Lumber, Mining And Movies, The Story Of The Railroad In The Mother Lode

Lumber, Mining and Movies, the Story of the Railroad By Sarah Lunsford

Pond at Railtown 1897, Tuolumne County, California (photo by Sarah Lunsford) It’s no accident that movies about the Gold Country, with its mining and logging operations, always seem to include a steam locomotive along with miles of track that seem to go on forever. In the real world railroads played an important part in the expansion of the Mother Lode back in the late 1800s and continue to serve the region today. Although hauling supplies to mining towns was a duty of the railroads in the early days, the engines arrived essentially just as the hard rock mining phase of the Gold Rush was winding down. “The primary reason for the railroad was to haul lumber out and mining machines in and out,” said Sam Cook, railroad enthusiast. Just like today, in the late 1800s the logging industry and its chief export of wood and wood products was a top-of-the-list agricultural resource in Amador, Calaveras and Tuolumne counties.

“In those days most lumber companies in the Sierra’s had their own railway,” said Cook. Those railroads included those run by the West Side Lumber Company and the Yosemite Sugar Pine Lumber Company that became the Pickering Lumber Company in Tuolumne. Many times logging companies and their complimentary mills operated their own railroads to haul logs around their own properties before taking them to mills to be finished. Typically these mills were stops for main lines like the Sierra Railroad and the Amador Central Railroad that ran in and out of those county’s from the Central Valley where they met up with either the Southern Pacific or Santé Fe lines. In Tuolumne County the West Side Lumber Company ran its own railroad with up to 90 miles of track of narrow (3-feet wide) gauge track in the forest that connected with a depot in Tuolumne City where Sierra Railroad then took the freight out of the Mother Lode. Yosemite Sugar Pine/ Pickering Lumber Company ran even more track throughout the forest. It ran over 100 miles of standard (4-feet, 8-inches wide) gauge track, throughout the forest, even running a line into what is now the South Grove in Big Trees State Park. The lumber companies not only hauled wood products around using their railroads but also transported employees and their families as well. During logging season, the companies would set up small towns in the forest bringing in mobile cabins and other buildings for their employees by railcar. “Whole families grew up in the woods,” said Patrick Karnahan, independent marketing consultant. Today, two mills operated by Sierra Pacific Industries in Standard and Chinese Camp still haul their finished product, such as wood chips, out by the Sierra Railroad. Two companied operated their own company railroads in Calaveras County. In 1885 McKays Clipper Mill located along Love Creek Road a couple of miles below Arnold ran tracks to transport lumber around it property. The other was located in Copperopolis where they used rails to move around their ore carts and railcars to transport mined copper. In Calaveras County, Blagen Mill located in White Pines didn’t operate its own railroad, but does own a slice of history from that early railroad/lumber era in the form of Yosemite Lumber Company Engine 4. “There was not much of any railroad up here,” said Robert Ash, Sierra Nevada Logging Museum board member. The Shay engine, a geared steam locomotive that is much more powerful than a typical steam engine, was the workhorse of logging companies. “It’s (a shay) a type of locomotive that can handle pretty heavy loads and steep terrains,” said Ash. “They were the 4-wheel drives of locomotives,” said Karnahan. “(It’s) the last remaining locomotive from the Yosemite Lumber Company,” said Karnahan, who was instrumental in tracking the engine down and bringing it to the logging museum. Shay engines were no racers, going about 10 miles per hour, but could haul heavy loads up grades that regular steam locomotives couldn’t. Reflections of the bygone era of railroads traversing the forest can still be seen by visitors to those wooded areas today.

“Many of our forest service roads are old railroad grades,” said Karnahan. Sal Manna writes a column about Western Calaveras County History in it he refers to the railroads and the Valley Springs train depot, a reminder of the railway that once came through the area at the crossroads of Highways 12 and 26. This railroad had its end point at the Calaveras Cement Plant in San Andreas, where arguably the best cement was produced before finding its way around the world. In Tuolumne County, Sierra Railway not only hauled freight between the Sierra’s and the Central Valley, it was a passenger train as well, making a run over the Angels Camp to take supplies to that town as well as passengers. If there were no passengers waiting to get on the train and no freight to offload or pick up, the train would go right through a depot. The way the engineer knew if someone wanted to get on was if they stood by the railroad tracks and flagged the engineer. This is where the term “flagstop” came from. It took approximately 3 hours to make the 21 mile trip from Jamestown to Angels Camp. Although the Sierra Railway stopped serving Angles Camp in 1935, from the description of the trip it was a sure hair raiser because the train switch-backed down the side of New Melones, stopped at the town, went over the river by bridge before switch-backing up the other side. According to Karnahan, that particular branch took passengers between Angels Camp and Sonora so fans from the two towns could watch their baseball teams compete. These trains, consisting of four to six open excursion cars and a caboose, ran on Sundays, taking up to 150 players, fans and bands to the town where the game was played. Records show that the Angels Camp fans were a little more genteel than their Sonoran counterparts. Many times the train leaving for Sonora after a game in Angels Camp was a couple of hours late because of the after game revelry that left a few fans wondering exactly where the train station was. Neither the town or the railroad tracks to this destination still exist. The town was flooded when New Melones Dam was built while the tracks were taken up when the train stopped running. The trains not only transported passengers and hauled freight to the Mother Lode but drove progress as well. “Eventually they helped to build quite a few dams in the area,” said George Sapp, Railroad Restoration Lead Worker at Railtown 1897. Dams like Don Pedro and New Melones were built with the help of the railroads, as well Hetch Hetchy. In Amador County the Amador Central Railroad transported mostly lumber products in and out of Amador County. The railroad started out as Ione & Eastern Railroad in 1904 and was taken over by Amador Central Railroad in 1909. Locomotives continued to haul freight, primarily lumber for the Georgia-Pacific then Sierra Pacific lumber mill in Martell, until 1997. A portion of the line was kept open by SPI under the name of the Amador Foothill Railroad for a few years after that before it too, closed. “There just wasn’t enough business to keep it open,” said Cook. For the past 10 years the Amador Central tracks have been maintained by the Recreational Railroad Coalition. A group that operates privately owned, track inspection

handcars (otherwise known as speeders), velocipedes and other human powered rail vehicles. With most unused tracks taken up and sold for salvage, there are few reminders of the trains in the tri-county area with one of the most prominent being Railtown 1897. A California State Park located in Jamestown that is also known as the movie railroad. Railtown is a fascinating place to visit with buildings dating back to its opening day in November 1897. The roundhouse tour offers visitors the unique opportunity to see a variety of trains from steam engines used in the movies to the cars that were used on the Jamestown, Angels Camp route. Railtown is also known as the movie railroad because of all the movies, television shows and commercials that have been filmed there. “It’s always been a favorite of the movie industry,” said Sapp who has worked on many of the movies himself during his 20 plus years at the park. “Working on the movie shoots is always a lot of fun,” he said. Sapp said one of his favorite shoots was a commercial with Aflac Insurance. The commercial featured a damsel in distress tied to a rail tracks with a train coming down the tracks towards her. The sequence was filmed on location at Jamestown and Sapp not only worked on the shoot but drove the train as well. “I didn’t get any face time,” he said, “But it was still a lot of fun.” The first movie filmed at the location was The Red Glove, a short serial movie filmed in 1919. Since that time it has seen many familiar westerns such as High Noon. Television programs such as the Lone Ranger, Lassie, Night Rider, East of Eden, The A Team and a BBC documentary, A Work of Giants. “Whatever they want, we do it for them,” said Sapp. Part of working with the entertainment industry is dressing up the trains to fit their parts. Although any train in the park can be used for filming, Engine 3 has received the most face time of them all. It has appeared in over 50 movies and 20 television series’. Its credits include Back to the Future III and Unforgiven. Built in 1891, Engine 3 is currently experiencing major renovation that was prompted by the need for a new boiler to comply with current federal regulation. The work is being financed through a matching grant. “It’s such a visible piece of history,” said Sapp. “We’re going to put it back in the movies.” Although Railtown does operate a train for tourists with trains from the Sierra Railway Company out of its depot, going down the tracks and coming back, it and Sierra Railroad are not the same entity, a common misconception among visitors and locals alike. In 1937 the Sierra Railway went through a reorganization in which the freight side of the company continued as the Sierra Railroad Company and the Jamestown property eventually was taken over by the State of California and turned into the historical park. “It was started as a way to haul lumber and here is it over 100 years later and is still the same,” said Sapp. Over a century later and the railroads are still serving the Mother Lode, not a bad track record for the iron horse.