The Ghosts of Lake Tahoe

by Patrick Betson

  When the Virginia Truckee Railroad was opened in the 1870s, they built a railroad spur to the Carson Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company’s massive lumber yard to the south of Carson City. Some of the timber would go straight to Virginia City via the VT Railroad. Some of it would be taken to the planing mill in Carson City. From the moment a tree was felled on Tahoe’s west shore, it might have been hauled a mile or so by ox wagon to the water’s edge, towed fifteen miles across the lake by steamer, milled at one of the Glen-brook mills, then taken nearly nine miles up the mountain by the Lake Tahoe Railroad to Spooner Summit, carried twelve miles by V flume down to the valley, and then onward another nineteen miles by the Virginia Truckee Railroad to the Comstock. By the time the silver mining came to an end in 1890s, an estimated 750 million feet of board was taken up to Virginia City.

  Postscripts

  1) There is the amusing account, written by H.J Ramsdell, a reporter for The New York Tribune, of possibly the first ever flume ride. Ramsdell in the company of two of the millionaire owners of the Virginia Consolidated Mine, Jim Fair and James Flood, rode the flume of the Pacific Wood Lumber and Fluming Company and barely lived to tell the tale. Ramsdell said he was so terrified, that he gripped the sides of the purposely built V boat, so tightly that he was picking out wooden splinters from his hands for a whole week.

  2) Philip Deidesheimer developed the interlocking square set, which made the mines’ supporting timbers several times stronger. It required precise cutting to make the interlocking ends fit tightly. This would have been done after the timber had come down the flume, at the planing mill in Carson City. The Bonanza series had an episode called “The Philip Deidesheimer Story.”

  3) A lumberjack’s wife, complained to Reno tailor Jacob (Youphes) Davis that her husband’s overalls tore too often at the pockets. Overalls were usually made of cotton duck cloth, the same material Jacob used for tents and covered wagons. Jacob discovered that, by using copper rivets, he could make the material much stronger. Jacob asked his supplier Levi Strauss if he was interested in making overalls with copper rivets. Davis and Strauss patented the idea and Davis joined Strauss in San Francisco. Later they used a softer cotton-twill from France, called Serge de Nimes; in time de Nimes would get shortened to denim. Levi jeans did not have belt hoops until 1922.

  4) The Carson Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company’s lumber yard outside Carson City, stretched more than a mile in length and more than half a mile across (see photo.)

  5) In 1875, Duane Leroy Bliss beat the two Murphy brothers to the purchase of Meeks Bay on Tahoe’s west shore. The brothers had intended to establish a dairy farm there. Mr. Bliss told the brothers he would resell the bay back to them, once he taken the timber. This he did, and the Murphy brothers were able to buy the bay for the same price $250.

  6) In 1898, after the timber-cutting days were over, the railroad up to Spooner Summit was dismantled and transported across the lake on barges. It was re-laid and extended along the Truckee River Canyon between Tahoe City and Truckee. Passengers could now come straight off the Transcontinental and continue by train down to the Tahoe Tavern pier.

  7) In 1926, the Southern Pacific took over the lease of the Lake Tahoe Railway and changed the track to standard gauge, buying the railroad outright in 1933. The Southern Pacific operated the train service another ten years before the rail was torn up and went to help the war effort, in 1943.

  8) The age-old question “when a tree falls down in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” - is unanswerable. However, if someone is there to hear and the tree is a big Ponderosa or a Douglas fir, it makes enough noise to wake the dead!

  Hank and Horace (The Greeley Story)

  It is doubtful we will ever know the truth of the Greeley Story.

  It was immortalized by two icons of American literature. Mark Twain (America’s favorite author) and Artemus Ward (Abraham Lincoln’s favorite author) both supported the theory that Greeley had fallen prey to the mischievous Monk.

  On the other hand, we have a silent Horace Greeley. Greeley was a political hot potato, a crusader of radical ideas, and one of the founders of the Liberal Republican party. That Greeley was hung out for ridicule was not surprising; his campaign to expose corruption threatened many in Washington. As the editor and founder of the New York Tribune he was a powerful man. Had he been elected president he would have been to his many enemies a powerfully dangerous man.

  How dangerous? If you take it to the extreme, you can almost say that Horace Greeley helped give birth to communism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels both wrote articles for the New York Tribune. Marx was a regular contributor from London. For all this, Horace Greeley was popular, his paper had the largest distribution in the nation, and, as a fierce abolitionist Greeley views were initially embraced by Abraham Lincoln.

  Is there any truth to the Greeley story? The only doubt cast is that when Greeley (obviously as a newspaper man) wrote about his journey west in An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco 1859, Hank Monk is not mentioned by name. He writes of his stagecoach journeys only in general terms, although he does praise the ability of one unnamed stagecoach driver in California.

  Now, as much as we want to believe Mark Twain and Artemus Ward, we have to admit that they both tended to exaggerate in the telling of stories. Artemus Ward traveled the country giving tongue-in-cheek one-man shows. Mark Twain and Artemus Ward met in Virginia City and there was an immediate connection between the two of them. Possibly, Twain gave his own slant to a story told to him by Artemus.

  In Twain’s version, he and his brother are on their journey west when they are told the story of Monk and Greeley. The amusing tale delights Mark Twain at first hearing, but the story is repeated ad nauseam by every new passenger that joins their stage journey. What grinds on Twain’s nerves is that the story is not just repeated, it is repeated verbatim. When a new passenger is just about to repeat the tale for a fifth time, Mark Twain begs the would-be story teller not to recount it. The newcomer gets so morose at not being allowed to tell the story that he dies, leaving Twain wrought with guilt.

  Mark Twain writes this amusing anecdote in his 1872 book Roughing It. Twain makes the anecdote relevant because he and his brother Orion are supposed to be on the same road that Monk and Greeley traveled two years earlier. This cannot be true, however, because Twain and his brother were bound for Carson City. Twain did not travel further west for another three and a half years.

  Artemus Ward’s version is even more bizarre, because Artemus has Monk and Greeley on a stage traveling east from Folsom to Placerville, with the amusing incident of the would-be escort occurring in Mud Springs, which is west of Placerville. You do not drive through Mud Springs if you are coming from Carson City.

  The stagecoach ride of Monk and Greeley is commemorated in the town of Placerville by a historical marker stating that Monk and Greeley came from Carson City. This fits in with Greeley’s own journal, even though he does not mention anything of having been thrown around by our stagecoach hero.

  So, what is the truth? Of course, had the embarrassing event actually happened, Greeley probably would not have wanted it remembered. He would have played it down and dismissed it as pure fiction, but unfortunately for him the story did do the rounds. It was probably distorted, added to, and exaggerated.

  I have given the impression that Monk was reluctant to talk about the Greeley episode, but that might not have been the case. Monk was indeed given a gold watch, which he was obviously proud of, inscribed by the distinguished leaders of the Nevadan community in remembrance of the Greeley ride. Ironically, one of the signatures on the watch belongs to George Hearst, father of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.

  Greeley was originally a Whig and then joined the newly created Republican Party in the 1850’s. He supported Fremont’s nomination for President in 1856. He was outspoken in his opposition to Democrats (even though in the election of 1872 the Democrats supported the Liberal
Republican nominee.) One of Greeley’s best-known quotes was “All Innkeepers are Democrats” which was quite often misquoted as “All Democrats are innkeepers.”

  Monk was indeed the son of an innkeeper and he would have taken great delight in telling Greeley so. Despite his seemingly common background, Monk could indeed trace his lineage back (even though we encounter two illegitimate births) to nobility; this would have caused no end of merriment had it been widely known at the time (see below.)

  There is enough evidence to confirm that Hank Monk was a loveable but incorrigible rogue. He drove a stage for more than thirty years, and it was a considerable art to maneuver a stage and horses over mountain trails in any kind of weather. We have to believe that Monk knew what he was doing, drunk or sober. That he is not better remembered now in the twenty-first century is sad indeed. His grave is mostly forgotten and indeed the original headstone fell over.

  For the World’s Fair in Saint Louis in 1904, each state in the union sent various exhibits. Nevada sent, as two of its main exhibits, Hank Monk’s stagecoach and Hank Monk’s watch.

  Postscripts

  1) Roughing It achieved one of the highest readerships of any book ever printed. Frank Borman and James Lovell read the book out loud while hurtling around the Earth in Gemini Seven.

  2) Joe Goodman recounts the story of when Artemus took the staff of The Territorial Enterprise (including Twain) to dinner at Chaumond’s French restaurant. Before dinner, Artemus stood up with a glass of wine in hand to make a toast: “Gentleman, I give you Upper Canada.” Everyone stood up and solemnly drank the toast. A little later Goodman asked Artemus why he had given Upper Canada as the toast, and quite off-handedly Artemus said, “Because I do not want it for myself.”

  3) Hank Monk, as stated, was born in Waddington, New York, the son of George Wagner Monk, an innkeeper who was likely the illegitimate son of Sir James Monk (1745 -1826,) the chief justice for Lower Canada. Sir James Monk was the grandson of George Monk, who was the illegitimate son of George Monck, the First Earl of Albemarle (1608-1670,) a favorite of both King Charles and his son King Charles II, Monck also found favor with the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. The earl is buried in London’s Westminster Abbey.

  4) Monk died in February, 1883. J. A. Yerington said that Hank Monk was born in March, 1826, which meant that he died a month before his fifty-seventh birthday. His headstone says he was fifty years old.

  5) It was always the intention of the locals to remember Hank Monk with a memorial or a statue somewhere along Kings Canyon. Somehow it was forgotten, or the thought died with a generation. With the building of the new Highway 50, up to Spooner Summit, a statue to Hank Monk on the canyon trail would not be seen by most travelers today.

  6) Mr. Sharkey Begovic erected a new headstone above Hank Monk’s grave. This highly commendable act of remembrance still omits the fact that Monk was immortalized by the likes of Mark Twain and Artemus Ward.

  7) Greeley was nominated Liberal Republican candidate for president and ran against incumbent Ulysses S. Grant in the 1872 election. Greeley died after the election but before the Electoral College had cast their votes. It was a comfortable victory for Grant but Greeley ended up with 43 percent of the popular vote.

  8) It was Cassius Marcellus Clay, a co-founder of the Liberal Republican party, who put Greeley’s name forward to be the party’s nominee for president. Earlier in his political life, Clay had put forward his own Proclamation of Emancipation, which was largely adopted by Abraham Lincoln. Making enemies on the way for his abolitionist stance, Clay (being good with a Bowie knife) had to defend himself physically on more than one occasion. In 1912 an African-American boy whose last name was Clay was given the Christian names Cassius Marcellus, and he in turn gave the names to his son thirty years later. The son, ironically, became quite a good fighter too!

  Hank Monk’s Epitaph

  (written shortly after his death, by the people of Carson City.)

  “The Whitest, Biggest-Hearted and Best-Known

  Stage Driver of the West,

  Who was Kind to All and Thought Ill of None.”

  Ode to Hank Monk

  Monk used to drive the Grade, when the Grade was just a trail.

  But he’d bring the stage over on time, and seldom did he fail! It was hard to see the Grade in snow and through the failing light, so he used to take some whiskey with him, to help him with his sight.

  The wind did moan and howl and tried to knock him down, But Carson people used to cheer when Monk rode into town.

  9) Earthquake and Steamers

  (From Disaster to Triumph)

  Immediately after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, someone erected a sign close to the Ferry Building at the end of Market Street. “Things could be worse. Tomorrow you could be living in Oakland!”

  Even in the midst of tragedy there were other amusing stories. Not least of which involved Enrico Caruso, the famous Italian opera singer.

  Enrico Caruso was the Elvis Presley of his day. He was staying at the San Francisco’s Palace Hotel at the time of the earthquake. Many victims remembered Caruso bursting into song while walking (or stumbling) through and over debris. Many thought it was morale-boosting stuff, but apparently the singer was fearful that the dust would cause permanent damage to his vocal chords. Convinced he was losing his voice, he would suddenly launch into an aria or two.

  In March 1872, the small community of Lone Pine was rocked by a strong earthquake. The quake was felt throughout the Tahoe region. It was reported that some of the pass roads were visibly higher by several feet by nature rolling over on its side. Only seven structures were left standing out of the original fifty-nine in Lone Pine. Pictures were shaken off the walls in Sacramento, and thousands fled the silver mines of Virginia City. Naturalist John Muir, who was camping in Yosemite at the time, declared it to be the most “noble” of earthquakes! The earthquake is quite often referred to as the Owens Valley Earthquake.

  In June 1896, the 168-foot Steamer Ship Tahoe was launched at Glenbrook. She would be the longest steamer to ever operate on the lake. She was not built for the lumber industry, she was built for pleasure cruising. But she would also deliver the mail around the lakeside communities for several years. She had two wood-burning boilers, cut crystal, brass fixtures and was furnished throughout in both oak and mahogany. She had a gentleman’s smoking saloon and hot and cold water in the public restrooms. The Captain for the first twenty-one years of the SS Tahoe (featured in the story “From Disaster to Triumph”) was Ernie J. Pomin. The Pomin family has been at Tahoe City since its very first days.

  When the narrow-gauge railroad joined Tahoe City to the Transcontinental Railroad, Duane Bliss closed the Carson Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company and moved his operations over to Tahoe City. The steamers Tahoe and Meteor and the railroad now operated under the Lake Tahoe Railroad and Transportation Company. In 1901, The Tahoe Tavern Hotel opened just south of Tahoe City. A pier with an extension of the railroad track was built in conjunction with the hotel. The lavish hotel and pier were now the focal point and starting point for the new traveling tourist. In 1896, the Bliss family also acquired the SS Tallac from “Lucky” E.J Baldwin and renamed it the SS Nevada. The Bliss family had moved successfully from the old century of timber cutting to the new century of tourism. They owned one of the best hotels and the three biggest steamers on the lake.

  Postscripts

  1) Inside the Gatekeeper’s Museum, just on the south side of Fanny Bridge by the Tahoe City dam, you’ll see a written testimonial to Captain Pomin, by the members of the board of the Lake Tahoe Railroad and Transportation Company, at the time of his death in 1919.

  2) Tahoe’s first ever casino was built on the California side of the lake. Lucky Baldwin owned the luxurious Tallac House on Tahoe’s southwest shore. It had a casino, a bowling alley, and a ballroom mounted on springs. Actor and director Eric Von Stronheim worked as a guide for the hotel, leading hiking trips up to the top of Mount Tallac, before
he went to Hollywood.

  3) Lucky Baldwin received his nickname for his seemingly good fortune. He had invested in a silver mine and while traveling abroad he wrote his agent to sell the worthless stock. His agent never received the letter, so the stock was never sold. Before Baldwin’s return to America a silver vein was struck and the stock price rocketed. He went onto the build the Santa Anita racetrack and owned four winners of the American Derby.

  4) It was Duane Leroy Bliss’s fourth child, architect Walter Danforth Bliss, who designed the Tahoe Tavern Hotel in Tahoe City. He and his partner William Baker Faville designed the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco, which opened in 1904.

  5) Ceremoniously, the SS Meteor was sunk in the middle of the lake on April 21, 1939. The same fate came to the Queen of the Lake, the SS Tahoe on August 29, 1940. William Seth Bliss (Duane Leroy’s oldest son), well into his seventies, thought it better to sink the proud steamers than to see them rust away on dry land.

  6) The SS Tahoe was meant to be sunk in a hundred feet of water off Glenbrook Bay, but due a miscalculation it ended up sinking to a depth of four hundred feet.

  10) The Stars of Lake Tahoe (Mutiny at the Inn)

  There is some poetic license taken in the story “Mutiny at the Inn.”

  Charlie Chaplin did film the opening sequences of his 1925 film “The Gold Rush” above Truckee, somewhere around the present-day Boreal Ski Area. Gable starred with Loretta Young in “Call of the Wild,” partially filmed at Lake Tahoe during the winter of 1934-35. It‘s possible that during this time Gable first came to the Glenbrook Inn. Returning often, he was known to help out and wait-table when the Inn was shorthanded.