Anniversaries manage to find their way.

This year sees an interesting one for an ancestor of mine. One that marks a moment that changed his life and set in motion a career of 51 years, a family in northern Nevada and a life long passion for this writer.

Christopher Cameron Walker was my great-grandfather. He was born in the mining town of Eureka, Nevada on October 7, 1881. He was the firstborn child of Jonathan and Mary Walker. They were married in November the year before in nearby Mineral Hill, another mining camp where they both worked supporting the community. He was a saloon keeper; she was a house keeper in a boarding house. Not long after Chris was born, Jonathan and Mary moved to another booming mining camp named Safford. There Jonathan built one of the few structures and operated it as the Pioneer Saloon. Eventually, it became more of a general store.

As with many mining camps in Nevada, once the silver ore played out, the community moved on to other camps where things were promising. The Walker family grew, even as the business continued during lean times. Eventually, things had to change. So it was that in 1893, Jonathan took his eldest son aside and broke the bad news to him. At the age of 12, it was time for Chris to make his own way in the world. Jonathan could no longer afford to support him.

Now, at that time in central Nevada, there was not much in the way of opportunities for an uneducated young man. An apprenticeship was rare as most of the trades tended to be in bigger cities. Mining was limited to the places where ore was paying enough to cover costs and make a profit. Ranching was the other going concern as folks had livestock that needed attending.

Along the Central Pacific Railroad in that part of Nevada was the town of Palisade. From here, freight went to various mining camps. At first a toll road ran south and later came the narrow gauge Eureka and Palisade Railroad, running through the Pine Valley to Eureka, the county seat. The Pine Valley was so named because of Pine Creek that flows into the Humboldt River at Palisade. With water in the creek year round, the land was good for ranching with plenty of grasses for feed.

And here it was that Chris went to work as a vaquero. For the next 6 years, life was lived on the back of a horse working at a series of ranches. And from what Chris described, it was pretty much the same, day in and day out. He had the same slouch hat, the same pants, shirt, jacket and boots. If he was lucky, he may have had an extra shirt to wear when it got cold.

About the only thing of note was a yearly round-up of wild horses to be driven to the railroad for shipment east. A buyer would pay so much a head and the ranch owner would count his profit on the sale. The price differed from year to year, depending on the need. Sometimes, horses were sold for work. Others, just for meat and other materials processed.

The way Chris described it, the hired hands would herd horses into a box canyon from out on the ranch. Once that was done, the gathered animals would be driven to the railroad in either Palisade or Carlin. Often, such a drive was a multi day trip there and back again.

It wasn’t all dull on the drives. For entertainment, the hands would put up a pot of six-bits or so, to be won by the man who could ride a wild horse. Chris had a knack for riding and he said he could usually stay on. He claimed only to have been thrown from a horse once, when it was scared and reared up unexpectedly. The real trick wasn’t riding he said. It was saddling the wild horse, and that wasn’t part of the plan to win the pot. But it did make for amusement.

In the winter of 1899, there was a Mardi Gras dance to be held in Eureka. Now as a young man on the range, Chris was sweet on a particular girl he had met. Rumor had it that she was going to the dance as well. There was a whole group coming from out in the Pine Valley who planned to ride the train into town.

As the story is told, Chris had a miserable time at the dance. While he may have been sweet on the girl, she wanted nothing to do with him. In fact, she went out of her way to avoid him all night. After the dance, when it came time for the train to go back to Palisade, Chris didn’t want to ride with the rest of the group. He decided instead to ride with the crew of the train’s locomotive.

Remembering the night years later, Chris told of how he decided right then and there, that the life of railroading was for him. He tried to go to work for the Southern Pacific soon after and was turned away as being too young at 18 years of age. Instead, I believe he found work with the narrow gauge Eureka and Palisade that summer and gained experience as well as growing.

He hired out as a steam locomotive fireman in December of 1900, in Wadsworth, Nevada. His job took him over the original route of the transcontinental railroad on a line that hadn’t been greatly improved. Ties in the alkali dirt for ballast on light rail that had come around Cape Horn. He must have been good at the job, for he was promoted to engineer in 1906. He retired in 1951, being number one in seniority on the SP’s Salt Lake Division, running the diesel-powered Streamliner City of San Francisco; what was considered one of the finest passenger trains on the railroad.

He claimed never to have ridden a horse after he started his railroad career. Years later, after he retired, his grand children wanted him to go with them to see the rodeo in Reno. He declined. telling them that he “didn’t need to see the rodeo. He had already lived it”.

Had it not been for the Mardi Gras dance in Eureka and the young girl who spurned his interest, he might never have ridden in the cab of that narrow gauge steam locomotive and taken up railroading as a career. Now 120 years later, I will hoist a glass in his memory and toast his good fortune on Fat Tuesday.

I for one am glad he did!

Once upon time, Union Pacific travelers used the Overland route to reach Denver from either the east or west. Their partners in doing so included the Southern Pacific from San Francisco as well as the Chicago and Northwestern from Chicago.

At the peak of rail travel, UP offered service to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. It’s Streamliner trains were some of the finest with service standards right down to the placement of a chilled glass for a passenger’s favored beverage.

While my trip this week follows part of the Overland route from Emeryville to Salt Lake City, it still harkens back to days like above, when Colorado was calling to the travelers.

The Denver and Rio Grande Western has a wonderful history. Crossing Colorado, Utah and New Mexico, it managed to overcome adversity and be the lifeline to many communities in the days when roads were few and trains were the only really reliable way to go from place to place.

The Rio Grande used a slogan in marketing the railroad which really did describe what it did best. “Through the Rockies, Not Around Them.” And yes, it was a dig at competition. The mighty Santa Fe and it’s Chief took the southern route west. The fabled Union Pacific went over Sherman Hill to the north through Wyoming on it’s way to Salt Lake City. The Rio Grande went direct through the Rockies. But with the construction of the Moffat Tunnel, and opening in 1928, it shortened the route west between Denver and Salt Lake City.

At 6.2 miles long, it was an engineering marvel. A smaller tunnel next to the railroad tunnel carries water, as part of the supply for Denver. Previously, trains crossed the area high on the mountain in a slow and laborious route. This new route was a key element when the Rio Grande joined forces with the Western Pacific and the Burlington Route to run passenger trains between Chicago and San Francisco. The 1939 Exposition Flyer and the 1949 California Zephyr proved popular with travelers offering the best scenery along the route.

I’ve ridden through the Moffat Tunnel twice; once east and once west, back in the fall of 1980 on my vacation to Denver. Aboard the Rio Grande Zephyr, it was a throwback to earlier times in the streamliner era. The Rio Grande had decided against joining Amtrak in 1971 and continued to operate their own segment of the California Zephyr between 1970 and 1983. Using the same passenger cars and offering much the same service as it had years before, the train operated on a tri-weekly trip between Denver and Salt Lake City, with Wednesday’s being the day the train was serviced in Denver. My trip was part of a larger adventure, but I know many for whom the Rio Grande Zephyr was the destination, rather than the mode of transport.

As I head east again this week, I will head back some 39 years to my first ride. Indeed, “Through the Rockies, not Around Them.”

In a little more than a week, I will be riding with a small group of folks on a private railroad car heading from Emeryville to Denver and back again.. As things go, this isn’t a new experience. I have made many a trip aboard private railroad cars including a couple of long distance trips of many days.

What sets this one apart is that I haven’t ridden a train east of Sparks, Nevada by rail over the Southern Pacific”s Salt Lake Division since October of 1980. As then, the destination in 2019 is Denver, Colorado.

Now before this particular trip, I had been lucky enough to have ridden to Reno a number of times by train including a trip before Amtrak in 1963. But this trip would be different. For the first time, I would be riding the same rails that my great grandfather had worked over between Sparks and Carlin. I was keyed up from the excitement that night. I chatted with some of the train crew members who worked for the SP then. Listening in on my train radio, I could hear discussions between the train and the dispatcher as we sped east. The stop the train made in Carlin to change crews was a quick one. Headlights from automobiles illuminated the trackside for those moments as the San Francisco Zephyr made it’s short stop there. It was a visit back in time, even if a brief one.

I was lucky enough to have ridden for a short ride around the Spark’s yard at the age of 3. My great grandfather arranged with some friends to take me into the cab of a locomotive being moved about one afternoon. It was indeed memorable and somewhere, I have a photograph taken at the ancestral home at 401 Sixth Street in Sparks with my father and great grandfather after the ride. I was all smiles. (And yes, it rubbed off big time, leading to a life long passion for railroading.)

My father used to ride on occasion with his grandfather on trips to Carlin. They would stay with my grandfather’s brother Joseph, who was also a conductor with the Southern Pacific. My father recalled trips aboard both diesel and steam locomotives, including the famed Cab-Forwards. In those years, Chris Walker had enough seniority that he was strictly working passenger trains. I have some train register books from the post war era, and his name is listed among the engineers who signed in, on a regular basis.

While I may not have the same anticipation today as I did back in October of 1980 for the ride over those rails between Sparks and Carlin, I will be taken back to many years ago of family history.

Special, indeed…

When I was growing up, one of the greatest adventures we could have was to go out for the day for a ride in the car with my mother’s dad. Always some place different, always some thing we hadn’t done before.

And of course, whenever we would ask where we were headed that day, he would always tell us, “the car knows where it’s going.” For a young child, the promise of an unknown adventure was just the thing. Travel down a new road could (and usually did) offer all kinds of rewards. A new place for lunch, a stop at a roadside fruit stand, even ice cream! There where times when I think he was as amused by those days out as we were.

There were all kinds of adventures. A stop at a trout farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains was one occasion. Sure, it was exciting, but when that six-year old puts a hook and a line into the water of a pond, only to be rewarded with a trout on the line moments later, it was pretty neat! That first fishing trip lead to other adventures, such as the casting ponds in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and lunch at the Angler’s Lodge, as he proudly showed off his grandson’s to friends. Later on, some of us even accompanied him on long fishing weekend trips up to Fall River Mills in Shasta County. The Golden Gate Casting and Angling Club had arranged the use of a section of prime trout fishing along the Fall River. Whether trolling from a rowboat or casting from shore, adventure was always there.

One afternoon in particular always comes to mind from those years. We were fishing from a road bridge as the sun set. Now, my grandfather was very proud of his hand tied flies used for fishing. Works of art, they truly were. One in particular he was very proud of was a large back ant. Using that ant, he had hooked into a good sized trout and was giving it all the fight it could handle. At 14 inches, the trout was not giving up easily. He must have spent a good 20 minutes letting the fish run and reeling it back in. It was a moment for the ages. Until the line broke and the trout went free.

I don’t recall my grandfather as an angry man on many occasions. You could annoy him, as kids are want to do, but for the most part, he didn’t display anger often. I recall a few choice words being said, and that we grandchildren were very quiet on the ride back to town. Looking back, it may have been he was angrier about loosing the black ant fly than he was losing the fish.

As we grew older, he discovered another passion. Wine. With a basement at the home in Seacliff that never varied in temperature, it was the idea wine cellar. With California wines coming into their own, he was able to explore vintages by sampling on various trips about Northern California.

A couple of those are notable. The first one was a trip to a railroad museum, east of Fairfield, on State Route 12. We made the trip from Walnut Creek to Fairfield in a little more than 45 minutes, pulling off on eastbound Interstate 80 onto West Texas Street. And almost as soon as we made that turn, we made another sharp turn into a driveway of a house. Now, I had no idea where this detour was taking us, but he certainly did. We ended up downstairs at the house as he tasted the wine. And we left with several gallon jugs of good red wine. Years later, as a volunteer at the same railroad museum. I enjoyed more than a few glasses of the same jug red wine; the product of the Cadenasso Winery in Fairfield. Closed since 1982, it was good enough for my grandfather that first trip and friends, years later.

Another trip took us along the Sacramento River through the Delta, from Walnut Creek. It was a warm summer day when we found ourselves in Clarksburg at another home. This time, it was a tasting room in a converted garage. At the Bogle Vineyards. And as I recall, there were more than a few bottles purchased to make the trip back to San Francisco, with him.

He passed away in November of 1978. And while I didn’t taste a great deal of wine while he was alive, I did pay attention to lessons at the dinner table about what folks were about to enjoy. When it came time to clean out the house in Seacliff, the wine cellar was one of the last parts of the house to be addressed. My grandmother, aunt and mother decided to sell the collected wines together to someone they had known in the area for a number of years. In fact, my mother and aunt had grown up with him. The only proviso was that my mother would be allowed to keep a case of wine from the collection for herself. Being her fathers daughter, she chose well. Almost too well, as the gentleman making the purchase began to object to her choices. “She was taking the best wines!” Of course she was, and informed him that if he didn’t keep quiet, she would take it all.

I can attest that she did pick some of the best wines. We had a selection of them on my 21st birthday, including a stunning Chateau d’Yquem. A trip to Germany in 2001, saw us visit and sample at his favorite German winery, Schloss Johanisberg. We had another for my 50th birthday and most recently for my 60th, an absolutely amazing 1966 Chateau Margaux. It was as close to perfection in a glass as I am ever likely to enjoy. He would be greatly pleased that 46 years later, it was enjoyed as he would have liked to have done when he laid it down.

Recently, I was taken back to that afternoon at Clarksburg many years ago. Buying wine for an upcoming train trip, I picked out four bottles of Bogle’s Old Vine Zinfandel to enjoy. It may not be the equivalent of that 1966 Margaux, but I will indeed raise a glass with a smile to his memory when we open a bottle ad go back to that afternoon when the car knew where we were going…