First, a little story about the photograph. I had never seen these kinds of postcards of Fruit Growers. I had spent a lot of time at Fruit Growers headquarters in Sherman Oaks going through their archives. They did not have this in their collection, nor was there any documentation about the postcards being manufactured. As it turns out, an individual in Australia has taken old photographs of locomotives and produces postcards, which I purchased this on Ebay.
Fruit Growers had two Shay locomotives on the Lassen Operation. The No. 5 was purchased in 1924 from the McCloud River Lumber Company. According to. railroad historian David F. Myrick, he indicates that the No.5 was no longer in service by 1949. Three years later, Fruit Growers would discontinue railroad logging.
Davis Cut near Johnstonville of the Fernley & Lassen Railroad, 1912
In the fall of 2006, a major event occurred that went largely unnoticed. The last segment of rails from the Fernley & Lassen Railroad from Susanville to Wendel were removed. The railroad had such a major impact on the region and its final passing was relegated to a mere footnote. The local press did not even make a note of it.
Rails piled up at the defunct Leavitt Station, November 24, 2006
The whole process of dismantling the line was done in segments. In 1970, the first segment to go was from Fernley to Flanigan. In 1955, the segment from Susanville to Westwood was shuttered, but not abandoned. That came in 1976, and then the rails were removed in 1981 as the conversion process of Rails to Trails.
For some time I have been corresponding with a former resident, who also happens to be a rail fan. Timing can be everything, and he just happened at the Westwood Depot on the last day it operated. So I am working on this story. However, not to leave anything to chance, if there is any one out there that may know something on this topic, I would like to hear from you.
Many years ago, I wrote a weekly historical column for the Lassen County Times. At that time, I contacted Eric Moody, who was researching Flanigan, and I asked him to write an article. He obliged and here it is.
Flanigan was to be the most important community in eastern and southern Honey Lake Valley, a major rail center, situated in the midst of a rich agricultural area, boasting hundreds, perhaps thousands of inhabitants.
At least that was the grandiose dream of Flanigan’s founders. In reality, the small town located five miles inside Nevada at the intersection of the Southern Pacific and Western Pacific tracks never boasted a population more than fifty and never became a center for much of anything.
The place did exist, though, for seventy years, 1909 to 1969, and its history isn’t as lacking in interest as its meager population would seem to indicate.
Flanigan first appeared in late 1909, when the Western Pacific Railroad built its main line through eastern Honey Lake Valley. By January of 1910 a Western Pacific station was in operation there. The station disappeared the next year, but in 1912-1913 the Southern Pacific built a branch line from Fernley, Nevada to Susanville and Westwood, and the new line passed that of the Western Pacific at Flanigan. Southern Pacific buildings were set up late in 1912, and the next year a station established.
With this, the time seemed ripe for promotion of the site. Two Oakland speculators, C.A. Ross and George Warnken, had a townsite laid out on land they owned just west of the Flanigan railroad intersection. Their projected community, taking the same name as the station, was to have thirty blocks with 900 lots, a school and a library.
Promotion of the new town began, with the principal “pitchman” being Paul Butler, a one-armed dynamo who had been hired by Ross and Warnken to be their agent at Flanigan. Scores of curious visitors were ushered around eastern Honey Lake Valley, and over 200 town lots were sold. By 1914 Flanigan boasted a post office, a general store, and a spacious forty room hotel—built and operated by Paul Butler, who confidently predicted that Flanigan was going to become a major rail center—another Roseville, or at least another Sparks.
Cabins on A Street, Flanigan, 1976–Christopher Moody
Unfortunately, Flanigan didn’t develop much more. Butler continued his promotional work into the mid-1920’s—even trying to drill for oil and developing a bog lime, or marl, deposit nearby, but even he finally gave up. In 1924 he sold his store to Orlando Gasperoni, then a Southern Pacific section foreman at Flanigan, and in 1926 the practically unused hotel was sold for its lumber and torn down.
Flanigan went on living, but its existence was quiet and relatively uneventful. There were some further attempts to drill for oil or gas and the marl deposit continued to be worked. The Bonham School (formerly located at the Bonham Ranch) opened its doors at Flanigan in 1929, and dances, which drew people from all over the area, were held in the school building. In 1934 Orlando Gasperoni sold the store to William and Gertrude Milne, who had come to Flanigan four years earlier when she had been hired to teach school.
The Milne Store, 1950s. Courtesy of Dorothy Carnahan.
It was not until the late 1950s that things at Flanigan really began to change—for the worse. In 1959 the Southern Pacific pulled out its section crews, and shortly after that the Western Pacific did the same. In 1961 the post office shut down. It had been located in the store, which had closed its doors in the middle 1950s.
Flanigan remained alive only because of the school, where a commuting teacher taught a handful of students, and Mrs. Milne’s continued residence at her home which was attached to the closed store.
The year 1969 saw the end of Flanigan. Early on the morning of January 2, while Mrs. Milne was away visiting at the Fish Springs Ranch, the store with her attached home, burned to the ground. And that summer the school, the last one-room school in Washoe County, was closed because of a lack of students. Mrs. Milne moved to Sutcliffe over at Pyramid Lake.
Today, there is not much to Flanigan to tell visitors that it was once the “coming city”, the projected metropolis of eastern Honey Lake Valley.
Stacy was a small community in the eastern Honey Lake Valley located between Amedee and the Nevada Stateline. It came into existence when the Fernley & Lassen Railroad was constructed through there in 1912. There were high hopes in the region with the completion of the Standish Water Company’s pumping plant on Honey Lake. It was the company’s intent to irrigate some 4,000 acres for sugar beet production. Its a complicated story.
Stacy Depot. The town was named for Stacy Yoakum Spoon, wife of Grover Franklin Spoon, one of the town’s developers and its first postmaster.
This is another depot, where I have not been able to locate much information. There was a nearby stock corral for loading sheep. In 1940, there was siding that could handle 113 cars.
McGiffert loader, Camp 28, Red River Lumber Company, 1924—R.S. Pershing
With the advent of railroad logging required the development of supporting equipment. In this particular case, today, a machine to load logs onto flat bed rail cars. Some consider the McGiffert Loader the “Cadallic ” of loaders, which many in the woods just referred to the machine as a “Jammer.” The McGiffert was invented by John R. McGiffert in the early 1900s , and were manufactured by the Clyde Iron Works of Duluth, Minnesota.
The McGiffert while efficient in getting the job done, did not look like much. It had an elevated platform for the boiler and spools. What is interesting it was self propelled wherein its chain-driven axles moved it along the rails. As the McGiffert straddled the tracks, a large, somewhat awkward looking machine. The boiler and spools were mounted on a platform that was elevated over the tracks. The entire machine sat on legs that rested on the ground on either side of the tracks. The McGiffert was self-propelled, as it had a chain-driven drive axles that moved the machine along the rails. The empty log cars were shoved underneath the loader. The log cars would then be rolled through the loader, with logs loaded onto the cars by a boom off of one side of the loader.
McGiffert loader at Camp 28, Red River Lumber Company, 1924–R.S. Pershing
Fruit Growers Supply Company was still using McGifferts into the 1940s on the Susanville Operation, and may have until 1952 when it discontinued railroad logging.
In August of 1911, fourteen men in the Standish area gathered to form the Standish Promotion Bureau. It was a very short lived organization. Their one and only goal was to convince the Southern Pacific officials to have their Fernely & Lassen Branch line be built through Standish. This was an uphill battle since the railroad line had already been surveyed to the north of Standish. The bureau had a slate of officers towit: E.F. Koken, President; B.F. Gibson, Vice President; E.H. Doyle, Treasurer and J.H. Elledge, Treasurer.
Things did not go well and in the spring of 1912, things unraveled. Instead of convincing railroad officials to change their mind, Gibson suggested to the bureau that they should move Standish to his ranch where the rail line would be built. Needless to say it was not a pleasant meeting. Gibson resigned. Add insult to injury, when word emerged that Gibson was working with Los Angeles promoter, B.E. Jackson on a proposed townsite on the Gibson property, when the bureau organized. There was no reason to continue with their mission, the bureau disbanded.
In 1925, Great Western Power Company announced its plans to enlarge Lake Almanor. The raising of the dam would flood a large portion of Chester Flats, thus flooding a number of roads, and also Red River Lumber Company logging railroad network. Controversy arose when Great Western informed the Plumas County Board of Supervisors that the road across Chester Flats would be re-routed to follow the high water contour. The residents of Chester and Westwood were furious, for such a proposal would add an additional seven miles between the two communities. They wanted a causeway in which the current route would remain the same. Great Western balked at the idea. After all, a causeway would cost Great Western $220,00, while to re-route the road would only cost $50,000. To make a long story short the opponents bypassed the Plumas County Board of Supervisors and had the State Highway Department intervene. In 1926, an agreement was made between the State and Great Western that a causeway would be constructed.
Sunflower demonstration on the A.F. Babcock Ranch, Bieber, 1923
During the 1920s, the Lassen Farm Bureau published weekly all the agricultural news of the county. All the rural communities had their own “Farm Center,” that held regular meetings to discuss a wide variety of topics. M.D. Collins who was the farm advisor then, kept very busy. Here are two items, that some may find of interest.
May 1926 – J.H. McClure, assistant freight and passenger agent for the Southern Pacific with offices in Reno, spent two days in Lassen County this week. Mr. McClure states they are now giving Lassen County service in freight that has never been excelled. Freight leaving Reno in the evening arrives in Susanville the next morning. Mr. McClure states that an iced car is leaving Susanville twice a week to carry Lassen County products to the lower country markets. The service is being pushed to the highest possible degree of efficiency and the farmers will be able this season to ship out their products under better conditions than of former years. The rate on potatoes was reduced last fall.
May 1926 – Jack Menser, Arthur Kenyon and Peter Gerig, committeemen for the Big Valley flour mill, report that the money is being paid quite satisfactorily and it is hoped the larger portion will be collected in the near future. Alfred Jacks is ready to make the mill purchase as soon as the money is available.
August 1926 – The Big Valley flour committee has collected $2,450 of the $2,500 required to get the mill. The mill is being ordered by Alfred Jacks who is constructing the new building in which to house the machinery. Big Valley will have another flour mill for operation this fall.
September 1926 – The Red River Lumber Company has built a new hay barn near the dairy buildings which has a capacity of 1000 tons of hay. The barn is practically full of hay at the present time. Other improvements have been made around the dairy barns and the market milk station. New corrals for the dairy cows and feed racks are being installed.
In the spring of 1913, the mighty iron horse finally arrived in Susanville and the community rejoiced. It was a long time coming, ever since the early 1880s they had done all they could to attract a railroad, citing its untapped timber resources as an incentive. For awhile there was a glimmer of hope that the NCO Railroad would extends its line to Susanville on its journey north to Oregon. That was shattered when the railroad in 1887 decided to bypass Susanville and build its line along the east side of the Honey Lake Valley.
With the arrival of the Fernley & Lassen Railroad, in 1913, the residents wondered what kind of depot they would have. As far as the Southern Pacific, owners of the line, were concerned it would be a modest structure, since in their opinion, Susanville was a small community that had no industry. A wooden 26 foot by 62 foot depot was built, being part passenger depot and part frieght shed. It opened to the public on September 14, 1913 with C.B. Morton’s the first depot agent.
P.S. For those who want to know, yesterday the cast came off and pins removed, too. It will take time to fully function again, but its a start in the right direction. Thank you Dr. Mark for everything and for most pleasant and memorable office visit yesterday.
