Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway

by Effie Price Gladding

Two miles beyond Austin we were 9000 feet above sea level. As we reached this height we could, looking back, see Austin below us. We also had a fine view of the desert mountains. Here I began to understand the conformation of the Nevada country. We were passing from one great valley into another, hour after hour. When I looked on the map of Nevada, I found a series of short mountain ranges. I could see what we were doing in our travel. We were descending into a valley, crossing its immense width, coming up on to a more or less lofty pass, usually bare, and descending into another valley. It was very fascinating, this rising and falling with always the new vista of a new valley just opening before us.

But now came tribulations. Mr. N. had evidently wrenched his machine in his struggle to free it the night before. He began to have trouble, and traveled more and more haltingly a little way behind us. T. felt a personal responsibility for him and we were continually stopping to wait for him. Finally we halted at the head of a pass before plunging down what turned out to be a long descent. We had just climbed up from a wide valley and could see nothing of our fellow traveler on the slope behind us. T. left the car and went back; and while I waited, looking off at the mountains, two women reached my hilltop, the older one driving the Ford car in which they were traveling. They looked like women of the plains, perfectly able to take care of themselves and to meet emergencies. They had food supplies with them, and two dogs as fellow passengers. The one, a fox terrier, was tied in a box in the tonneau and looked very unhappy. The other, a spaniel, was running back and forth on the rear seat and whining with anxiety to get out. His mistress told me that he was one of the greatest hunters in Nevada, and that he was anxious to go off in the sage brush on a grand chase. Just here the two men came up the hill with Mr. N.'s Ford car, weary and exhausted from going over its machinery and struggling to get it moving. The women warned us that in the valley at the foot of the hill was a very bad mud hole which we must inevitably negotiate. They said that a stream from the mountains had in a recent freshet overflowed the plain and reduced both the road and the adjoining country to the state of a swamp. They assured us that we simply must go through the mud hole and that we were bound to get stuck in it. They cheered us, however, by telling us that a nearby settler had a sturdy draught horse and that he would in all probability pull us out for the sum of $2.00 a motor car. We thanked them for their warning and drove down the long hill into the next valley.

I had been interested while waiting for Mr. N.'s machine to come up, to see the beautiful cactus blossoms growing close to the ground on both sides of the road. They were of a rich yellow and a rich magenta color, single petaled and really beautiful. I saw them growing all along through the desert. In some places they made broad patches of color.

Coming on to another wide valley stretching away for eighty miles and more, we saw the mud hole before us and carefully examined the sides of the road to see if we could not make a detour. The spongy, muddy soil assured us that it was hopeless, and that what the women had told us was only too true. In the meantime the settler, working with his wife and baby near at hand in his newly cleared field, kept an eye on us. But he did not come to our rescue until we called him. The Ford, being the machine of lighter weight, started first through the mud hole. Its wheels sank immediately and no turning on of power could push it forward. We then shouted to the settler. He came across the field with his big horse, and as he drew near we saw that he was a tall, good looking man with an open and kindly face. I was secretly glad that the poor fellow who had so recently cast his lot in this lonely and immense valley had a chance to earn some ready money. After a little pleasant dickering he agreed to pull the machines out for $1.00 apiece. The splendid big horse was harnessed to the machine and at the word he threw his weight against his traces and philosophically pulled away, while Mr. N. at the same instant turned on his power. The machine easily came out of the mud and was soon on dry ground. T. drove our machine forward, was instantly imbedded in the mud and was pulled out in the same way. It was interesting to see how the big horse threw his weight into the pulling at just the proper moment and relaxed as he felt the machine settle on the firm ground. His master told us that the animal had come with their little caravan from Colorado, seven hundred and twenty miles, without turning a hair, while the other horse sickened and died.

This man had only his few supplies and the little tent in which they were living, together with a bit of the rich land already cleared and planted to a crop. He said that he had never seen richer land than this from which the sage brush had been pulled up and burned off. A thin muddy stream trickled across the road from the hills and was used both for irrigation and for drinking purposes. "But when you come back next year, I shall have a well down," said the brave homesteader. "And, by George, if the County Commissioners won't put in a bridge across this mud hole, I'll put one across myself! Just come back and see a year from now!" We waved him goodbye and went on our way across the lone valley and up another divide. The valley was Monitor Valley, he told us. I can see him standing there in the lovely light of the late afternoon sun, he and his wife and their baby boy waving us farewell. I should like to pass that way again and to see whether he has replaced his tent by a little house and whether his virgin fields are green with a crop.

Some day, I suppose, those wide, far-stretching acres will be dotted with houses and barns and stacks of alfalfa. It is difficult to convey the impression that these vast valleys with the hills in the distance, and with the rich coloring of the sunrise and the sunset, make upon one. They are lonely and yet they are not lonely. They are full of life. We saw hundreds of prairie dogs. Day after day they scuttled across our pathway, often narrowly escaping. Sometimes they sat on their hind legs by their burrows, waiting as long as they dared until the noise of the machine frightened them into their holes. Sometimes a whole village of them would watch us until we drew near, and then frantically disappear. Sometimes we saw a coyote, usually in the early morning or the late afternoon. We once saw one whose curiosity was so great that he halted perhaps fifty yards away, and looked at us from this safe distance as we passed. Once we saw a rabbit breathing his last near the roadside, his soft eyes filled with a look of far away consciousness and pain. And once we saw a beautiful antelope leaping and bounding over the sage brush so lightly that he looked in the distance like a phantom animal made of thistle down.

I can completely understand how the desert casts its spell over cattlemen and sheepmen so that they love it and its freedom and are continually drawn back to it. The mystery and glory of the desert plains have their devotees just as really as the mystery and glory of the great city have their worshippers who never wish to be far from its lights.

The many stops of the day had made us very late and it was in darkness that we came through the canyon which makes a long gateway to the town of Eureka. There was something fearsome about those dark rocks, whose mysteries we had never seen by daylight, rising on each side of us, and about the deep chasm that lay in shadow down at the left of the road. We were glad indeed when the lights of our lamps flashed on the stakes with their familiar red, white, and blue markings, the friendly signs of our beloved Lincoln Highway. It was nearly nine o'clock when we came into Eureka, and drew up at the dim lights of Brown's Hotel. Brown's Hotel seemed to be mostly a bar room and lounging place; at least that was the impression made upon me by the glimpse I caught of the lighted room downstairs as I stood on the wooden porch. But we were shown upstairs to a very comfortable, old fashioned, high ceilinged room with heavy walnut furniture of the style of forty years ago. An aged ingrain carpet was on the floor, and a wreath of wax flowers such as our grandmothers rejoiced in, hung, set in a deep frame, on the wall. I thought to myself that these were relics of departed glories and of a day when there was money to furnish the old hostel in the taste then in vogue. A dim oil lamp assisted our toilet and we went downstairs and out into the town to a restaurant kept by an Italian and his wife. It was the only place where we could get food at that time of night. Eureka is a most forlorn little town, perched high and dry, just as if the waves of traffic and of commercial life had ebbed away and left it far up on the beach forever. They told us that it was once a big and prosperous town. But like Mariposa in California, the mining interests have been transferred to other localities and the town is left lonely. As we walked along its silent and dimly lighted main street, we saw the quaint wooden porches in front of the shops and houses, some high, some low, making an uneven sidewalk. Practically all of the shops were closed, only the saloons being open.

The Italian had named his restaurant The Venezia in honor of his native city. It was a bright, comfortable little room, the kitchen at the back of it lightly screened from the dining room. It adjoined his hotel, quite a large building, where he proudly told us he had twenty-two beds. His wife, a stout, bright-eyed woman, cheerfully took our order. "I am poor," she said smilingly, "so I cook when other people ask me. If I rich I cook when I feel like it." A savory smell arose from her frying pan, and we were soon eating excellent and generous slices of ham, drinking very respectable tea, and enjoying some good bread and butter. It was a most refreshing supper after a long and somewhat trying day. We expressed our appreciation to our Italian friends and paid the very modest reckoning.