OVERCURRENTS

GWs stateside correspondent Nick Day, reflects on a great railroad odyssey he recently completed and considers the geographers, surveyors and engineers who grappled with routes through some of the most inhospit-able land anywhere in the world.

Rocky Mountain High! or Its Only Rock N Roll!

hese classic John Denver and Rolling Stones numbers were in my thoughts in late July as I indulged myself in the dream of a lifetime a train ride on Amtraks California Zephyr from San Francisco, up through the Sierra Nevada and Rockies to Denver, the Mile-High City. A nephew's wedding in Boulder, Colorado, gave me the opportunity to avoid United Airlines overpriced air fares ($712 for two round-trip tickets versus $291 for the train), long lines and intrusive body searches. The train is really the only way to appreciate the vastness of the USA, and experience places that, apart from river rafting, can only be seen from the train. The trip is about 1400 miles, or almost half-way across the USA, and takes two days. The scenery ranges from absolutely breathtaking through the Sierras, to sleepinducing through much of Nevada and Utah, and back to spectacular in the Rockies. Although, I admit there is a certain je ne sais quoi about seemingly lifeless and flat sagebrush plains, punctuated every few hours or so by grotesque rock formations, looking as though they could only have been computer simulated for a George Lucas film set. The Sierras and Rockies are a geographers, geologists, photographers, and artists paradise, yet a challenge and nightmare for the surveyors and engineers tasked with selecting, surveying and designing routes and sites for roads, railroads, transmission lines, dams, and bridges.

Moonshine, the surveyors only comfort

I may have been the only passenger, out of about 200, looking at the entire route from a geographers, surveyors, and engineers perspective, seeing a story every few miles. Back in 1980/81, I spent a year seconded to Pacific Gas Transmission Co (PGT), overseeing several contract survey crews, and selecting the route for a 585-mile, 36 gas pipeline running from the Overthrust Belt in SW Wyoming, down through Utah and Nevada to California. At times we were at over 10,000 feet through the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, while temperatures ranged from about -20 F in Wyoming in winter, to 120 F in southern Nevada and California in summer. Despite its beauty, this can be very inhospitable country. Although nearly always alone, at least I had a CB radio to keep in

touch with the outside world. Surveyors back in the mid-1800s had no such luxuries. Pack mules carried their equipment, and although I walked much of that 585 miles, with a little help from a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter over some tough stretches, these pioneers walked every step and endured extreme hardships. Their only comfort, perhaps a bottle of moonshine. Armed with my handheld GPS, I clock us at less than 20 mph for long stretches. The train has a mandated top speed of 80 mph, which we almost reached on several occasions across Californias Central Valley and the Nevada Desert. Spiralling ones way through the mountains is not a quick process, but gives plenty of time to admire the scenery, especially from the superb observation car. With vertical, red sandstone or limestone rock faces towering sometimes over 1000 feet above us, little more than an arms length from the side of the train (in many canyons there is barely enough room for the river and a single line of tracks) you need the sunshine roof to see to the top. Rolling through Truckee, usually the coldest place in California, and along the river of the same name, I catch sight of one of the old open wooden flumes, common in the Sierras, that still carry water for drinking supplies or hydroelectric projects. Hanging precariously off cliffs, or over rivers, they must have been an interesting exercise in survey alignment and stake-out. Soon, we cross into Nevada, immediately evident by the appearance of gambling casinos, on the way to Reno.

Boundary follies
I am reminded of the controversy over the boundary line between California and Nevada. From the northerly boundary line with Oregon on the 42 N parallel, the easterly boundary with Nevada follows the 120 W longitude line south to the middle of Lake Tahoe on the 39 N parallel, and then runs south-east to the Colorado River in the Mojave Indian Reservation. Ever since the California Constitution was enacted in 1849, the true location of the eastern boundary has been in dispute; not least when the Comstock silver lode was discovered in 1859. To try and settle the dispute, part of the line was surveyed in 1863 by Houghton and Ives, but never completed. Allexey W. Von Schmidts party resurveyed the line in 1872/73, but were unable to do a proper job due to time restrictions and lack of money, plus erring a little with their solar observations. Some surveys purported to show the true line much further east, placing some casinos in California rather than Nevada a political embarrassment! So, for the umpteenth time both sides were back in the courts again. However, surveyors take note that when dealing with boundary issues judges are often more

Top: narrow gauge steam, Durango to Silverton. Above: Four Corners plaque.

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OVERCURRENTS

interested in whats equitable rather than whats mathematical. Today, some boundary disputes around Lake Tahoe are still in the courts. Apart from casinos, Reno is full of wedding chapels and funeral homes. Slowly lumbering past one of the latter, I notice a sign that reads Drive Carefully, Well Wait. Humour in these parts is as dry as the countryside. I recall the engraving on a tombstone in an old gun-slinging, ghost town graveyard in Montana: Here lies Lester Moore, killed by two slugs from a .44; no Les, no more. Later in the trip, we were to pass an electricians truck with the slogan Let Us Remove Your Shorts on the side. Leaving the glitz of Reno we rock and roll east across nothingness towards Winnemucca (a town about as far from anywhere as anywhere) and then the Great Salt Lake. This is no French TGV experience, and youd better make sure your coffee cup is only half full, because if it isnt it soon will be before youve even passed two prairie dogs, watching bemusedly from their gopher holes. Just to the north, before we pull into Salt Lake City, at about 3:30am, is Promontory Point, Utah. Here, West met East on the Transcontinental Railroad 133 years ago. Legend has it that after trying to hammer in that famous Golden Spike, and consistently missing, dignitaries left the job to a surveyor!

Silverton (elev. 9280) completes our fascinating mining town experience. Our next stop is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River National Park, a mini Grand Canyon, so deep (2000 sheer drops), narrow, and inaccessible that no one has ever inhabited the bottom. Back in the late 1800s, surveyors looking for a crossing for the Rio Grande Railroad, reluctantly had to give up and look elsewhere. Another side trip takes us to Mesa Verde National Park, ravaged by forest fires in 2000, where we hike down to ancient cliff dwellings. Brilliantly conceived and constructed, around 600 AD, they are situated under overhangs in steep sandstone canyon walls. Facing south, the myriad rooms and kivas run 90 feet into the cliffs, avoiding the bitterness of the north winds in winter, and direct sun in summer, which is too high in the sky to penetrate the complex. Of no particular tribal origin, the cliff dwellers finally moved on (no one quite knows why) around the time of King Edward I in the early 1300s.

The abandoned homes of ancient cliff dwellers who moved on around the time of Edward I.

Monumental works
So, whats significant about Lat N 36 59 56.7 & Long W 109 02 42.5, elev. 4905 (again courtesy of my GPS)? Well, were not too far from the awe-inspiring Monument Valley, Arizona, backdrop to John Waynes classic movie Stagecoach. But, actually, were at Four Corners, the only point in the USA common to four state corners: Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. It is our furthest stop south, and although the terrain (home to the Navajo Indians) is hardly scintillating, the surveying history of this National Monument makes fascinating reading. The plaque at the site reads, Established & perpetuated by US Government Surveyors & Astronomers beginning in 1868. Surveyors Darling, Robbins, Reeves & Carpenter surveyed boundary lines between states. Ehud Darling surveyed the corner for Colorado in 1868, Chandler Robbins for New Mexico in 1875, Rollin Reeves for Utah in 1878, and Howard Carpenter for Arizona in 1901. In 1899 US Surveyors Hubert Page & James Lentz found the 4-corners disturbed and broken. They marked and set a new stone at the original location. Everett Kimmell from the Government Land Office (GLO) re-monumented the Page/Lentz stone with a concrete and brass monument in 1931. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) poured a concrete paving block around the Kimmell monument in 1962. In 1992 cadastral surveyors Darrell Wilson and Jack Eaves officially monumented it with an aluminium/bronze disk. We dont hang around for long. Although late in the day and nearly a mile high, its nearly 100 F in the shade, except theres no shade as far as the eye can see. We get back into our air-conditioned car, ice-cold lemonade in hand bought from an old Navajo woman, with the kind of well-weathered, interesting face that speaks volumes. Truly, it was a trip of contrasts, with history and human endeavour experienced as well as geography.
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Tunnels, fires and canyons

No one can deny the significant role played by surveyors in setting out those tracks and myriad tunnels that opened up The West. Climbing up into the Rockies, we soon see further evidence the Moffat Tunnel, named for David Moffat, a Denver banker and railroad pioneer. Traversing the Continental Divide, its 6.2 miles long, and over 9200 above sea level. It is the longest and highest tunnel in the USA, and sixth longest in the world, trimming hours off the old 23-mile route over Rollins Pass at 11,600 feet elevation. It took 48 months to bore 21 feet per day and the first train rolled through it in February 1928. Emerging from the East Portal, which houses the power plant and ventilation equipment, we wind down in a series of switchbacks to the green plains below and Denver, 50 miles to the East. Vast acres have been burned by fires this year, some man-made, others from numerous lightning strikes. Driving south after the wedding, we spend the night in Breckenridge, and the next morning visit perhaps the most interesting, picturesque, and one-time richest silver mining town in the West Leadville. At 10,200, its the highest incorporated city in the US. The population, now, is about 2800, but back in the 1880s it was a wild and bustling city of over 35,000, when the discovery of silver, lead, zinc, molybdenum, iron ore, copper, bismuth, manganese, and later gold, drew fortune hunters from all over the USA and Europe. Carnegie and Guggenheim got their start here, and it was visited by such characters as: Oscar Wilde, Doc Holliday, Kit Carson, and Buffalo Bill. Fortunes were won and lost overnight. Sadly, mostly the latter, the spoils going to the service industries booze, prostitution, gambling, and the purveyors of jeans, food, and mining equipment. Later on, a 3-hour ride on a narrow gauge (36) steam train from Durango (elev. 6550) to