Walt Wiley was a feature writer for the Sacramento Bee and focused interesting stories about Northern California. Some readers may recall I highlighted an article of his last November, Westwood, A Tough Old Town. The following appeared in the Bee on October 13, 1973, when Hallelujah Junction was to no longer be.
“Hallelujah Junction was never much of a town; it never even got its own post office. But it was right there on every road map and aircraft navigation chart. Now Hallelujah Junction is going to be obliterated to make way for a freeway.
“For forty years it was a popular stop some 30 miles north of Reno, Nev at the intersection of Highways 395 and 70. Until last month, Hallelujah Junction was a haphazardly-arranged community of a few houses, a bar, motel, restaurant, service station and even a couple of aircraft hangars and an abandoned stretch of Highway 70 that made up. ‘Hallelujah International Airport.’
“Now the State of California is selling the buildings after having bought the land to build a highway interchange next year when 395 is widened into a four-lane freeway between Hallelujah and the Nevada State Line, some eight miles to the south.
“I’ve still got 12 acres of the land left across the highway. When they’re through I guess I’ll try to build something there,” said Charles Armstrong, Hallelujah Junction’s owner for the last two years.
“They bought the land because they wanted the access to it, and if I build anything new, I’ll have to until they’re through with the new highway so I can find out how much success I have on the land I have left,” said Armstrong. He is living in nearby Graeagle, Plumas County, waiting for the dust to settle from the construction.
“Harold Stoy, who sold the town to Armstrong, now lives some 15 miles north of Hallelujah at Doyle. Stoy’s father, Orville, founded the community in 1932, homesteading 80 acres, 68 of which now have been consumed by the highway builders. “It started out as a tiny gas station, and sort of grew from that as more and more people started traveling through, said Stoy, 58. “The only reason I sold the place is that it just got too busy for me. There was so much business it was wearing me out.”
“The name, he said, attracted all sorts of visitors. Pilots would land on the bumpy airstrip out of curiosity, and after a group from Mexico flew in one day a few years back, he deccided to call the strip ‘Hallelujah International.
“Ministers would occasionally stop to complain that a place with such a scriptual name was a disappointment because it had a bar but no church. Tourists would stop to mail postcards, only to find that there was no post office. “I never did get around to getting a post office there; I was always too busy running the business,” Stoy said.
“He said the place was named Hallelujah 80 years before his father homesteaded there. A group of emigrants shouted the word on the spot after hearing mountain man James P. Beckwourth describe the mountain pass just to the west—5,212-foot—Beckwourth Pass—as the lowest and easiest over the Sierra.”
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