The Ghosts of Lake Tahoe
(The Stuff of Legends)
Patrick Betson
Book’s Front Cover
Lake Tahoe Bierstadt, Albert (1830-1902)
Private Collection/Photo © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Art Library.
Copyright © 2013 Patrick Betson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0615653219
ISBN-13: 9780615653211
Dedication and Thanks
This book is dedicated to my wonderful mother Jean Betson, who has always had faith.
It is also dedicated to the memory of Eveline Jacobs. It is the Lord’s pleasure to have taken her home but she will be sadly missed down here.
I thank the townspeople of Tahoe City who (once told) warmed up to the possibility of the book.
I thank all the various galleries, museums, historical societies, artists and individuals who have granted permission for some outstanding pieces of art and photographs to be reproduced here.
I thank Sue Twitchen for the initial proof reading.
I also thank my publisher Create Space, we got there in the end.
It would be nice to see a memorial to Hank Monk one day. If he was remembered by the greatest man of American literature, should we, the people of Tahoe and Northern Nevada, not remember him too? May I suggest a metal sculpture of a stagecoach in full flight on top of Spooner Summit?
I thank God for this humbling experience to try to do honor to a little bit of Tahoe’s vibrant past.
Pat Betson
A word about the artwork and
photographs in the book
Frank McCarthy paintings are some of the most stirring scenes of the Old West on canvas. His paintings are usually fluid moments of high tension set within dramatic scenery. His “Pony Express” could have been painted for the story of “Solid Gold,” the story of Tahoe’s local Pony Express rider Bob Haslam.
Mian Situ is a Chinese-American artist who is still very much alive. His impressive painting “the powder monkeys - Cape Horn - 1865,” is a masterful depiction of what the Chinese railroad workers of the Central Pacific faced, while building the railroad through the impenetrable Sierra Nevada. The painting is a testimony not only to what they achieved but also how they achieved it. Jung Lo is one of those heroes.
Albert Bierstadt was one of the premiere landscape painters of the nineteenth century. His painting of Lake Tahoe dates from the 1860s and is featured on the front cover. It captures a sunny winter’s day from the water’s edge at Tahoe City and is perhaps the first ever oil painting of the lake.
Colin Bogle is a brilliant painter of natural history, his painting of the bald eagle (Soaring Spirit) sets one of the scenes for “Three-Toed Island.”
Award winning photographers Jean-Louis Klein and Marie Luce Hubert are responsible for the great shot of the Grizzly bear, which is so good it is reproduced for the back cover and again in the middle of the book.
A few years back, a talented artist by the name of Michael Brent Malley did some pen-and-ink sketches for five of my stories. His skill was bound to be recognized by someone, I am just glad I got to him first. Michael went on to work for Disney; my apologies to him for being a little tardy in getting these stories finished.
Sandy Pavel is responsible for the shot of Fannette Island at Emerald Bay. She is as passionate about Tahoe, as anyone I have met. This book is written for people like Sandy who share that passion.
Finally, but not least, featured in the center of the book, is a painting of the outlet of Lake Tahoe into the Truckee river. Talented local artist Keith Brown painted this picture from a rare photograph taken before the turn of the twentieth century, I am proud to say it appears here for the very first time.
At the back of the book you will find a few historical photographs pertinent to some of these stories.
“Go west young man, and grow up with the country.”
Horace Greeley 1851
The Ghosts of Lake Tahoe
(The Stuff of Legends)
Introduction
It has been said that you should compliment a lady of average looks on her beauty and a beautiful lady on her depth of character. The trouble with Lake Tahoe is that she is always complimented on her beauty but hardly ever on her character. These dozen stories will introduce you to some of the characters and heroes of Tahoe’s early days, plus one or two of more recent times. Some of them knew Lake Tahoe not long after she was first settled. These were times of the old west, when nothing was faster than a horse, or a man on skis.
On a warm August day in 1876, in the beautiful lakeside hamlet of Glenbrook, halfway down on Tahoe’s eastern shore, two men watched as the iron hull of the Steamer Ship Meteor, prepared to launch. One of the men was a Carson City newspaper reporter and the other a stagecoach driver. The two men were friends but disagreed as to the buoyancy of a hull made of iron.
“She’ll not float!” said the reporter.
“I’ll wager a bottle of whiskey she does and she’ll serve our lake just fine!”
These prophetic words were uttered by one of the most colorful characters in Tahoe folklore, the stagecoach driver Hank Monk. His companion at Glenbrook on that summer day was the news reporter, author, and historian Sam Davis. Sam Davis was the inspiration behind the story “The Hole in the Lake.” This story is of my own telling. In truth, I had never read Sam’s original story The Mystery of the Savage Sump until just recently, but I have been relating this marvelous tale for more than thirty years. It’s too good to be left out, so I hope I do Sam honor by relating my own version.
Noisily the iron hull rushed down the wooden slipway toward a very placid lake. Sam managed a shout to accept Monk’s wager. “OK, you’re on!”
As the iron hull hit the lake, she disappeared behind a gush of water. For a moment it looked like Sam had won the bet; it seemed she had gone directly to the bottom. Then suddenly she popped up above the spray, and as the displaced water returned to rest, there she floated as peaceful as the day. Sam begrudgingly looked at the weather-beaten face of his old friend. Monk nodded approvingly. “Don’t she look purty?”
Sam knew Monk well enough to know that the question was rhetorical and the stagecoach driver was taking pleasure in having won the wager.
“You’ll get your whiskey, you Greeley-buffeting old soak!”
The experience of Horace Greeley’s buffeting at the hands of Hank Monk is related in “Remembering the Rough Ride of the Tribune.” This story was well known during the latter half of the nineteenth century, it has been long since neglected, so here I try to tell it afresh. Again, I hope I do Hank Monk and even Horace Greeley justice.
The friends of that summer’s day in 1876, Sam Davis and Hank Monk, are both buried in Carson City’s Lone Mountain Cemetery. After sixty years of faithful service, the SS Meteor was purposely sunk in 1939, and it now rests on the bottom of the lake in several hundred feet of water. For years she towed cut timber from the south and west shores of the lake to the saw mills of the Carson Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company at Glenbrook. After the timber-cutting years, she served as a mail delivery ship and passenger cruiser and outlived both Davis and Monk. Her sister ship, the Steamer Ship Tahoe launched in 1896, was sunk in 1940, a year after the SS Meteor. The SS Tahoe lies just off of Glenbrook Bay in about four hundred feet of water.
Captain Dick Barter (featured in Three-Toed Island) is also buried somewhere in the depths of Lake Tahoe. Pony Bob Haslam (Solid Gold) is buried in Chicago. Mark Twain (The Immortal Faces Death) is buried in Elmira, New York. Our bad man Jim Stewart (The Dreaded Evening Drink) is buried in Tahoe City’s Trails End Cemetery. The final resting place of Martin Lowe (From Disaster to Triumph) is unknown. Snowsho
e Thompson (Sesquicentennial) is buried in Genoa’s Cemetery. Jung Lo the Chinese railroad worker (Jung Lo) never existed, but thousands just like him did. A few of them fell to their deaths or were buried in avalanches and rock slides, never to be recovered. Col Claire and William Meeker still live in our imagination. The chef and lady friend (Mutiny at the Inn) are buried in Switzerland (but not together,) and the waiter is buried in Glendale, California. Alex Cushing (In the Halls of Zeus) died in Newport, Rhode Island, in 2006. Old Ben (The End of an Era) does not lay at rest but still flies above us all.
For a moment, I am raising the others from their resting places, and we will know them again briefly. The characters, heroes, and villains of these stories are mostly men, but the true star of this book is the beautiful lady whom these men either came to visit, or came to call home. She is a beauty, but Tahoe really does deserve more than just your wolf whistle!
First and foremost, this is a book of twelve short stories and not a history book, but some background will (I hope) help the reader enjoy the stories even more. Therefore, every story has its own historical background with postscripts.
Here, then, are The Ghosts of Lake Tahoe!
“I know a man who went there to die but he made a failure of it!”
Mark Twain, 1872
Table of Contents
Solid Gold, 1860
The End of an Era, 1862
The Immortal Faces Death, 1863
Jung Lo, 1866
The Hole in the Lake, 1869
Three Toed Island, 1870
Artwork and Photographs
The Dreaded Evening Drink, 1872
Remembering the Rough Ride of the Tribune 1877 (Hank and Horace 1859)
From Disaster to Triumph, 1906
Mutiny at the Inn, 1937
In the Halls of Zeus, 1955
Sesquicentennial, 1856 – 2006
Historical Photographs
Backgrounds, Postscripts, Ironies, and Controversies
It was a blustery early June night in 1860. Outside the forge, the wind slapped the trees as the dark clouds rushed overhead. Despite the lateness of the year, wintry weather was obstinately hanging on, but the pine pollen, already thick in the air, indicated that summer was being held back against its will.
Inside the forge, the stranger watched as the blacksmith used the long tongs to grab a crucible from the furnace. The smithy poured the molten metal over a crudely shaped rock inside a tin can.
“Before the gold completely cools we’ll pull the rock out, so it won’t stick unevenly. Then you’ll have one cheap golden nugget and one expensive tin can!” The smithy laughed at his own humor, but the stranger didn’t smile. “Mind you, your nugget won’t fool anyone who knows gold.”
“It’s only supposed to fool the masses,” quipped the man in response.
The tents and shacks of the Forty-Niners had long since disappeared. Towns had been planned, with Victorian houses, gardens, schools, banks, and merchant stores. It should have been a developer’s dream, except there were no new people. The excitement of the Gold Rush was over; the dream of statehood was a reality. Farmers were coming to California but were settling in the valleys. A large movement of prospectors was now headed east out of California to the silver mines of the Washoe Hills. No one was stopping in the foothills above the Sacramento valley, where the stranger had invested thousands of dollars. There was nothing to attract emigrants to stay. Maybe a rumor of a new gold discovery might help. And to start a rumor, you need a starting place.
A few days later, the stranger boarded the Lake Tahoe-bound stage at Hangtown on a bright summer’s morning. The plan was simple enough, but first he had to leave the immediate area, where he was known. Since the massacre of seventy-six men near Pyramid Lake to the north of the Com-stock silver mines, there were daily horror stories of Paiute Indian attacks along the Carson River. The fearful stranger did not want nor need to go beyond Lake Tahoe. Many silver miners would stop at the growing community on Tahoe’s south-east shore for rest and supplies, before heading up and over to the silver mines forty miles to the north east. The fake nugget had to make it east, but because of the Indian attacks the stage was often not running beyond Carson City.
The Pony Express was the only alternative to the stage. On its way east out of California, the Pony Express ran nearly two thousand miles from Sacramento to St. Joseph, in Missouri. Barely a hundred miles out of Sacramento, the Pony Express ran around the south shore of Lake Tahoe, and went up and over the eastern range of the Sierras. The Pony Express usually only carried letters and dispatches, at a cost of five dollars per ounce. It was not cheap but was considered good value, provided it got through.
Young lightweight riders covered an average distance of sixty to seventy miles apiece over four or five stations, with a change of pony at every station. Each station would keep an eye out for an approaching rider. At an interim station, a new mount would be waiting. The young rider would jump off and, without pausing, jump onto his new mount. Upon reaching his last station, the young rider would pass the service mochila to the waiting hands of a new rider. The new rider, already mounted, would take the mochila and fix it to his saddle and be into a hard gallop out of the station in less than two minutes.
To convince the Express to take his nugget was a challenge for the man, but he felt the nugget’s existence would start loose tongues talking right along the chain of stations. Having reached the Tahoe community, the stranger asked for directions. He was told Fridays Station was five miles to the north of town. The stranger chose to walk rather than hitch a ride with a sympathetic silver miner. A lot of silver miners had been gold prospectors before, and they were a little too savvy for the man’s liking. The less other people knew about his intentions, the better it would be. He had no need for small talk or friendly questions that he might have to deflect.
Annoyed and a little thirsty, the man arrived at Fridays Station. The newly built station was made of white weatherboard and someone had attempted to create a garden, with a few colored flowers surrounding a grassy patch under the shade of some Ponderosa pines. There were pony noises coming from the stables beyond, but no human activity was evident from the outside. So the stranger pushed open a side door of the main building. He came across a young lad sleeping awkwardly on a table. The lad’s head hung backwards off the edge of one end, while his feet were propped up on the sill of an open window. He had one arm by his side while the other arm dangled with his knuckles scraping the floor. It might have been a natural repose for a drunkard, but the lad did not drink; he was just exhausted.
Young Bob Haslam had arrived unexpectedly at Friday’s, just before dawn. Tyler, his relief rider, had to be woken up from a deep sleep before the dispatches were taken further west. During daylight hours exchanges were immediate but sometimes during the night things did not go quite as smoothly, especially when it was a change of riders. Ted, the stationmaster, had told everyone at the station not to disturb Bob’s sleep. So the young lad had been left in his precarious position on the table, to sleep the day away if necessary. The traveler, however, had little sympathy and since Bob did not wake at his first request, he started to prod the lad. “Wake up boy,” the man demanded.
Bob slowly opened one eye, as his left hand came up to rub the other. Sleepily, trying to regain consciousness, he peered at the intruder before him. His first utterance was a polite “Yes, sir?”
The stranger was irritated. “Is there no one with any authority here?”
“Ted is sure to be around somewhere, sir.” Bob had swung his legs over the side of the table and was now sitting upright.
“Well, why don’t you do something useful and find him for me?” the newcomer sneered.
Ted was eventually found, though he was none too impressed by the man’s off-handed manner. He was even less impressed when the stranger told him of his purpose. Ted looked at the gold-covered rock, raised an eyebrow, and knew something was not right. “The Express does not deliver cargo,
” he emphatically told the man.
“It’s hardly cargo,” countered the stranger. “It weighs less than nine ounces, and it’s imperative that it reaches St. Louis by the quickest means possible.”
“You’ll have to wait for the stage, then.” Ted turned as if to end the conversation.
The man felt a sudden rush of blood to his face but forced himself to be pleasant. “Since the stage is not running at present, I will be glad to pay whatever price you deem necessary for accommodating me.”
“One hundred dollars!” Ted hated to be bought but he was not going to be bought cheap.
The stranger’s eyes narrowed as he looked hard at the station master. Begrudgingly, he accepted. “OK, one hundred dollars and you will take it east to St. Joe?”
“Yes, but there won’t be a ride east for a couple of days and the service is not responsible for any loss, damage, or theft.”
Having filled in the necessary paperwork and paid more than twice the going rate, the man left Fridays Station never to be seen again.
Bob was fast becoming a favorite with everyone in the service. He had one of the most difficult rides to cover between his two home stations. Bucklands, in the east, and Friday’s, in the west, were a good seventy miles apart. The two stations could not have been more different. Bucklands was in the parched desert surrounded, by a few hills covered in sage brush and ten-foot Piñon pine trees. Friday’s stood close to Lake Tahoe’s southeast shore and was surrounded by snowcapped mountains with huge Ponderosa pines and tall cedar trees. Despite Lake Tahoe’s grander scenery, Bob enjoyed Bucklands as much as Fridays. The hills surrounding Buck-lands were home to many wild horses. On his days off, Bob went on mustang round-ups to find new ponies for the Service. He would get paid for every new pony he corralled and extra pay if he was responsible for breaking a pony in.
The ride east of Dayton through the Honey Lake Valley to the Carson Sink was the most likely for Paiute attacks, and Bucklands was in the heart of this dangerous stretch. Despite recent attacks, the Pony Express had continued to ride, but it was now a company edict that every rider had to be armed. Bob quickly learnt how to handle a Colt revolver and a Spencer rifle, but using a gun was always considered a last resort. A Pony Express rider was meant to outride any trouble by putting as much distance between him-self and any danger.
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