OCR Text |
Show THE CITIZEN 10 Nature in all Her Pristine Glory A I --2V GREAT SALT LAKE, THE DESERT, LAKE TAHOE, DOWN THE SIERRAS TO SAN FRANCISCO AND LOS ANGELES 9 Tourists Wonderland at Not far teenth century. We come to they drove Reno, nestled in among: snowcapped mountains, where the Salt City. WERE is the spot where Lake the golden spike that linked long rails and spanned a vast continent. Few men see history in the making, but history was made here. It was as if that spike was the last thing America needed to feel her unity as an empire was secure. See now the black giants that groan at evening and at morn, in one endless procession, East and West! Poetry in action! A song will yet be sung, not to the dolorous tune of the Volga Boatmen, but in the joyous rhythm of mans triumph over science, a triumph that takes the groan out of human souls. Now, then, to the land of the western suns choosing! A genial conductor greets us. The porter takes our luggage. Were off. THE DEAD SEA. To sea by rail! This is the S. P.s across the Great Salt famous cut-oLake, remnant of an ancient inland sea, twenty thousand years old. Only the Dead Sea in Palestine surpasses Great Salt Lake, in saltiness. It is the Dead Sea of America, wherein ff one swims but cannot drown. Out on the ocean seagulls amuse the ships passengers by their feats in aeronautics, but here they may be seen by train. It was in this empire of the Latter Day Saints, in eighteen forty-eigh- t, that they made war upon the crickets and saved the Mormons crops. Behind, in Temple Square at Salt Lake City, stands a monument in honor of their deed. To the south is Antelope Island, where roams the largest herd of buffalo this side of the Canadian border. Directly north of Promontory Point, on the old line, is the spot where, building east, the Central (Now Southern) Pacific met the Union, building west, May the Leland tenth, eighteen sixty-ninStanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker were the big four that led the way in building the Central Pacific. Stanford, then Governor of California, turned the first shovel of dirt at Sacramento, January the eighth, eighteen sixty-thre-e. He also drove the final spike e. at Promontory. THE SILVER STATE. On through Nevada the train rolls; Nevada, land of magnificent distances; land of majestic mountains and colorful deserts, of mystic caves and prehistoric things, of mineral springs and geysers, of old mining camps and wide ranges; land where rivers lose themselves and lakes recede. Here Peter Ogden, of the Hudson Bay Company, discovered, in eighteen twenty-fiv- e, what is the second largest river in this region, three hundred miles long, named later by General Fremont in honor of Alexander von Humboldt, naturalist and explorer, who had visited the southwest early in the nine- - winding Truckee comes tumbling down from Lake Tahoe into Lake Pyramid. Let him stop here who hears of Reno only as a place where unhap H py bonds are cut. Nearby is N Virginia City, site of the famed Comstock Lode, where, in times gone by, seven hundred million dollars in gold and silver were mined, the greatest gold and silver mine the world has seen, the greatest perhaps it will ever see. Ask Fannie Hazlitt, at Reno, She came now ninety-thre- e. in the sixties. She knew this country' when it was in the heyday of its prosperity. She can tell about the long wagon trains that came from Sacramento, loaded with supplies. Fannie Hazlitt doesnt think men are as strong as they used to be. But Comstock is no more. Virginia is a dead city. Some day the tunnels and shafts may cave in, when it will be a city in ruins. Or it may take on new life, make another strike. Who knows? Truckee is next. Many of the Far North scenes in the movies are taken right here. AMERICAS SWITZERLAND And now Lake Tahoe, hundred feet above the level of the sea,, twenty-thre- e miles by thirteen wide, and eighteen hundred feet deep. Lake Tahoe, where California and Nevada meet; like a crystal in a cluster of snowcapped peaks, towering, one eleven thousand feet; her shores fringed with pine Mark Twain: This is nature in all her pristine glory. Tahoe will ever be the emerald mountain lake, unique in color, in lure, her symbol a mighty cross of snow. Tahoe is the Indian name for big water. is in among the Tahoe Tavern pines. In basket-weavin- g she can tell a tale that runs back through long centuries. Her work is proof there is true art in America, aboriginal, indigenous. an old woman of the Washoe tribe, is said to be the only weaver of Indian baskets with inherent knowledge of perspective and relative values. She carries out faithfully the laws and traditions of her tribe, never creating a duplicate. Obtaining her materials from the limbs, bark and roots of trees, she uses her fingernails and teeth to shred them into fine strands. six-ty-t- wo B'' irre-sistab- Dat-So-La-L-ee Dat-So-La-Le- le ... II 1 I f SHOWING THE GROWTH OF SGfJTHl make one rare or ceremonial basket. In her art one sees her struggle after the beautiful as she sees it. Form and symmetry are her sculptures, utility her religion, ornamentation her paintings, and her symbols and designs record the legends of her tribe. factqjyized Miller & Lux would have done it. Now the journey may continue to San Francisco, or southward, with Mt. Whitney to the East, through the San Joaquin Valley and across the mountains, till Los Angeles is reached, that city of a million and more which has grown faster than New York and Chicago combined. Here lies Californias great winter resort. AMONG THE GIANTS. IN THE GORGES. From Lake Tahoe one may go over Yosemite Valley Tioga Highway-t- o and the Big Trees; to Merced and Fresno, in the San Joaquin Valley, where the old Miller & Lux ranch, some one hundred thousand acres, is being split up into small farms. Miller was a cattle king, and his ranch an empire in miniature. If farming could Or one may go the Sacramento through long snowsheds, catching here and there a glimpse of stately pine and spruce and fir, or the silvery thread of a stream ; over the summit of the Sierras, down the great slope; then past Dutch Flat and Gold Run, rich in legend from the gold rush of forty-ninwhen custom was the only An old knife smoothes them into regularity. Many moons are needed to day-gee-co- op, be e, e, |