Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Panaca, Nevada is a small dusty town on state route 319, a little bit north of Caliente off US-93. At seven in the morning on a summer’s day it was already almost too warm to be walking around, and a woman on a bicycle watched me curiously as I stomped about taking photographs of the several historical markers on its high street.

The state historical marker for Panaca is a small one, telling the story of a town that started with a Mormon settlement. As I rode through Nevada, some of the greenest, most pleasant areas turned out to be the handiwork of the Mormons. They came here, they settled, they irrigated and farmed, then politics and change moved them along. Their abandoned farmsteads gave others the workings of an agricultural world where none could really have been imagined before.

The oldest surviving town in eastern Nevada still has many descendants of the original 1860s settlers. It was founded in 1864 when the Mormon missionaries and pioneers arrived, led by Francis Lee. The name was taken from the Paiute words “Pan-nuk-ker” which means “metal, money, wealth.” Missionary to the Indians, William Hamblin was shown a place where such things were to be found in abundance. They must have thought they had hit paydirt.

When originally settled, this area was part of Utah. However, in 1866 the boundary was revised and suddenly it was in Nevada. The Mormons refused to pay their taxes or acknowledge that this was a part of Nevada. The fight dragged on until 1870 when many of them upped and left. Only a few hundred remained behind. They grew produce for the nearby miners, and involved themselves in logging, thus removing a large portion of the area’s original forest.

There was a school here, a church, and some homes. With the help of a ranger at nearby Cathedral Gorge State Park, I was able to find the tucked-away marker for some natural springs, too. (It had been moved to stop it from getting vandalized by bored youths.) The mercantile store here has been open and running for over a hundred years. It really does not look as though much has changed in the years since then. I rode through trying to find a motel, convinced that there was one, and found a sleepy, peaceful place where people minded their own business.

The state historical marker for Saratoga is attached to an imposing white memorial arch that has changed location around three times since it was erected. It was one of my earliest indicators that historical markers are prone to moving around at night, and helped to build the same mythology over at Markeroni.

While Ohlone Indians and the De Anza expedition passed this way, it wasn’t until an 1846 land grant that the area was settled by Jose Noriega and his father in law, Jose Fernandez. Manuel Alviso later purchased it and the area was named Rancho Quito. Quito Road is a nice little biker road shadowed by trees–laburnum, flowering cherry. At the right time of year, it’s like riding through an archway of blooms.

What with there being a lot of trees hereabouts, the logging industry was soon in full swing. William Campbell built a sawmill about two miles west of present-day Saratoga, and an Irishman solved the problem of getting the logs down by building a toll road. Another historical marker notes where this came out in the town. It had been called Campbell’s Gap before; now it was Tollgate. The sign notes the many changes of names and there is still a Tollgate Road.

Later, when the County of Santa Clara was formed, the tolls were removed and the town renamed McCartysville. The Irish entrepreneur had already laid out plots for building on either side of what is now highway nine–Big Basin Way.

Are you with me so far? In 1865 the villagers decided to call their town Saratoga. That name hasn’t changed in the last hundred years, so it’s probably here to stay. Congress Springs in Saratoga, New York, had a similar type of water. (Congress Springs Road is an even more popular biker road–lots of switchbacks and steepness leading up highway nine.)

The open meadows gave way to wineries and orchards. Travelers attracted by the towns “pleasant aspect” came here and there were hotels and restaurants. Then rich San Franciscans “discovered it” and built their country homes. This might account for Saratoga’s current upscale air–it’s not like the rest of Silicon Valley, built up and full of offices. It actually feels a bit like it probably felt a hundred years ago. When suburban spread threatened this town of many names, in 1956 the members voted to become a city so that they could control who built what.

It worked. In 2005, the Saratoga zip code was named the 42nd most expensive zip code in the United States.

Cañada Road, closed to traffic on Sundays to let the bicyclists have a field day, stretches out from Woodside out towards highway 92. Hiding behind an ornate gate can be found Filoli, the mansion used as the Carringtons’ home in Dynasty, and its 654 acre estate. A single lane road takes you through a landscape reminiscent of English stately homes and on towards a vast parking lot, under the shadow of mature trees. Then you wander up to the house, where if you’re anything less than pristine you’re likely to get odd look from the staff. National Trusts, it would appear, are the same the world over: “genteel.”

The house was commissioned from Willie Polk, famed San Francisco architect, by the Bourns–William Bowers Bourn II and Agnes Moody Bourn. Mr. Bourn was president of the Spring Valley Water Company which owned nearby Crystal Springs Lake and other areas. Started in the 1860s, the company had about 40,000 acres of holdings in Alameda and Santa Clara Counties until it was bought by the City of San Francisco in 1930. Even now, it still has 23,000 acres of holdings. Polk had already built two homes for them, so they must have figured that it would work out just fine. They used Filoli as one of their residences from 1917 to 1936 and then sold it a year later to Mr. and Mrs. William P. Roth.

Mr. Roth was the president of the Matson Navigation Company and had been paid accordingly. In 1862 one Captain William Matson had started a shipping line between San Francisco and Hawai’i and it made him, and those who followed in his footsteps, a small fortune. The Roths decorated accordingly: the house contains nautical pictures, models and other artifacts.

The Roths held onto the place until 1975 when Mrs. Roth donated the entire estate to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. If you’re a member, you can get in for free. If you want to visit their charming garden shop, you can get a garden-only pass at the visitor center (but woe betide you if you’re caught without your sticker: the entry fee is quite steep and will be extracted from you.) Several gardens with different purposes (for cut flowers, vegetables, even a beautiful venue for a wedding) are for the most part maintained by volunteers. No matter what time of year you go, it’s always different as something new is coming into leaf or bloom.

And the name? It is a contraction of Mr. Bourn’s credo for life: “Fight for a just cause; Love your fellow man; Live a good life.”

Not a bad credo, really.

Arizona historical markers were hard to stop at. The warning signs didn’t warn early enough to slow down from 60mph onto what was usually a dirt pullout, and I blasted through many of them, tutting in annoyance but too lazy to do a u-turn.

Then I found one, just outside the small town of Geronimo on US-70 in Arizona. It was a bright desert day, the blue in stark contrast to the freshly ploughed fields alongside, and it pleased me no end to have found this marker dedicated to the most famous Apache Indian of all.

I grew up shouting “Geronimo!” without having the slightest clue what, or who, Geronimo was. He was, in fact, born to the Chiricahua Apache tribe in 1829. His birthplace is now in Arizona, but back then was still part of the Mexican territory. His real name, incidentally, was Goyaałé: “one who yawns.” Somehow, he doesn’t strike me as a man who had much time to relax and yawn.

Working alongside his brother, Juh, he was often mistaken for the leader himself because his brother, with a speech impediment, often left the talking to Geronimo. He was instead a medicine man, in charge of the spiritual health of his kin.

That time was one of conflict between the original inhabitants–the Apache–and the Spanish settlers. In 1858, returning from a trading excursion, he found that a raid on his home had left his wife, mother and children all murdered. That engendered a hatred that lead him to become a hero for freedom if you were Apache, and a pestilence on two legs if you were not. While never a chief, he became from that point onwards a military leader, which in the tradition of his people gave him the role of spiritual leader as well.

By 1875, all the Apache were rounded up into the San Carlos reservation. This was barren land where they could not survive using their traditional ways of life. Geronimo escaped three times, surrendering while at the same time eluding capture. Eventually he lead a band of his family into exile, avoiding capture for over a decade. At the height of the campaign, thousands of soldiers from the United States and Mexican armies were deployed to hunt him and his band down.

It all seemed to be over seven years later, when in May 1882 Geronimo was surprised in his mountain sanctuary. He agreed to bring his kin down to the reservation. But after hearing rumors of hangings and trials, instead he ran away again–with 35 warriors and 109 women and children. It was, nonetheless, the beginning of the end. He surrendered to General Nelson Miles on September 4th, 1886; his group had dwindled to 16 warriors, 12 women and 6 children and the surrender signaled the end of the last guerrilla action of the Indians.

The government broke its promise (now there’s a surprise) and sent 450 Apache people to be imprisoned in Florida, then later Alabama and finally Oklahoma. Geronimo later became a rancher, appearing in the parade for Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1905 and making other appearances with a kind of old-age celebrity.

He died in 1909, still a prisoner of war, and was buried far from his homeland at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Back in the 1860s, there was a city ordinance in place that banned all uncontrolled dogs from the downtown of San Francisco.

All except two.

On the 16th of June 1862, Bummer and Lazarus were specifically exempted from this rule.

Bummer and Lazarus were two stray dogs who, for whatever reason, made it into the collective hearts of San Franciscans. They were closely bonded, and expert rat killers–likeable both for their skills and for their friendship. Their territory was along Montgomery Street. Whatever they got up to was eagerly reported in newspapers of the time; presumably if they were around in this day and age they’d get a segment on the six o’ clock news. Ed Jump, a French artist, even made them the stars of a series of satirical cartoons that poked fun at notable characters of the day. The self-proclaimed Emperor Norton I of the USA was apparently so incensed to find himself depicted eating at a free-lunch table alongside the dogs that he broke a window to remove the offending picture. (A differing account states that it might have been the cane that broke instead.)

Their adventures were many and varied, captured in flowery prose and embellished, and included the dogs’ being shut up in a jeweler’s store one night. They might have been less popular if that had been a butchery.

In 1862, however, Lazarus lost the popularity game, and bit a boy. Someone poisoned him. A $50 reward was offered for news of the offender, but to my knowledge none was ever found. Ed Jump drew a cartoon depicting a formal funeral procession for the poor mutt, on his way to being buried with city notables. Bummer, who was no doubt bummed, died three years later when he was kicked to death by Henry Ripper, a drunk. Ripper, promptly arrested to bypass a lynching, nevertheless received a beating from his cellmate, popcorn vendor David Popley. (Was there ever a more apt name for a popcorn vendor?)

Mark Twain wrote a eulogy: “Full of years, and honor, and disease, and fleas.” Ed drew another cartoon, this time with Lazarus sponging off the feast as Bummer lay in state. Only Norton, whom phony legend would come to say had owned and loved the dogs, was not sad to see them go.

Lazarus was stuffed, and displayed in a bar, later given to the California Historical Society and destroyed around 1910. In 1992 a plaque to the two dogs was erected in a park behind the Transamerica Pyramid. Part of their obituary in The Daily Evening Bulletin noted that they had “two dogs with but a single bark, two tails that wagged as one.”

Niles Canyon is a favorite among local bikers, seeming to take you far from the chaos of commuter land into a world populated by leafy trees, old stone walls and a pleasant little river. As you ride, though, you catch glimpses of a different form of transportation: railroad tracks, and even, if your timing is right, an old steam train chugging its way along above you. The Niles Canyon Railway, once part of the first transcontinental railroad, is now owned and operated by a non-profit, the Pacific Locomotive Association, and supports its substantial collection by giving short rides, renting out its caboose for parties, and running special events.

In Suñol, a small rural town at the end of the canyon, the station has been lovingly maintained. An E Clampus Vitus plaque tells of the railroad and also of the reconstruction. When you go on a ride here, you see many of the original stone bridges and other features from its 1865 construction–not much rebuilding was done after the initial launch, and for historians that is indeed a blessing. For eighty years, steam trains used this stretch of the railroad before being replaced with diesel locomotives in the Fifties. Sadly, this all came to an end in 1984 when Southern Pacific stopped operations, pulled up the tracks, and deeded the land to Alameda County.

The Pacific Locomotive Association had a better idea. In 1987, they made arrangements with the County and started putting the rails back in. Everything was done by volunteer effort, and in May 1988 trains were running again after a break of only four years in 120 years of operation. If you’ll permit me a terrible pun, I think that’s a marvelous track record.

At the other end of the railroad is Niles Station, now a small railroad museum; mostly, it’s open on Sundays. In the railroad’s heyday Niles was a thriving town; now, it’s just a name that survives as part of Fremont. Since the 1960s, the non-profit has been collecting rare and unusual locomotives, and now has a collection of 22 engines and cars. The last of the collection was assembled in September 2004, driving proudly in on its own two tracks. It’s a sight to see, and I hope one day to chip in by taking my own one hour and ten minute ride.

From the steps beneath the huge St. Louis Arch, the Eads Bridge can be seen reaching out gracefully across the Mississippi to Illinois. It separates west from east, and was designed to let trains through and ensure that St. Louis retained it power as a trading hub well into the future. The largest bridge in the world at the time of its official dedication on July 4th 1874, it was also the first bridge to use steel and cantilevered construction. The two outer spans are 500 feet long, and the central one is a whole twenty feet longer. The piers are made from limestone and are anchored down into the bedrock.

The structure was a combination road and railway bridge; these days carries the light rail of St. Louis. By the time its cornerstone was laid in 1878, so many restrictions had been put on its design, so much politicking was done, that it was claimed this project could not be completed. Yet Captain James Buchanan Eads, engineer extraordinaire, danced between the flutters of red tape and made it happen anyway. He created a thing of beauty that, when it was opened officially, was fêted with a fifteen mile long parade, fireworks, speeches–in short, a party of the kind that Americans do so very well. There was even an inaugural train ride, even though trains had been already been passing along it for nearly a month.

In April of the very next year, however, the Keystone Bridge Company, builder of the bridge, went bankrupt. There were delays in the income they expected from paying passenger trains, and it finished them off. At the end of 1878 the structure was sold at auction for a whole two million dollars–a great deal less than the cost to actually build it. In 1974 the last Amtrak train rolled across the river, and piece by piece the poor old bridge fell into disrepair. It was closed entirely in 1991, seemingly doomed. But in 1993 the city’s new light rail started to use the lower deck, once the terrain of great trains, and a huge renovation was finally completed in 2003 with the upper deck open to road and foot traffic. It’s a good job too: the Eads Bridge, originally named the St. Louis Bridge, is a thing of beauty, and not a structure to be abandoned lightly.

Now, you can walk on it, and a special path for pedestrians and cyclists gives an unrivaled view of the St. Louis skyline. I did not have that opportunity, since at the time I visited St. Louis I had a badly strained ankle and limping across to Illinois was not on my itinerary. Yet it is spectacular, and it is elegant, and I intend some day to return.

The Eads Bridge was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

In Santa Clara, towering over a quiet urban street, is a magnicifent house of the kind “this author would buy in a heartbeat if she were stinking rich.” It is a beautiful Queen Anne Victorian with wooden stairs, fancy scalloped trim and little stained glass windows. Best of all, it has turrets. I have a very soft spot for loft and tower rooms, and a loft in a turret…well, that would be the bee’s knees, that would indeed.

The house is now occupied by a law firm and is not as such open to the public. However, every December some of Santa Clara’s historic houses are opened up for fund-raising tours, and I have indeed peeped inside. I got an impression of polished wood and age, softly glowing chandeliers and lovingly restored luxury. Outside, a plaque remarks that it is state historic landmark number 904. It was one of the first landmarks that I ever logged, and it is my dream house.

It was the dream house of the man who built it, too. In 1877, one Charles Copeland Morse (a failed gold miner) and A.L. Kellogg (a minister) acquired the well-established seed company of D.M. Ferry and Co, which had already started fiddling about with seed in California and produced the first commercially grown crop for the Pacific Coast, some three acres of Ferry’s Prizehead Lettuce. A few years later they branched off and started their own company, C.C. Morse and Co., keeping in touch with the original Ferry company and working together so that both enterprises were strengthened.

After C.C. Morse and Co. was incorporated in 1884, it quickly became the leading producer of flower and vegetable seed on the West Coast. In 1930 it merged with the D.M. Ferry Company. Hello Ferry-Morse Company. It is in business to this day.

Charles Copeland Morse had come to California in search of gold, but gave up after that didn’t [gratuitous pun alert] pan out. So in 1862 he made his way to Santa Clara; in those days it was still a small agricultural town, not to form part of the Silicon Valley conurbation until roughly a century later. There, he tried his hand at various non-mining jobs, and six years later married an elegant-looking lady called Maria. They had five children, he pooled resources with his minister partner, and thereafter they earned a great deal of money. Not content to be just a normal businessman, he also became a founder of the Bank of Santa Clara and the Advent Christian Church of Santa Clara.

In 1892 they built their dream house, which a newspaper dubbed “the house that seeds built.”

The marker, above mentioned, is planted in its own little garden full of colorful bright flowers.

Jackrabbits are hares, not bunnies. If you ride through Nevada in the early morning, they love to dive out of the undergrowth in front of you, rather than bounding away as by rights they should. It is as if their survival instinct is to trip you up and prevent your progress, not to run away. I lost count of how many I saw, each one waiting until the very last minute before deciding to attempt suicide in front of my wheels.

Jackrabbits are not miners, either, but Nevada legend has it that one of them started an entire silver mine. Fourteen miles north of Pioche, Nevada and a long way south from anywhere else, the Jackrabbit state historical marker stands by the side of the road. To the north the wide sweep of the Great Basin fills up half the view; a vast blue sky fills up the rest. US-93, straight, fast and empty, bisects the USA’s largest desert (190,000 square miles!) for as far as the eye can see. On either side of this divider grows a low-slung desert “forest”, its juniper bushes adding welcome greenery to the miles of arid landscape.

As I approached, the road was stained blood red, as though there’d been some major road kill. Then I saw the blackened stumps of burned vegetation, and realized that this area had been the victim of one of that summer’s many wildfires: what I was seeing was most likely the leftovers of fire-fighting work.

Local legend has it that the mine was founded in 1876 when Isaac Newton Garrison picked up a rock to throw at a jackrabbit…and found that he was holding a chunk of high-quality silver. I guess he could only be glad that, unlike his namesake’s apple, the rock didn’t land on his own head.

Either way, within months of the jackrabbit’s lucky escape from a bad headache, “Royal City” was a camp heaving with miners, equipped with all the usual accoutrements: a store, a smithy, a place to eat and drink. Later, it even got its own post office. The stagecoach stopped there, the last watering hole before heading on back to Pioche.

At first, production was about ten tons a day. The silver sold at anything from $40 per ton to around $2000 per ton for a total of two to six million dollars over the mine’s lifetime. The ore was milled in Pioche and Bristol, the latter of which gave its name to the mountain range on the eastern slopes of which the mine was dug.

By the 1880s things were winding down, but when, in 1891, a fifteen mile narrow gauge railroad — the Jack Rabbit Road — was opened between the mine and Pioche, it increased again. The name stuck, and lives on still as the Jackrabbit Mining District. But 1893 was the end, apart from a couple of two-year spurts in the early 20th century. Now, if you take about one mile of dirt road off US-93, you’ll find some shafts and a head frame, and the jumbled remains of wooden huts … maybe even a stone foundation or two.

And some ghosts. There is always going to be a ghost or two, if only of the jackrabbits.