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Motoring in the High Sierras 213
This country is in striking contrast to no other means of livelihood in these rocky
that which has been left behind. The Sierra gorges, and the settlements were
fertile valleys and well-watered fields of consequently abandoned to the mercies
the western base of the mountains are replaced
of winter storms and spring floods. All
on the east by a succession of bar­
that remains of Silver Mountain, once a
ren, rocky arroyos, alkaline wastes, and prosperous town of forty saloons and six
dry plains covered with the pungent sagebrush.
The descent into this desert country
is more abrupt than the long, sweeping
thousand people, is the stone jail with its
iron-barred windows. The forty saloons
undoubtedly accounted for the solid construction
of this building. slope that has just been ascended, and
To an inquiry
it is not long before the cool mountain as to the present population of a one-time
heights are left behind and the odor of hot
sage begins to fill one's nostrils. Just before
" city" that still lingers in a dejected state,
the '' oldest inhabitant'' replied in a drawl:
emerging onto the desert there is a "Wal, I reckon it's about sixty-five or
delightful, cool meadow known as Leavitt's
sixty-seven; I ain't quite sure which."
Meadow which affords an ideal From Reno the ascent to that wonderful
resting-place. The Upper Walker River, gem of all Sierra lakes, Tahoe, is a matter
which meanders through its soft green of a few hours over a well-travelled route.
turf, dotted here and there with groves of The new State road that leads for twentyfive
miles around the western shore offers
cottonwoods, affords ample sport for the
disciples of Izaak Walton. At a point just views over this magnificent body of prussian-blue
water that are unrivalled even by
below the meadow the road forks. The
branch to the south leads past Mono the Axenstrasse and Lake Lucerne, or the
Lake, down through the Owens River more subdued beauty of the Italian lakes.
Valley and Death Valley to join the The road at times follows the very shore
Santa Fe trail. The branch to the north of the lake, enabling the traveller to peer
follows through the canyon of the Walker down through the transparent depths. At
River and, hugging close under the massive times sheer rock faces descend to the
wall of the Sierras, joins the great Lincoln water's edge and the road circles upward
Highway at Reno.
along ledges cut from the solid granite.
The canyons that cut through the eastern
flank of the mountain bear mute evi­
face of a cliff five hundred feet above
At one point the road-bed traverses the
dence of one of the results of the rejection Tahoe's surface and presents an outlook
in 1873 of silver as a monetary standard. over an island-studded inlet strongly reminiscent
of its Italian sister Lake Maggiore.
This region was formerly settled by thriving
silver-mining towns, whose relative degree
of importance used to be judged by Mount Tallac, a wide and well-graded
Passing under the snow-capped mass of
the number of saloons they boasted; but route leads down beside the rushing torrent
of the American River, out, through
the Demonetization Act of 1873 reduced
the value of silver to such an extent that the foot-hills, to the well-oiled boulevards
the mines were shut down. There were of the Sacramento Valley.