History of the big bonanza

by Dan De Quille

Other large mills besides those of the company named, are engaged in devouring the forest surrounding Lake Tahoe. About five million feet of lumber per month are turned out by the several mills at the lake, and each summer about three million feet of timbers are hewn in that locality. Many of the sugar-pine trees about Lake Tahoe are five, six, and some even eight feet, in diameter; all are very tall and straight.

At a point in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, about eleven miles from the town of Reno, on the Central Pacific Railroad, Messrs. Mackay & Fair have a lumber-flume over twenty miles in length. This flume was built through an exceedingly rugged region, and cost $250,000. It taps a tract of twelve thousand acres of heavy pine-forest owned by the parties named. The land is estimated to contain 500,000 cords of wood, 100,000,000 feet of saw-logs, and 30,000,000 feet of hewn timber; all of which will be brought down to the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, through the flume. A printing telegraph extends along the whole line of the flume, by means of which orders are transmitted to all points.

There are a great number of these flumes reaching up into the Sierras from the valleys of Nevada, and soon it will be necessary to build railroads to haul the lumber up to the heads of these from the California side of the mountains, as has been done by Yerington, Bliss, & Co. No means of transporting wood, lumber, and timber is or can be cheaper than these flumes. When once a plank or stick of wood has been dropped in at the head of the flume it is already as good as at the other end, twenty or thirty miles away. The flumes are far ahead of railroads of any gauge, broad or narrow, as a means of cheap transportation for wood and lumber.

Each season, from 80,000 to 100,000 cords of wood are floated down the Carson River. This wood is cut high up in the Sierras, at the head-waters of the Carson and its tributaries, and is sent down from the mountain slopes for many miles, in flumes of the same kind as those in use for the transportation of lumber. The wood is collected on the banks of the river, ready to be launched at the proper and auspicious moment.

Contrary to what most persons would suppose, the proper time for starting one of these drives of eighty or one hundred thousand cords of wood, is not when there is a big freshet, but at the falling of the stream after a freshet; that is, on the heels of a grand overflow. If the wood be put into the river at a time when its waters are over the banks, it floats away into the flats and out over the valleys, whence it is almost impossible, but at too great cost, to get it back into the channel, and thus it is as good as lost. The lumbermen are for this reason careful not to put their wood into the river while there is danger of there occurring a sudden flood, which would lift it above the banks and scatter it broadcast over the country.

The time for starting the drive is just after the great flood of the season—after the thaw which sweeps the greater part of the snow from the mountains. Then the wood comes down huddled in the channel, and covering the whole surface of the water, for fifty miles or more. At points where there are sloughs or bayous leading out of the river, booms are stretched to keep the wood in the straight and narrow way. French Canadian lumbermen and Piute Indians are generally employed in making these drives. As the wood must be followed up and kept moving, it is a wet and laborious business.

The time is not far distant when the whole of that part of the Sierra Nevada range lying adjacent to the Nevada silver-mining region will be utterly denuded of trees of every kind. Already, one bad effect of this denudation is seen in the summer failure of the water in the Carson River. The first spell of hot weather in the spring now sweeps nearly all the snow from the mountains, and sends it down into the valleys in one grand flood; whereas, while the mountains were thickly clad with pines, the melting of the snow was gradual, and there was a good volume of water in the river throughout the summer and fall months.

The prevailing breezes in Nevada are from the west—indeed the wind seldom blows from any other quarter than the west—which is directly over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In passing over the fields of snow, on the summit of the Sierras, the breezes are cooled, and the summer weather in Nevada is thus rendered delightful. But when once the mountains shall have been denuded of their timber, all the snow on both slopes will be swept away by the first warm weather of spring—as it is now swept away on the eastern slope—when a marked increase in the heat of the summers in Nevada is likely to be experienced.

Railroads are being pushed, both north and south, along the eastern base of the Sierras, with no other object than to strip the mountains of the forests in which they are now clothed, in the course of time. We may therefore look to see the whole range lying bare in the sun. When this shall come to pass, the Great Basin region to the eastward will be a perfect furnace in summer.

There must come a day when wood will be scarce and dear, and some other fuel must be found. Coal from the Rocky Mountains is now extensively used at Virginia City, but it costs about as much as wood. The problem may be solved in a wonderful deposit of lignite recently opened by the Virginia City Coal Company, and it is to be hoped that the mine will prove to be all that it now promises.