California, Nevada County, Norden
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History
Theodore Judah, who plotted the Central Pacific’s route over the Sierra and for whom Mt. Judah was named, thought it was only the mountains that needed conquering as the Central Pacific headed east to meet up with the Union Pacific. He was wrong. The climate needed taming too.
Snowfall on Donner Summit averages 35 feet a year and in extreme years 60 feet can fall. You don’t just push that much snow away - although that was the first solution.
Even as they began building over the Summit the directors of the CPRR saw the problem and they began experimenting with snowsheds so trains could continue to run even in heavy snows. Ultimately more than 40 miles of sheds would be built to shelter the trains, at a huge cost.
Solving one problem brought others. Snowsheds were extreme fire dangers because they sheltered spark spewing locomotives. Lookouts, line walkers, and fire trains were maintained to watch and fight fires. An army of snow shovelers worked winters to keep the sheds from collapsing.
The sheds also caused problems for travelers:
“The average passenger journeyed over the Sierras usually utters a deep sigh of relief when his train emerges from the snowsheds. They have formed one bleak, uninteresting section of the journey, relieved only by a monotonous succession of tantalizing glimpses of striking scenery through the breaks and cracks in a dead wall of grimy timbers. The cars have filled with suffocating smoke and life has been made miserable for a time.” - San Francisco Call October 15, 1905.
Some of the most beautiful scenery in the world to be seen from a train window, and along the Sierra Summit, was hidden.
Pictured here: snowsheds on Donner Summit and under construction. Snowsheds often ran right up to buildings. Here The Summit Hotel is seen through a snowshed. Bottom, Snowsheds at Cisco.
A Good Story
With improvements in snow removal miles of snow sheds have been removed and those that remain are constructed of fire proof concrete. The fire lookouts and snow shovelers are gone as is the danger of snowshed collapse. One legacy remains. Many houses built in the 1940’s on Donner Summit were built of old now shed timbers. They are strong and solid. One owner remembers her mother sanding the insides of the house for years to remove the “patina” that had developed on the timbers from their days as snow sheds. The interior is now gorgeous.
(Railroads & Streetcars) Includes location, directions, 6 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
HistoryTheodore Judah, who plotted the Central Pacific’s route over the Sierra and for whom Mt. Judah was named, thought it was only the mountains that needed conquering as the Central Pacific headed east to meet up with the Union Pacific. He was wrong. The climate needed taming too.
Snowfall on Donner Summit averages 35 feet a year and in extreme years 60 feet can fall. You don’t just push that much snow away - although that was the first solution.
Even as they began building over the Summit the directors of the CPRR saw the problem and they began experimenting with snowsheds so trains could continue to run even in heavy snows. Ultimately more than 40 miles of sheds would be built to shelter the trains, at a huge cost.
Solving one problem brought others. Snowsheds were extreme fire dangers because they sheltered spark spewing locomotives. Lookouts, line walkers, and fire trains were maintained to watch and fight fires. An army of snow shovelers worked winters to keep the sheds from collapsing.
The sheds also caused problems for travelers:
“The average passenger journeyed over the Sierras usually utters a deep sigh of relief when his train emerges from the snowsheds. They have formed one bleak, uninteresting section of the journey, relieved only by a monotonous succession of tantalizing glimpses of striking scenery through the breaks and cracks in a dead wall of grimy timbers. The cars have filled with suffocating smoke and life has been made miserable for a time.” - San Francisco Call October 15, 1905.
Some of the most beautiful scenery in the world to be seen from a train window, and along the Sierra Summit, was hidden.
Pictured here: snowsheds on Donner Summit and under construction. Snowsheds often ran right up to buildings. Here The Summit Hotel is seen through a snowshed. Bottom, Snowsheds at Cisco.
A Good Story
With improvements in snow removal miles of snow sheds have been removed and those that remain are constructed of fire proof concrete. The fire lookouts and snow shovelers are gone as is the danger of snowshed collapse. One legacy remains. Many houses built in the 1940’s on Donner Summit were built of old now shed timbers. They are strong and solid. One owner remembers her mother sanding the insides of the house for years to remove the “patina” that had developed on the timbers from their days as snow sheds. The interior is now gorgeous.
(Railroads & Streetcars) Includes location, directions, 6 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
History
This is one of the original street markers used following the incorporation of the City of Palm Springs in 1938. Dr. J. J. Kocher and Philip Boyd, then secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, had renamed the streets in 1930 at which time Main Avenue became Palm Canyon Boulevard. Constructed of native stone and mortared with cement, this marker is the last one of its kind remaining in Palm Springs.
Founded 1906 by John Q. McAdams, who served 17 years as cashier, and since as president. Original capitalization was $15,000.
Founded in upper room of schoolhouse ten years before Winters became a town. Chartered Dec. 7, 1892. First officers: J.T. Brown, Worshipful Master; Ervin Brown, Senior Warden; W.S. Mullin, Junior Warden.
From its beginning as a west central Texas frontier community Winters grew from a retail support center for the surrounding agricultural community to a small-town railroad link to an oil, gas and manufacturing center. Settlement of the area of Winters began in the 1880s when two families, the Currys and the Bells, staked claim to the land one mile southeast of the present-day town. In 1889, a small schoolhouse was built on land that was given by land agent J.N. Winters. The community met in the completed schoolhouse to vote on the town name and Winters won. Winters already had significant cattle and feed production, and cotton added to their growing economy. By the first decade of the 20th century, Winters was typical of small settlement communities on the west central Texas prairie. In 1907, residents lobbied to construct a railroad between Abilene and Ballinger. By 1909, the railway reached Winters. This railway, along with the rise of blacktop roads and the automobile, ushered in an era of prosperity and expansion for Winters.
This route was used by Luiseño and Gabrieleno Indians, whose villages were nearby. Leandro Serrano established a home here in 1820. Jackson and Warner traveled the road in 1831, and Frémont in 1848. It was the southern emigrant road for gold seekers from 1849 to 1851, the Overland Mail route from 1858 to 1861, and a military road between Los Angeles and San Diego from 1861 to 1865.
Has been designated a
Dwight David Eisenhower, born on October 14, 1890, the third of six sons to a modest family in Denison, Texas, was raised in Abilene, Kansas. He excelled in baseball and football in high school. Eisenhower saw education as a way to better himself and became as much a scholar as he was an athlete. 
President of the United States of America. Inaugurated January 20, 1969. Inaugurated for second term January 20, 1972. We are proud of our native son, a man who has spared nothing of himself to help build a great nation.
Honoring the memory of the early Cahuillan Indian Clans who dug the Indian well 400 feet back of this monument, and the pioneer settlers, prospectors and stage line passengers who camped at the county well, located 50 feet back of this monument. The county well, dug in 1870 and used until 1910 was for years the walley's only county established watering point.
"Kronenberg Alley" honors the business begun by Joseph Kronenberg as a tim shop in 1848 at White's Corners (now Hamburg village). In 1848, Joseph's son William built the Fish and Kronenberg Store on Main Street with partner Newton Fish. By the 1930s the business had evolved onto a local shopping center selling hardware, household goods, appliances, furniture, and plumbing and heating services, occupying the entire southwest corner of Main and Buffalo Streets. Kronenburg's operated until 1961, and the corner portion of the complex was destroyed by fire in 1972. A large section of the former store building survives today as 12 Main Street. Kronenberg's, a much-loved Hamburg institution and precursor to the modern department store, represented 113 years of commerce in the village.
Focus of social life during Winters’ early years, the band played throughout the area for box suppers, old settlers reunions, and political campaigns. Charles Grant organized the group in 1901 (sever years after the town was incorporated) and conducted when it played for the coming of Winters’ first railraod in 1909. Grant served as bandmaster for fifteen years.
Born in Emory, Texas, youngest son of William and Nancy Cooke.
First local industrial plant. Processed cottonseed into cake, meal, hulls, oil. Gave city good payroll, a work whistle marking times of day, and a good aroma.
The remains of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and his son William Wallace "Willie" rested in this receiving vault from May 4, 1865 to December 21, 1865.
On April 6, 1863 near here "on an elevated plain", President Lincoln reviewed 13,000-17,000 men on horseback. the cavalry review was said to be the largest in the world. Reporters wrote it was a grand sight "with banners waving, music crashing, and horses prancing, as the vast column came winding like a huge serpent over the hills past the reviewing party,and then stretching far away out of sight."
Nearby here was Sthreshley Farm, site of Abraham Lincoln's Grand Review. On April 8, 1863, 60,000 men passed the president who sat on a horse for the long, 5½ hour review. 10 year old Tad stayed by his father, while Mrs. Lincoln watched from a carriage. Lincoln constantly touched his tall hat in a return salute to the officer, but uncovered his head when enlisted men passed by.
Ezekiel Smith and his large family had settled, in about 1806, in the area which is now the intersection of Abbott and Newton Roads within what was then the original, larger Town of Hamburg. The family established a series of grist mills on local creeks, with the last mill being on Eighteenmile Creek just west of the present South Buffalo Street bridge in the Village of Hamburg. (Later owners of this mill were named Long, Riest, Bastian and Schoepflin.) Smith's Mills was the earliest name, beginning about 1820, for this early settlement which grew westward and was later known as White's Corners prior to the incorporation of the Village of Hamburg in 1874. The house dating to 1815 and still standing at No. 40 South Buffalo Street was owned by Richard Smith, a son of Ezekiel. Richard Smith, in 1814, became one of the first supervisors of the Town of Hamburg, the Town having been incorporated in 1812.
