The Town of Truckee.
Truckee is situated in a heavily-timbered basin, lying between the two ridges, or summits, of the Sierras. In this basin is contained an area of over 250 square miles of as fine pine forest as is to be found in the mountains. The town is the center of a great and flourishing lumbering industry, and immense quantities of ice are each winter harvested and stored in the immediate vicinity. In 1883 it was estimated that the forests of Truckee Basin contained 5,000,000,000 feet of lumber, and that 50,000,000 feet might be cut every year for 100 years. The town has an elevation of 5,866 feet, or over a mile above the level of the sea, yet for eight months of the year the climate is pleasant. Where the town now stands was formerly “Coburn’s Station,” on the old Dutch Flat wagon-road. The place was named Truckee, and began to build up in 1865, with the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad at that point. It is a brisk and thriving place, and, besides its lumber and ice industries, has a good trade with an extensive farming and grazing region. It is wonderful that so large a town exists as is now seen, in view of the fact that since 1868 it has seven times been swept by terrible fires, and by two or three of these it was, in different years, almost wiped out of existence.