this county, by way of Dutch Flat, that has been used more or less every year since '49" (Placer Herald, 12/2/59). The diary of a Dutch Flat resident records his use of the Old Emigrant Road in 1863, and again in the 1870s. There is another diary, in the Bancroft, which likely records use of this Old Emigrant Road in 1852; but I have not seen this diary yet. Charles and Joseph Dornbach, who founded Dutch Flat in 1851, undoubtedly used this route.
3. The road passed through Illinoistown, a settlement which dates from 1849, near today's Colfax. A loaded freight wagon could be driven uphill from Sacramento as far as Illinoistown in 1849. But above that point the terrain was too rough and emigrant wagons could only make the downhill grade. It took years for a wagon road to be built above Illinoistown, so mule trains supplied all the mining camps above that point (Dutch Flat, Green Valley, Little York, Cold Springs, etc. etc.).
4. Strangely, no attempt has been made to designate it as a historical landmark or anything of the sort. Other counties in the Sierra are proud of their emigrant trails; why not Placer County? Moreover, unlike the Placer County Emigrant Road, which was constructed in the early 1850s to entice emigrants into Placer County, this road is the real thing.
Cheers,
Russell Towle
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 20:12:27 -0800
To: Doug Noble
From: Russell Towle
Subject: Dutch Flat Swindle
Hi Doug,
I read your article (online) about the DF Swindle etc. I have lived in the DF area for 25 years and have studied its history; so I had encountered this so-called swindle.
The thing is, Doug, that this whole thing arose in the middle of the Civil War; and any Republican project (like the CPRR) was sure to be venomously opposed by the Democrats, who strongly tended to Copperhead, Southern-sympathizing views of things. Who can deny that Stanford and Crocker and the rest were capable of being ruthless? Nevertheless, I have little doubt but that the stagecoach race was won fairly and squarely by the Dutch Flat Donner Lake wagon road. Recall that this route foreshadowed the Lincoln Highway, Highway 40, and Highway 80. Not without reason.
No, the Copperheads were determined to drive the CPRR into the ground if at all possible. The leader of the Democratic newspapers of the day was the Alta California in San Francisco. It went on and on about the impossibility of building a railroad across the Sierra; rocks too hard, snow too deep, and so on. It went on and on about the Dutch Flat Swindle, how the railroad would never be built beyond Dutch Flat, that the RR was only a feeder to the DF Donner Lake wagon road, and that Crocker and the rest would wax fat and happy on the profits from the wagon road. Of course it was all nonsense, but the propaganda had its effect, and sober historians have asserted that construction of the CPRR was delayed by approximately one year by the scaring-away of investors.
So when in July of 1866 the rails did at last reach DF, which one might have supposed a sensible temporary terminus while work progressed upcountry, Leland Stanford took care to have the rails laid a couple of miles further, and the temporary terminus established there. This new terminus meant a new town and Leland Stanford himself named it for his nemesis, the Alta California. Hence the town of Alta. The first CPRR station past Dutch Flat.
The Southern-sympathizing Democrats of the day were also enraged by the CPRR's use of Chinese labor. In the Placer Herald of Auburn at this time one finds DF described as “that nigger-loving, Digger-loving, women-loving, China-loving Radical camp.” At any rate. In reading newspapers from those days one should always keep in mind political affiliation. In later days Dutch Flat lost a bit of its Lincoln-Republican luster and had a Workingmens' Party newspaper, the DF Forum. Anti-Chinese invective was incredible, And when the whites burned down DF Chinatown in Sept. 1877, the Forum had the gall to write that "a few people have suggested that the fire was purposely set, but there is no basis for this." This, at a time when Chinatowns were being torched from Reno to Grass Valley.
You write some good articles.
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| Blue Canyon panorama October 25, 2000 Click to enlarge. |
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| October 25, 2000 |
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 14:27:41 -0800
To: North_Fork_Trails
From: Russell Towle
Subject: Lost Trail, Lost Lava Flow
Hi all,
This morning seemed the best time to do something long deferred, namely, to find the trail from Sawtooth Ridge to Italian Bar, and find a certain tiny remnant of a lava flow, also on Sawtooth Ridge.
Sawtooth Ridge forms the divide between the main North Fork American, to the east and south, and the North Fork of the North Fork American, to the west and north. One can reach it from Emigrant Gap exit on I-80 by taking Forest Service Road 19 out past the East Fork of the North Fork of the North Fork to Texas Hill, where the road forks, the right hand leading out to Sawtooth Ridge and Helester Point, the site of an old fire lookout tower. The left fork leads out to Big Valley Bluff, a 3500' cliff projecting boldly into the North Fork canyon.
I have quite a variety of old maps, dating back to the Gold Rush, of this area. One of the more interesting of these is a geologic map by one Waldermar Lindgren, based upon field mapping and survey work performed in the 1890s, and published around 1900. The map base is a contour map with intervals of 100 feet, covering the area from 120.5 to 121 degrees west longitude, and 39 to 39.5 degrees north latitude.
Lindgren's map shows quite number of the old trails, including one from Sawtooth Ridge down to Italian Bar, over a descent of 2500'. This does not show on the current USGS 7.5 minute Westville quadrangle, and no one seems to have ever heard of it. The Westville quad does show the trail from the south, Foresthill Divide side of the river, which descends to Italian Bar.
Also shown on Lindgren's map, a little ways west of this "lost" Italian Bar trail, is a tiny patch of Pliocene basalt. Such masses of basalt are passing common in the high country, but rare farther west. There is one, for instance, on Lowell Hill Ridge, the divide between Steephollow and Bear River. And there is another on Sawtooth Ridge. I have hiked and driven and explored around on Sawtooth Ridge for many years, but never saw any basalt.
It was time to act. Last night, with cold calculation, I fired up my GPS software on my Macintosh and opened the Westville quadrangle DRG map. I got out Lindgren's map and my magnifying glass. By careful comparison of the two maps I was able to establish the approximate positions of trailhead and lava flow. I set four waypoints for two alternate possible trailhead locations, and one waypoint for the probable location of the lava flow, and one for the southern terminus of the Burnett Canyon Trail, which lies half a mile due north of the lost Italian Bar trailhead. Without any hesitation I then uploaded these waypoints to my GPS unit.
Dropping the kids at school in Alta this morning, I drove up to Emigrant Gap and on out Forest Road 19 to Texas Hill, thence to Sawtooth Ridge. At a decent opening in the forest I whipped out the GPS unit and pointed it unflinchingly at the heavens. It duly found four satellites and without a backward glace I forged onward.
The trailhead appeared, on Lindgren's map, to be associated with one of the many saddles or passes along the length of Sawtooth Ridge. I reached this saddle with a distance of .25 miles showing on the GPS to my nearest trailhead possibility. There was a large bulldozed log deck on the edge of the canyon there. Scouting towards Possibility One, I encountered a burned area, from a fire some five years ago or so, when a logging helicopter crashed; the dread Sierra Pacific Lumber Company was harvesting the ancient old-growth trees down in the North Fork, near Italian Bar, as the Forest Service had been dilatory in finding the funds necessary to purchase these lands.
At any rate, the slopes near Possibility One seemed too steep, and were in any case choked with masses of Deerbrush, Ceanothus integerrimus, which had sprouted after the fire.
I wandered west towards Possibility Two. Logging operations complete with vicious bulldozers had thrashed the terrain on the canyon rim, but only a few yards down the slope the forest was untouched, and I scanned the area for signs of an old trail.
Suddenly a strikingly worn game trail appeared.. It descended quite steeply into a grove of Kellogg's Black Oak and Ponderosa Pine. The hoofprints of deer covered the trail, which not only had been worn into the ground, but had been used so much that almost every vestige of oak leaf and pine needle had been swept aside as though raked. Above me, a bulldozer skid trail led down past a large pine. I climbed up and checked the pine for old blazes; there were none visible.
Following the deer trail down, I noted that it was making a beeline, or a deer line I should say, for Italian Bar. Not only that, but occasionally the trail switched back and forth.
I am convinced that this is the historic trail from Sawtooth Ridge to Italian Bar. Having descended a few hundred feet, where slopes moderated and the old trail wound through a lovely grove of oaks, I retraced my steps, and followed the trail right back to where I had parked. The upper end is confused by logging slash, fallen trees, skid trails, and so on.
I set my GPS to "go to" my basalt waypoint, and drove west. The GPS showed me 1.25 miles from the presumed lava flow. I dropped into another saddle and climbed up out of it, as the distance diminished to a tenth of a mile and then little more than a hundred feet. I was on the highest past of this particular "sawtooth," and started scouting around. I saw nothing but the ordinary boulders of andesite from the Mehrten Formation volcanic mudflow, so common in this part of the Sierra.
Forcing my way through some small trees and brush, I got a little clear of the forest, on the rim of the canyon, and saw some rocky slopes to the east, nearby. Making for these, I felt sure I would find the lava flow. But, no. I found a slope of volcanic mudflow, with, puzzlingly, boulders of rather light-colored basalt scattered about, for all the world looking like glacial erratics. Nowhere was there an actual outcrop of the basalt, and the mudflow was visible to within a few feet of the top of the ridge. Yet, the basalt is younger than the mudflow, and must sit on top of it.
Yet there were large boulders of the basalt all over the place!!
It was maddening.
I followed along east until my little rounded sawtooth began to fall away into a saddle, but, no lava flow. So I got into the car, resigned to not having found the lava, and wondering whether the basaltoid boulders could somehow have been left there by the ice, and have fooled Lindgren.
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| Russell Towle, perched on the highest outcrop (Photo by Gay Wiseman) |
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| California Nutmeg (Torreya californica) |
This lava flow undoubtedly came from a source near today's Sierra crest. It likely followed down a little valley incised into the andesitic mudflow plateau, before the North Fork American and other major canyons of today's Sierra existed.
Returning to the car, I set the GPS to the Burnett Canyon trail terminus and continued my eastward retreat. Passing around the head of Wilmont Ravine, I reached the devastated, bulldozed, clearcut area which marks the head of the Burnett Canyon Trail.
I saw lots of flagging marking timber harvest boundaries out on Sawtooth Ridge. I would like to see Tahoe National Forest try to purchase the lands held by Sierra Pacific out there. I also think that a rather wonderful trail could be constructed on the North Fork side of the summit of Sawtooth Ridge.
At any rate, a lost trail and a lost lava flow were sought and found. The trailhead and lava flow are in sections 29 and 30, respectively of Township 16 North, Range 12 East. I would like to explore this old trail before the snow flies, if anyone else is interested, let me know.
Cheers,
Russell Towle
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