Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway

by Effie Price Gladding

1. Smelter near Ely, Nevada. 2. Lahontan Dam, Nevada.

As we drove along the dusty road a short, rather thick snake, its back marked by shining black diamonds, wriggled hurriedly across the road in front of us, escaping to the sage brush. I asked later what this snake was, for I felt certain that it was poisonous. Sure enough, it was a diamond-backed rattle snake. We came soon to another little town where there was a good hotel. Hanging on the wall of the hotel was a painting of the proposed Lahontan Dam and the country which its life-giving streams would touch. We decided, instead of going direct to Fallon, to drive across country to the Dam, making a slight detour. We were very glad that we did so, for we found the young superintendent of the Dam construction, a Brown University man, very courteous indeed. We went to look at the enormous pile of sand and clay which has been banked up day after day and week after week until the Lahontan Dam is the largest earth dam in the world. We saw cement spillways, one on each side of the earth dam proper, their tall steps planned to break the fall of the water at any time of great flood and pressure. We saw the lake itself with its measuring tower and gate already sixty feet under the rising water. Mr. Tillinghast told us that the lake stretches back into the hills and the canyon for twenty miles. We heard of the millions of fertile acres which this water, already beginning to be released in a rushing stream, was to make possible. Some miles back we had seen irrigated country, green and fertile, cut, so to speak, right out of the desert. Alfalfa was growing luxuriantly and was being cured in high green stacks under the sun. Settlers' little cottages were a visible promise of the future, just as they had been in California. We congratulated Mr. Tillinghast on his work, and told him that in days to come he should bring his grandchildren to see the Lahontan Dam, a splendid monument to his work and the work of the men with him.

We saw where he and his assistant engineer lived with their families. They had small but comfortable quarters made of houses built of tar paper. Some chicken yards were near, and an improvised tennis court was in front of the little row of houses. Near by was a little schoolhouse for the children of the settlement. Here New England women, city born and bred, were living happily with their children while their husbands built the great Dam. One lady told us that her relatives in Providence commiserated her lot. "But," said she, "the boys are so well and live such a free and happy life in this glorious air that we really dread being moved to another piece of work when the Dam is finished." From Lahontan we picked our way across the desert with its sage brush and its spaces, to Fallon.

When we left Fallon we had before us a very trying drive. The country east of Fallon, past Salt Wells Ranch and as far as Sand Springs, was in bad condition because of recent heavy rains. We met heavy wagons drawn by ten, twelve, fourteen, and sometimes sixteen horses and mules, struggling madly and almost hopelessly through the sticky mud. The drivers were cracking their whips, yelling and swearing, and the poor animals' flanks and bellies were thick with mud. The heavy wagons were piled high with bales and boxes. In some instances the horses of one team were being unharnessed to be added to another team where the wagon stuck hopelessly in the mud. A country woman told me later that she had seen the horses of these trucking teams come in at night, their flanks covered with the dried blood which had streamed down from the wounds made by a pitchfork in the hands of a desperate and angry teamster determined to get his team started out of a mud hole.

We had an advantage because of the broad tires of our machine, and got on very well by picking our way across the plain and keeping well to the left of a long stretch filled with salt water holes and with a fairly large salt lake. A new road had been made by travelers, far away from the regular road, which ran close to this small inland sea and which was a hopeless quagmire. The land about us was dreary and desolate and yet had its own charm. Off to the left were immense sand hills blown up by the wind, and barren, rocky hills, the Wind Mountains. We came at last to the little station known as Sand Springs, which is simply a lodging place for the teamsters and their horses for the night. We could look down from the plateau on which the little house and the barns stood, upon the white and clay-colored, desolate spaces of the salty valley below. The landlady welcomed us cordially and gave us a plain but hearty lunch. She was a Californian and told me that she and her husband missed the green hills and fields of their own State. She said that they had wonderful salt for curing and packing their winter meats from the lake down in the valley. She said that the salt could be raked up in great heaps, white and coarse but with great strength and savor. She was mourning the loss of her cows, which had disappeared. They had been gone a month and she feared that in wandering away on the mountain ranges they had been driven off by "cattle rustlers."

From Sand Springs we drove on through a more hilly country, the road winding along through an open canyon. We passed Frenchman's Flat, where there was a little restaurant and where a Frenchman came out to pass the time of day. He greeted us very pleasantly and would doubtless have given us a good meal if we had not already had one. We then crossed another great level and passed three ranches known as West Gate, Little Gate, and East Gate. We were coming into a much more fertile country, a high valley with mountains rising on either side. Ahead of us, marked by its tall cottonwood trees, was Alpine Ranch, a part of the big Williams estate and our destination for the night. It was very cheering to drive through the paddock, cross a bubbling little stream, and come up alongside the long, low, pleasant ranch house.

1. On the Lincoln Highway. 2. Ranch House at East Gate, Nov. 3. Road Scene near Rawlins, Wyoming.