The Virginia and Truckee Railroad.
From our elevated position on the peak of Mount Davidson we may trace nearly the whole course of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad. This road runs from Reno to Virginia City via Carson City, and is fifty-two miles in length. Besides being in one part the most crooked railroad in the world, its whole course is a great curve. The distance from Virginia City to Reno as the crow flies is only about seventeen miles, and but twenty-two by wagon road, yet to connect the two points by rail required a road fifty-two miles in length.
From Reno, where the road connects with the Central Pacific, its course is southward through Truckee, Meadows, and Steamboat, Washoe and Eagle Valleys, to Carson City, a distance of thirty-one miles. From Carson City the road runs east down the Carson River about nine miles, when it leaves the river and, turning to the north, begins to climb the mountains to Virginia. From the river to Virginia the distance is thirteen miles and the maximum grade is 116 feet. In climbing the mountain there are many very short curves. The maximum radius of curves is 300 feet. By adding together all these curves it is found that a passenger on the road actually travels seventeen times round a circle between Virginia and Carson City. On the road are six tunnels, whose united length is 2,400 feet, and there are numerous deep cuts in very hard rock. The only high bridge is the trestlework on which the road crosses Crown Point Ravine, at Gold Hill. This bridge is eighty feet in height.
Ground was broken on the road February 19, 1869, and eight months thereafter the most difficult part of it was finished and trains were running to Carson—twenty-one miles. The construction of this twenty-one miles of road cost $1,750,000, the greater part of which sum was expended on the first thirteen miles. In round numbers the whole fifty-two miles cost $3,000,000. The road does an immense business in the transportation of Comstock ores to quartz mills on the Carson River, and in carrying back from the valley wood, lumber, and timbers for the mines; it also carries from Reno to Virginia great quantities of all kinds of goods and merchandise—coal, ice, provisions, fruit, and machinery—with mails, express, and many passengers daily. The road connects with the Carson and Colorado Road at Mound House, eleven miles below Virginia City. The road and its many side-tracks and switches constitute a lasting monument to the engineering skill of the late I. E. James.