The Water Company that controls the flow has here tampered with primitive physiography, in that it has cut a tunnel or channel from the Echo Lakes, tapping their water supply and conveying it to Audrian Lake. Hence strictly speaking the Echo Lakes are now the headwaters of the South Fork.
Soon we pass Hay Press Meadows, so called from the fact that hay was cut here in the old stage-coach days, baled with an old-fashioned press, and sold for $90 to $100 per ton, after being hauled to Virginia City.
Down we go into Strawberry Valley, where 42 1/2 miles from Placerville, we reach Strawberry, at 5700 feet elevation. This used to be a noted stopping-place in the olden days, sometimes the whole flat area being covered with loaded wagons bound for the mines.
There is a rugged majesty about this Valley that has always made its impression on men. To the right is the southern end of the Crystal Range, and to the left the Yosemite-like cliff known as Lover's Leap, 6985 feet elevation. As the station at Strawberry is 5700 feet, this cliff is 1285 feet in sheer ascent. Leading up it are strange columnar towers and structures of Egyptian appearance that remind us of those lines of Joaquin Miller's:
Great massive rocks that near us lay,
Deep nestled in the grass untrod
By aught save wild beasts of the wood—
Great, massive, squared, and chisel'd stone,
Like columns that had toppled down
From temple dome or tower crown,
Along some drifted, silent way
Of desolate and desert town
Built by the children of the Sun.
We pass under the great cliff, and past a glacially-polished dome on the left. The cliff is all cross-hatched and seamed with infiltrations of quartz. Ahead of us to the right is a canyon that is the southern extension of Desolation Valley.
Strawberry to Kyburgs, 10 Miles. A few miles below Strawberry we pass Georgetown Junction (where the road from Georgetown enters the main road), and ten miles brings us to Kyburgs, 4000 feet elevation, the canyon narrowing as we descend. On the right we pass Sugar Loaf (6500 feet).
At Kyburgs the water is taken out for the domestic and irrigation water-supply of Placerville—8000 inches of water. The station is located at a break in the mountains where a cone-shaped rock, covered with trees, is a striking feature.
Kyburgs, Through Riverton, to Pacific House, 14 Miles. Passing the South Fork of the American on the left, nine and a half miles brings us to Riverton, a charming river resort where many visitors stop during the season for a day or a week, as this is a noted center for fishing and hunting. Here we cross over an excellent bridge, surrounded by a mountain amphitheater lined with trees, and our road follows the course of the bowlder-strewn river-bed. Yonder is the scene of a noted "hold-up" in the old mining days.
If we cared to go over the files of the newspapers of the days when bullion was being shipped daily by stage to Placerville, how many accounts might we not find of "hold-ups" by daring "road-agents." And it does not take much imagination to picture in this secluded spot or that, the sudden appearance of a masked bandit, gun in hand, and to hear the sharp quick commands, "Halt! and Hands up!" and to hear the "squeesch" of the brake on the wheel, to see the hands of driver, express-messenger, and passengers go up in helpless anger and furious impotence.