September 15, 2018
I was in San Francisco for business Friday, and needed to be in Dallas in Monday. I stayed in the west coast and took the California Zephyr across the Sierra to Reno. The train follows the route of the western portion of the first transcontinental railroad, the Central Pacific. We had fine views of Northern San Francisco amd San Pablo Bays, which are navigable by ocean-going vessels a long way in from the Golden Gate.
At Sacramento, a guide from the California State Museum joined us to provide narration of the various sites along the route to Reno. He told the story about the state surveyor declaring mountains where there was barely even a mild grade. The federal government offered bigger grants for building the transcontinental railroad through mountains, rather than on plains (1).
We eventually did arrive at real mountains, reaching the Sierra Summit at 6,949 feet near Donner Pass, where the infamous Donner Party, en route to California, was trapped by an early snow in the Fall of 1846. They spent the winter camped near Donner Lake, which we passed on the way down from the Sierra.
The train followed the Trukee River (draining Lake Tahoe) into Reno, Nevada.
(1) While the on-board guide did not share this part of the story, the state surveyor who declared the planes east of Sacramento to be mountains was named Josiah Whitney. The state named the tallest mountain in California Mount Whitney.
