Boulder Gorge

Russell, actually the other way around. Timetable east would indeed be off of the top of the map as you have it oriented, but the water tank is further timetable west so would be off of the bottom of the map. I was going to put a set of maps together to post including this one, but for the time being I will just give you the next one that will show Boulder Gorge siding and the water tank. I drew the red lines on the map to indicate the continuation of the spur off of the siding that once went across the river. The isolated red line represents the location where another bridge once existed. I do not know if this bridge was railroad related, or for vehicles. The area across the river is a large sloping open meadow for the most part with a large canyon up behind it which is the water source for the railroad water tank. There is evidence of a large camp just up the canyon a short ways and it appears that a logging grade once went up the canyon. One late SVRR member related that he believed there was a grade that switch backed out of the canyon, but I don't believe we have found it on the two trips I have hiked the area. The attached photo from the SVRR archives of Boulder Gorge water tank is quite fascinating for the number of things that were captured. First of all notice the stock cars on the the spur that is across the river. This begs the question as to whether they were just stored there, or were they loading livestock over there. The large canyon behind certainly does access a lot of country and might have been a good place to gather and drive cattle down to the railroad. Pure speculation either way. The other thing you will notice is that there is a small trough like tank hiding behind the round wood stave tank. This was the original tank and you can see the make shift flume to carry water to it. The round tank which per and article in the Sumpter paper "The Morning Reporter" 21Jan.1901 was being constructed at that time, has a frost box of sorts to bring water from across the river probably containing a steel pipe. This tank was eventually replaced with a larger tank that had the pipe running under the river bed. This final tank had the typical SVRy octagon tank house. The concrete piers for this tank can still be seen. I have attached a photo looking across the river at the tank location. The former hwy, now road to the dam is up the hill and the grade not too far above river level. The large mound of brush is where the tank stood. The final two shot are of what little is visible of the footings hidden by the bushes. The next point about the historic photo is the engine in the photo which is 1st #4. This 4-4-0 came to the SVRy from UN as #285 and was photographed in service with this number at S.Baker. Until this photo surface no one realized that this engine had been renumbered to 4. Later photos exist of the engine numbered 15. It is believed that this renumbering to 15 occurred when Tonopah #4 arrived. So a lot of cool stuff in one old photo, which is from the SVRR archives collections.









Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2017 07:05PM by J.B.Bane.