OIn the lexicon of the Old West, few names conjure-up more dreams of glory than that of the Carson & Colorado Railroad. Henry Yerington and the moneybags of the Bank of California built it; Lucius Beebe enshrined it; Carl Fallberg satirized it; while time and the Washoe winds have all but erased its path.

It has been called, and fittingly so, the "Slim Princess" owing in part to the fact that her rails were spaced a mere three feet apart. It was also said to have been built "300 miles too long or 300 years too soon." But nevertheless, it survived in part even the greatest of the Nevada short lines ... the famous and fabulously rich Virginia & Truckee. It was in fact, the V&T and her wealth that financed the Carson & Colorado, not only providing its northern connection at Mound House, Nevada, now only a memory; but its visionary plan of connecting the Carson River with the distant Colorado River and all the silver and gold towns that would spring-up between. Originated, planned, pushed, financed and built by the Virginia & Truckee Railway in the early 1880's, the Carson & Colorado was all too soon a waif, unwanted and then finally unloaded on the unsuspecting but all powerful Southern Pacific ... just two months before news of the Tonopah gold boom resounded across the great basin and over-shadowed the queen of the Comstock herself, Virginia City.

Ore from Cerro Gordo, Candelaria and Tonopah rolled over the Carson & Colorado, but never to the extent that had been hoped. Wells, Fargo & Company's express rode the rocking cars too, but the big silver and gold camps never materialized. Struggling through sagebrush, Sierra snows, across Mount Montgomery Pass and over the alkali desert, the C&C was subjected to name changes, name calling and partial standard gauging, finally ending its days as an isolated narrow gauge line in California's Owens Valley, just on the east side of the lofty Sierra Nevada. The final years saw Southern Pacific lettered on its cars, but under flaking paint could be read the names of the Nevada & California, Central Pacific and Carson & Colorado, while journal box covers and other metal parts proclaimed them to have been cast in the huge shops of the V&T at Carson. Still other cars and engines ended their days on the valley run between Laws and Keeler, after having served on the likes of the Florence & Cripple Creek, South Pacific Coast and Nevada-California-Oregon.

Following the turn of the century, the Owens Valley was robbed of its water by a distant, yet thirsty Los Angeles. With the loss of water, the ground dried up and cracked. The once rich mines had already played out and many farmers and ranchers just quit trying and left the valley. The final years saw the once grand narrow gauge making thrice-weekly runs down the desert floor, serving the needs of Zurich, Aberdeen, Kearsarge, Manzanar, Owenyo and Dolomite in its seventy mile coming and going between Keeler and Laws. Oddly enough, not one single town boasted a population in excess of 300 souls, while most could not muster more than a few dozen citizens on a July election day!

Still the Southern Pacific narrow gauge struggled through the sand in the desolate yet beautiful valley ... hauling a mixed consist of borax, talc, soda ash and whatever else its agents could drum-up to fill the wooden cars. The ranchers around Laws provided a few carloads of cattle now and then, usually in the autumn, but no longer did the three and four engine "Stock Extras" blast up Mount Montgomery Pass and out across the valley in the shadow of 14,501 foot Mount Whitney. just over the Panamints was Death Valley, which at 282 feet below sea level placed the highest and lowest points in the continental United States within the confines of Inyo County.

When the end finally came in 1960 the amazing thing was not that a part of the Old West had vanished, but that it had lasted so long. This then is the story of the Southern Pacific's Owens Valley narrow gauge. Operating in a land of barren contrasts, the slim gauge defied economics, geography and progress to become the last of her breed in the far west. Drifting across the desert sands, smoking for all who came to watch, trailing a diminutive and ancient consist, this was the Southern Pacific narrow gauge.

by Mallory Hope Ferrell (from his book "Southern Pacific Narrow Gauge")