CHAPTER XXXIII.

HOW WOOD IS CUT IN THE SIERRAS.

The Comstock lode may truthfully be said to be the tomb of the forests of the Sierras. Millions on millions of feet of lumber are annually buried in the mines, never-more to be resurrected. When once it is planted in the lower levels it never again sees the light of day. The immense bodies of timber now being entombed along the Comstock, will probably be discovered some thousands of years hence, by the people to be born in a future age, in the shape of huge beds of coal, and the geologists of that day will say that this coal or lignite came from large deposits of driftwood at the bottom of a lake; that there came a grand upheaval, and Mount Davidson arose, carrying the coal with it on its eastern slope.

Not less than eighty million feet of timber and lumber are annually consumed on the Comstock lode. In a single mine—the Consolidated Virginia—timber is being buried at the rate of six million feet per annum, and in all other mines in like proportion. At the same time about 250,000 cords of wood are consumed.

The pine-forests of the Sierra Nevada Mountains are drawn upon for everything in the shape of wood or lumber, and have been thus drawn upon for many years. For a distance of fifty or sixty miles all the hills of the eastern slope of the Sierras have been to a great extent denuded of trees of every kind; those suitable only for wood as well as those fit for the manufacture of lumber for use in the mines. Already the lumbermen are not only extending their operations to a greater distance north and south along the great mountain range, but are also beginning to reach over to the western slope—over to the California side of the range.

Long since, all the forests on the lower hills of the Nevada side of the mountains that could be reached by teams, were swept away, when the lumbermen began to scale the higher hills, felling the trees thereon, and rolling or sliding the logs down to flats whence they could be hauled. The next movement was to erect saw-mills far up in the mountains, and to construct from these, large flumes leading down into the valleys, through which to float wood, lumber, and timber. Some of these flumes are over twenty miles in length, and are very substantial structures, costing from $20,000 to $250,000 each. They are built on a regular grade, and, in order to maintain this grade, wind round hills, pass along the sides of steep mountains, and cross deep cañons; reared, in many places, on trestle-work of great height.

These flumes are made so large that timbers sixteen inches square and twenty or thirty feet in length may be floated down in them. In a properly constructed flume, timbers of a large size are floated by a very small head of water; and not alone single logs, but long processions of them. Timbers, wood, lumber—in fact, all that will float—is carried away as fast as thrown in. When a stick of timber or a plank has been placed in the flume, then ends all the expense of transportation, as, without further attention, it is dumped in the valley—twenty miles away, perhaps. By means of these flumes, tens of thousands of acres of timber-land are made available, that could never have been reached by teams.

In some places, where the ground is very steep, there are to be seen what are called gravitation flumes, down which wood is sent without the aid of water. These, however, are merely straight chutes, running from the top to the bottom of a single hill or range of hills. In places, they are of great use, as through them wood may be sent down within reach of the main water-flume leading to the valley. Nearly all of the flumes have their dumps near the line of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, or some of its branches or side-tracks, and in these dumps are at times to be seen thousands upon thousands of cords of wood and millions of feet of lumber.

In some localities a kind of chute is in use, made by laying down a line of heavy timbers in such shape as to form a sort of trough. Down these tracks or troughs are slid huge logs. When the troughs are steep, the logs rush down at more than railroad speed, leaving behind them a trail of fire and smoke. Such log-ways are generally to be seen about the lakes, and are so contrived that the logs leap from them into water of great depth, as otherwise they would be shivered to pieces and spoiled for use in the manufacture of lumber. Occasionally, in summer, a daring lumberman mounts a large log at the top of one of these chutes, high up the mountain, and darting down at lightning speed, with hair streaming in the breeze, takes a wild leap of twenty or thirty feet into the lake. In one place, in order to obtain a supply of water sufficient to run two lumber-flumes, a tunnel was run a distance of 2,100 feet at a cost of $30,000. This tunnel passed through a ridge, and tapped a lake lying within the basin of Lake Tahoe.

Yerington, Bliss, & Co., one of the heaviest lumbering firms in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, have built a narrow-gauge railroad from their saw-mills on the shore of Lake Tahoe to the head of Clear Creek, on the first or eastern summit of the Sierras. The road is eight miles in length, and is used in the transportation of lumber from the mills of the company to their large flume at the head of Clear Creek. This railroad passes through a tunnel 500 feet in length, which was the only tunnel and the heaviest piece of work on the road.

Logs are rafted across Lake Tahoe to the mills, from all points. The lake being of great size, and all of its shores and the slopes of the surrounding mountains being heavily timbered, the company have command of a vast area of pine-forests. Through the waters of the lake and its numerous bays, they reach out and up into the mountains in all directions, gathering the pines into their mills, carrying them, in the shape of lumber, up their railroad, and then shooting them through their big flume down over all the hills till they land in Carson Valley.

[Illustration: LOG RIDING]

[Illustration: LUMBERING AT LAKE TAHOE.]

This is all very well for the company and for the mining companies, who must have lumber and timber, but it is going to make sad work, ere long, with the picturesque hills surrounding Lake Tahoe, the most beautiful of all the lakes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Where tall pines now shade all the shores and wave on all the mountain slope, nought will shortly be seen, save decaying stumps and naked granite rocks. But timber and lumber are imperatively demanded, and the forests of not only these hills but of a thousand others, will doubtless be sacrificed.

The rafts of logs are towed across the lake by small steamboats. This rafting is of a novel character. The logs forming the raft are not pinned or in any way fastened together. The steamboat runs up to a bay or other place where logs are lying, and casts anchor. A boat is then sent out which carries a long cable strung full of large buoys. This cable is carried round a proper fleet of logs, as a seine is carried round a school of fish. The steamer then weighs anchor and starts across the lake, towing along all the logs about which the cable has been cast. No matter how rough the lake may be, the logs remain in a bunch, being attracted the one to the other, and clinging together as bits of stick and chips are often seen to do when floating on a lake or stream.

On the side of the lake opposite the mills of Yerington, Bliss, & Co., a man who has a contract for delivering logs in the water ready for rafting, does his “logging” with a locomotive. He has laid a railroad track, some six miles in length, through the heaviest part of the forest, and instead of hauling the logs to the lake with oxen, in the old-fashioned way, rolls them upon low trucks, and hauls a whole train of them away at once, with his locomotive.

At the edge of the lake the track is laid under water for a considerable distance, and the train being run upon this track, the logs are floated off the low cars, and are ready for rafting.

Other large mills besides those of the company named, are engaged in devouring the forest surrounding Lake Tahoe. About five million feet of lumber per month are turned out by the several mills at the lake, and each summer about three million feet of timbers are hewn in that locality. Many of the sugar-pine trees about Lake Tahoe are five, six, and some even eight feet, in diameter; all are very tall and straight.

At a point in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, about eleven miles from the town of Reno, on the Central Pacific Railroad, Messrs. Mackay & Fair have a lumber-flume over twenty miles in length. This flume was built through an exceedingly rugged region, and cost $250,000. It taps a tract of twelve thousand acres of heavy pine-forest owned by the parties named. The land is estimated to contain 500,000 cords of wood, 100,000,000 feet of saw-logs, and 30,000,000 feet of hewn timber; all of which will be brought down to the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, through the flume. A printing telegraph extends along the whole line of the flume, by means of which orders are transmitted to all points.

There are a great number of these flumes reaching up into the Sierras from the valleys of Nevada, and soon it will be necessary to build railroads to haul the lumber up to the heads of these from the California side of the mountains, as has been done by Yerington, Bliss, & Co. No means of transporting wood, lumber, and timber is or can be cheaper than these flumes. When once a plank or stick of wood has been dropped in at the head of the flume it is already as good as at the other end, twenty or thirty miles away. The flumes are far ahead of railroads of any gauge, broad or narrow, as a means of cheap transportation for wood and lumber.

Each season, from 80,000 to 100,000 cords of wood are floated down the Carson River. This wood is cut high up in the Sierras, at the head-waters of the Carson and its tributaries, and is sent down from the mountain slopes for many miles, in flumes of the same kind as those in use for the transportation of lumber. The wood is collected on the banks of the river, ready to be launched at the proper and auspicious moment.

Contrary to what most persons would suppose, the proper time for starting one of these drives of eighty or one hundred thousand cords of wood, is not when there is a big freshet, but at the falling of the stream after a freshet; that is, on the heels of a grand overflow. If the wood be put into the river at a time when its waters are over the banks, it floats away into the flats and out over the valleys, whence it is almost impossible, but at too great cost, to get it back into the channel, and thus it is as good as lost. The lumbermen are for this reason careful not to put their wood into the river while there is danger of there occurring a sudden flood, which would lift it above the banks and scatter it broadcast over the country.

The time for starting the drive is just after the great flood of the season—after the thaw which sweeps the greater part of the snow from the mountains. Then the wood comes down huddled in the channel, and covering the whole surface of the water, for fifty miles or more. At points where there are sloughs or bayous leading out of the river, booms are stretched to keep the wood in the straight and narrow way. French Canadian lumbermen and Piute Indians are generally employed in making these drives. As the wood must be followed up and kept moving, it is a wet and laborious business.

The time is not far distant when the whole of that part of the Sierra Nevada range lying adjacent to the Nevada silver-mining region will be utterly denuded of trees of every kind. Already, one bad effect of this denudation is seen in the summer failure of the water in the Carson River. The first spell of hot weather in the spring now sweeps nearly all the snow from the mountains, and sends it down into the valleys in one grand flood; whereas, while the mountains were thickly clad with pines, the melting of the snow was gradual, and there was a good volume of water in the river throughout the summer and fall months.

The prevailing breezes in Nevada are from the west—indeed the wind seldom blows from any other quarter than the west—which is directly over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In passing over the fields of snow, on the summit of the Sierras, the breezes are cooled, and the summer weather in Nevada is thus rendered delightful. But when once the mountains shall have been denuded of their timber, all the snow on both slopes will be swept away by the first warm weather of spring—as it is now swept away on the eastern slope—when a marked increase in the heat of the summers in Nevada is likely to be experienced.

Railroads are being pushed, both north and south, along the eastern base of the Sierras, with no other object than to strip the mountains of the forests in which they are now clothed, in the course of time. We may therefore look to see the whole range lying bare in the sun. When this shall come to pass, the Great Basin region to the eastward will be a perfect furnace in summer.

There must come a day when wood will be scarce and dear, and some other fuel must be found. Coal from the Rocky Mountains is now extensively used at Virginia City, but it costs about as much as wood. The problem may be solved in a wonderful deposit of lignite recently opened by the Virginia City Coal Company, and it is to be hoped that the mine will prove to be all that it now promises.

This coal deposit is on El Dorado Cañon, eleven miles from Dayton, ten from Carson City, and seventeen from Virginia City. Such an extensive deposit of lignite as this has seldom been found in any country. There are two strata of it, each fifteen feet in thickness. The first vein was cut at the depth of forty feet, and forty feet below this was found the second stratum, of the same thickness (fifteen feet) as that above. Both veins dip to the southwest, at an inclination of four inches per foot, under a mountain of great size. The company have erected steam-hoisting and pumping machinery, and have sunk their main shaft to the depth of 180 feet, at which point they drifted out until they cut their lower vein, at a point 460 feet distant from the bottom of the shaft. They then followed the stratum back to the shaft, for the purposes of ventilation, and were all the way in coal of an excellent quality. The coal burns well and freely, and must prove of great value as soon as it can be cheaply brought to the several towns where it is needed, as it appears to exist in almost inexhaustible quantities. A narrow-gauge railroad is to be built from the mine to the neighboring towns.

One or two mills have been run with coal, but the cost of hauling it on wagons is too great to make it much more economical as a fuel than the wood and coal already in use.