Lost Trains, Tracks and Camps

LOST TRAINS, TRACKS AND CAMPS

May 1, 2010

A Brookings Co. Train - early 1900's

             I was thirteen when I began to explore Ahwahnee.  This would have been the summer of 1966.   Hiking our mountain became my passion over the next decade.

            When walking above the Tielroy campsite, for example, one could still follow the cutout of the land where the narrow gauge railroad once ran. The track appeared to hug the mountain all the way around Mohawk, Jamie and beyond to Rainbow Lake. This small lake disappeared after the breaking of its dam, due to the massive snowfall and eventual flooding throughout the winter and spring of 1968-69.  The only fishing experience of my life occurred at Rainbow Lake during my Senior Patrol Leader training week, a few years prior to the breach.  I was a lousy fisherman; I did not catch anything.  But, I clearly remember the attempt. 

            Over the years to come I learned that early Mormon settlers were the first to engage in active logging of the mountain in the mid 1800’s.  Later, larger investors, like the Brookings Company built roads, graded the land and laid tracks for the three small steam locomotives which were imported and soon put to work hauling logs from as far away as our area to their sawmill in Fredalba where the timber was fashioned into orange crates.  Brookings alone had eighty full time men working the mountain. The pay was a dollar seventy-five per day (better than my camp honorarium). Brookings, along with many other companies soon stripped the mountain of all usable lumber.  Old photos from that era attest to an ugly, barren landscape for miles around.

            After the close of our summer season in 1974, when both the campers and staff had already left, the Bergners and I enjoyed the camp pretty much to ourselves. I was stalling my return to school and other drudgery's which waited for me down below. 

             I always loved that time of year, around the first of September, when the days grew cooler.  Wildlife returned to wander unafraid and one could take in the quiet of the days and nights with no sound other than the wind through the trees or the screech of a hawk or owl swooping overhead.   Occasionally one could even hear the flowing of the creek from far way.

It was on just such a pre-autumn day that a gentleman from the San Bernardino Museum showed up at camp.  As the Bergners were about to leave to go down the hill for a bit, Gene asked me to escort the fellow around the grounds.  He was in search, he said, of lost logging camp number seven and believed that it might just have been located on our property.  He had been here before apparently and had now returned with old photos to help document his research. 

            The old black and whites he shared with me showed a large flat campsite, filled with tents and men and ancient machinery.  The hills around the surrounding area were well stripped of trees and showed mountains of stumps and brush.  As I stared at that old photo, I pretty much knew where it had to have been shot so long ago.   We headed out to Lightningville.    

            With photos in hand, we stood in various locations within this large flat area and successfully located familiar topography.  It looked like this may have been the site of an old camp.  It certainly made sense, as Lightningville was a barren, flat area, something unique in this rough hilly terrain.  This would have made for a natural campsite.  Lightning bounced off of the hills around here, or so it was attributed to old logging stories and thus the name of Lightningville.   It had the makings of being the site of a former logging camp.  I showed the man from the museum the old narrow gauge railroad track cutouts which were within spitting distance of where we stood. The man took note of the single ancient giant white fir tree and the deep gashes wrapping themselves about the base of the old veteran.  He confirmed what many of us had wondered about over the years.  The gashes were a result of old cable lines that cut into the tree long ago as they were wrapped about it as an anchor for hauling no doubt. Some had estimated this old fir to be four hundred years old – so it was a giant already when the loggers made camp here.  I had, over the years, found several younger trees in different locations where the cable itself was still in place, with the tree trunk having grown around it.  It all made sense.   We both grew excited as things were coming together.  It was an afternoon well spent.  History was coming alive.

            Some time ago, as I was searching various sites on the Internet, I came across old photos (one dated 1905) of two of the three small Brookings logging trains that worked our forest.  One was coming around a curve on a cutout of a mountain similar in terrain as to where I used to hike near Tielroy.   Now, I know that those old black and whites could have been shot anywhere between Arrowhead and Running Springs.  But I like to think that it was here, right here in the heart of Ahwahnee that one of those photos was taken.  I further like to believe that someone took it from lost logging camp number seven.

           

I, like so many others before and no doubt after me, have always felt something very special for this ancient land we boys of yesteryear once called Ahwahnee.

We know about the Serrano Indians who inhabited here long before the Mormons started to log it.  Outside the archery range, next to Lightningville for example, one could see the deep, smooth, round holes in several flat rocks where inhabitants ground acorn into meal. The setting must have been an ideal location for the ancient ones, as it was flat, shaded and close to water.  It would have been a great place to spend summers.  Apparently loggers, within time, would think so too. 

Forty years following the lumberjacks and their machines the land was occupied by the kids from Larry’s Boys Camp; a decade later by Boy Scouts; another decade after that the folks from Calvary Chapel took hold of the property and dwell there currently.  They even built a small lake at the edge of old Lightningville by flooding and deepening a naturally slight depression in the land.  The ancient grinding holes sit above the water line fortunately and can still be explored.  Although the people settling this area of the mountain certainly changed over the decades and centuries, this land rarely did. 

And so, I remember well how I hiked during those first awe-filled days, taking the time to hunt for hidden clues. 

I stumbled across ancient railroad track ties, tree enshrouded cable and the occasional rusty track spike. I looked at any flattened stone that might have Indian grinding holes hidden within. I found that the best tasting water bubbled straight out of the spring, near the ancient burnt out cedars off the nature trail or from the edge of a sharp embankment near the start of the Deep Creek trail, just shy of Inspiration Point.  Did the old ones, who first occupied this land, drink from these spots as well?  I like to think so.

These were all marvelous treasures to a child of any age.   That skinny kid of so many decades ago was and still is, (even in the guise of this middle-aged and softer-in-the-belly man of today) enraptured with the unfolding history of our old camp.  The fact that so many scraps of its past will remain intact, waiting to be found once more, if one only takes the time to look for them, is most comforting.

Narrow gage cutout just above Lightningville - Nov. 11, 2012