Yerington, Bliss, & Co., one of the heaviest lumbering firms in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, have built a narrow-gauge railroad from their saw-mills on the shore of Lake Tahoe to the head of Clear Creek, on the first or eastern summit of the Sierras. The road is eight miles in length, and is used in the transportation of lumber from the mills of the company to their large flume at the head of Clear Creek. This railroad passes through a tunnel 500 feet in length, which was the only tunnel and the heaviest piece of work on the road.
Logs are rafted across Lake Tahoe to the mills, from all points. The lake being of great size, and all of its shores and the slopes of the surrounding mountains being heavily timbered, the company have command of a vast area of pine-forests. Through the waters of the lake and its numerous bays, they reach out and up into the mountains in all directions, gathering the pines into their mills, carrying them, in the shape of lumber, up their railroad, and then shooting them through their big flume down over all the hills till they land in Carson Valley.
LOG RIDING
LUMBERING AT LAKE TAHOE.
This is all very well for the company and for the mining companies, who must have lumber and timber, but it is going to make sad work, ere long, with the picturesque hills surrounding Lake Tahoe, the most beautiful of all the lakes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Where tall pines now shade all the shores and wave on all the mountain slope, nought will shortly be seen, save decaying stumps and naked granite rocks. But timber and lumber are imperatively demanded, and the forests of not only these hills but of a thousand others, will doubtless be sacrificed.
The rafts of logs are towed across the lake by small steamboats. This rafting is of a novel character. The logs forming the raft are not pinned or in any way fastened together. The steamboat runs up to a bay or other place where logs are lying, and casts anchor. A boat is then sent out which carries a long cable strung full of large buoys. This cable is carried round a proper fleet of logs, as a seine is carried round a school of fish. The steamer then weighs anchor and starts across the lake, towing along all the logs about which the cable has been cast. No matter how rough the lake may be, the logs remain in a bunch, being attracted the one to the other, and clinging together as bits of stick and chips are often seen to do when floating on a lake or stream.
On the side of the lake opposite the mills of Yerington, Bliss, & Co., a man who has a contract for delivering logs in the water ready for rafting, does his “logging” with a locomotive. He has laid a railroad track, some six miles in length, through the heaviest part of the forest, and instead of hauling the logs to the lake with oxen, in the old-fashioned way, rolls them upon low trucks, and hauls a whole train of them away at once, with his locomotive.
At the edge of the lake the track is laid under water for a considerable distance, and the train being run upon this track, the logs are floated off the low cars, and are ready for rafting.