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Railroad Leads To Winter
Sports
By Mark McLaughlin
 The
completion of the first transcontinental railroad across the
United States in May 1869 finally opened to the door to safe
travel from coast to coast. The Iron Horse was a revolutionary
transportation technology the first to provide a comfortable
passage over storm-wracked Donner Pass during the winter months.
The railroad was also a vital component in the development of
skiing and winter sports in the Truckee and Lake Tahoe region.
Building a
railroad over the Sierra Nevada, however, was a major challenge
to the men laying the rails, especially during the heavy winters
of 1867 and 1868. Forty-four snowstorms during the winter of
1867 took a lethal toll on the Chinese railroad crews struggling
to reach the Sierra Crest west of Coburn’s Station (soon
re-named Truckee). Total accumulation on Donner Pass that year
exceeded forty feet, which effectively shut down all
construction except for tunnel work. One avalanche wiped out an
entire work camp; when the bodies were discovered the following
spring, work tools were still clutched in their hands. The
weather-related delays were critical since Central Pacific
Railroad was in a race with the Union Pacific to lay as much
track as fast as possible. The more miles of track each company
threw down, the more money and land grants they would earn from
their government contracts.
In their
fourth year of construction, the Central Pacific crews were
working up the Sierra west slope. Due to the hardness of the
granite and severity of the weather, construction progress was
being measured in feet, not miles. In order to accelerate their
eastward progress, Charles Crocker, associate of Leland
Stanford, Mark Hopkins and Collis P. Huntington (later known as
the “Big Four”), ordered a third of the Chinese crews ahead into
the Truckee River Canyon to prepare the road there. In December
1866, laborers constructed huge sleds by fitting large logs
together. Using these oversized toboggans, they hauled three
locomotives, forty cars of rolling stock, and tons of rails and
supplies over the snowbound pass. The leapfrog strategy worked.
Despite the blizzards in the high country, laborers managed to
build nearly forty miles of railroad through the Truckee River
Canyon.
Throughout the
following summer and fall, the 10,000 hard-working Chinese
laborers hired by Central Pacific pushed the track east,
reaching Donner Summit on November 30, 1867. The mild autumn
weather ended in December when a series of powerful Pacific
storms slammed into California. The construction crews working
near 7,000 feet in elevation were exposed and vulnerable to the
blinding blizzards and crushing avalanches. Snowslides delayed
the supply trains, but the crews continued to work through the
storms. When the snow piled so high that the workers could not
throw it over the embankment, it was shoveled into empty boxcars
and shipped to Sacramento where it was dumped into the river.
Theodore
Judah, the brilliant engineer who had surveyed the line over the
Sierra, had no real understanding of the great danger, power,
and frequency of snowslides. The track was built along the
avalanche-prone, steep-sided slopes; sometimes the railroad
clung to bare granite cliffs. To protect the railroad from heavy
snow and frequent avalanches, Central Pacific was forced to
construct nearly forty miles of wooden snowsheds. Where a
roadbed could not be built, a tunnel was chipped and blasted
out. In the heavy snow belt between 6,000 and 7,000 feet, nine
tunnels were excavated, totaling 5,158 feet in length. At Donner
Summit, Tunnel No. 6 was carved through 1,659 feet of solid
granite. Despite the constant digging and the use of 300 kegs of
black powder daily, the rock was so hard that the Chinese
laborers could gain only eight inches a day.
 Although
ice and snow remained 12 feet deep in many places, by June 1868,
trains were running all the way to Lake’s Crossing, the site of
present-day Reno, Nevada. Constructing a railroad 88 miles over
the rugged Sierra between Newcastle and Truckee had taken 11,000
men 38 months of backbreaking work. In comparison, to complete
the railroad from Truckee, east across the desert to Promontory,
Utah, a distance of 571 miles, took 5,000 men just one year and
27 days. For the crews that built the line over the Sierra
Nevada, their herculean effort not only connected California
with the rest of the nation, but it provided the transportation
necessary for the beginning of the winter sports industry in the
mountains.
Once the
transcontinental railroad was built, Truckee and eventually the
Lake Tahoe region became an easily-accessible winter wonderland.
The patriarch of Truckee, Charles F. McGlashan, was an
intelligent and energetic jack-of-all trades. Among his many
accomplishments, he practiced law, served as school principal,
wrote the first authentic history of the Donner Party, and was
the long-time editor and owner of the Truckee Republican
newspaper. In the 1890s, McGlashan proposed his vision that
Truckee, and eventually Lake Tahoe, would become major
attractions for people looking for winter sport excitement. Ice
Carnivals and other mid-winter festivals spurred thousands of
people to take the train from the mild flatlands for fun and
frolic in the snowdrifts around Truckee.
 Southern
Pacific Railroad capitalized on the newfound excitement about
winter sports by establishing “Snowball Specials” express trains
that conveyed hundreds of tourists from the California lowlands
to Truckee every weekend. Hilltop, the small hill with an open
slope just south of downtown Truckee, provided an excellent
place to sled and ski. In 1910, an old steam engine from an
abandoned lumber mill on the Little Truckee River was hauled in
by oxen-drawn wagon and converted into a pullback lift. Some ski
historians believe that this was the first mechanical lift of
its kind in the United States. Soon Norwegian-style skiing
became popular in the United States and Truckee was on the
forefront of this popular new sport. The Truckee Ski Club, later
the Truckee Outing Club, was organized in 1913. This was the
first formally organized ski team in the Sierra.
 The
greatest boost for winter sports arrived when the California
Highway Commission decided to make Highway 40 an all-year
transcontinental route, realigned it, and undertook the
expensive task of keeping it open throughout the winter. Ski
resorts and lodges quickly sprung up along the highway; the
Auburn Ski Club made its headquarters on 740 acres at Cisco,
about 20 miles west of Donner Pass. It was one of the most
highly developed systems of competitive ski courses and
instruction hills on the continent. One outstanding feature was
its Class “A” championship ski jump; its vertical drop of 251
feet enabled world-class jumps exceeding 300 feet.
Skiing and ski
resort development hit the big time when Squaw Valley hosted the
1960 Winter Olympics. With the completion of Interstate 80 over
Donner Pass a few years later, Truckee clinched its role as the
hub of winter sports in the Central Sierra.
Mark McLaughlin
is an award-winning, nationally published author and
photographer with four books and more than 350 articles in
print. His work appears regularly in California and Nevada
media; he was awarded the Nevada State Press award five times.
Educated in History and Cultural Geography at the University of
Nevada – Reno, Mark teaches Sierra Nevada pioneer history
firsthand, using entertaining stories, unique slide shows and
informative field trips. He is a frequent guest on regional
television and PBS programs, and has consulted for The History
Channel.
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