less than six years after the pioneers found here a desolate sagebrush
wilderness. Before railroads were built to the granite quarries, twenty
miles southeast of the city, the huge blocks of stone were hauled by
ox-teams, requiring at times four yoke of oxen four days to transport
a single stone! Forty years were required in its completion, and the
structure stands as a monument to the untiring energy of these people.
Its cost, in all, was four million dollars. Visitors have never been
admitted to the Temple since its dedication in 1893. “It was not
designed as a place of public assembly,” our guide informed us; “it is
to us a holy place devoted to sacred ordinances, and open only to our
own church members in good standing.” I wish that space permitted me to
quote all that we heard of their marriages, and even divorces, and of
their many quaint customs.
The figure surmounting the Temple is twelve feet in height, of hammered
copper covered with gold leaf, and represents the angel Moroni, the
son of Mormon, the writer of the Book of Mormon, which “is an inspired
historical record of the ancient inhabitants of the American continent,
corresponding to the Old Testament.” Mormon, who lived about 400 A. D.,
was one of the last of their prophets, and into the Book of Mormon
compiled the traditions which had come to him through generations. This
is not the Mormon Bible, for they use the King James translation that
our Christian churches use.
The Sea-Gull Monument is also in the “Block.” It commemorates a
historic incident of pioneer days, and was designed by Mahonri M.
Young, a grandson of Brigham. A granite base of twenty tons, resting
on a concrete foundation, supports a granite column fifteen feet high,
surmounted by a granite globe. Two bronze sea-gulls rest upon this
ball. The birds weigh five hundred pounds, and the stretch of their
wings is eight feet. On three sides of the base, in relief sculpture,
the sea-gull story is told, which, briefly, is this: In 1848 this was
the earliest settlement in the Rocky Mountains, and less than a year
old, consisting of a camp, a log and mud fort enclosing huts, tents and
wagons, with about eighteen hundred people. Their handful of crops
the first year, mainly potatoes, having failed, they were looking for
a good harvest the second year, or they would face starvation. In the
spring of 1848 five thousand acres of land were under cultivation in
the valley, nine hundred with winter wheat. Then came the plague of
crickets (our friends the grasshopper family). “They rolled in legions
down the mountain sides, attacking the young grain and destroying the
crops.” Men, women and children fought them with brooms, with fire,
and even dug ditches and turned water into the trenches. It looked
hopeless; their crops seemed doomed, when great flocks of sea-gulls
swept down on the crickets and devoured them. The Mormons compare the
incident to the saving of Rome by the cackling geese.
We heard an amusing story of how Brigham Young came by his name.
Originally his surname was “Brigham.” Once, when his agent returned
with some prospective brides, Brigham, looking them over and finding
them too old, exclaimed, “Go find others, and bring ’em young.”
The Utah Hotel is one of the finest in the country. It is owned and
run by the Mormons, and it does them great credit. We dined in the
roof-garden, which compares favorably with that of any hotel in New
York. You look off to the Wasatch range of mountains, the beautiful
fertile valley, and the great Salt Lake, beyond which lies the desert.
The executive staff of the Mormon Church has one of the finest
buildings in the city. The interior is paneled with native marbles and
woods and represents a fortune.
Returning to Ogden, we spent the next day visiting Ogden Canyon, a
short trip of twenty miles. We drove through groves of walnut trees
laden with nuts. Making a sharp turn on a good macadam road, you wind
through a deep canyon gorgeous with autumn foliage, a beautiful sight.
The river bank is lined with vine-covered bungalows, almost hidden
from view. The canyon streams are noted for the brook-trout fishing.
A Boston chap told us that he and two other boys caught ninety pounds
in three days. We lunched at the Hermitage, the best-known resort
near Ogden. It is built of logs, in the wildest part of the canyon.
The house was decorated with ferns and mountain wild flowers, as
artistically as a private home. We certainly enjoyed the brook-trout
dinner ($1.50) of fish caught that day in front of the hotel. Of
course, this cannot be compared to Yellowstone Canyon, but it is very
beautiful and well worth the trip from Ogden.
That evening we pored over maps. There was no route across the desert
that was good--only some were worse than others. Everyone advised
us to take the “Pike’s Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway,” which follows
the Southern Pacific Railroad (at intervals), and is considered a
“safety-first” way.
I never see that word “highway” that I don’t want to laugh! A
“cow-path” would more nearly describe any that we traveled in Idaho or
Nevada (not to mention a few others).
XIII
NEVADA AND THE DESERT
We did not look forward with an atom of pleasure to this part of the
trip. We dreaded it. It simply _had_ to be done. The officials told
us that nearly all the tourists shipped their cars to Reno. That was
valuable information to give us, when not a train was running west. The
clerk pointed out a dried-up little woman of seventy, and said, with a
withering glance at me: “See that old lady? She has driven her own car
across the desert twice this summer!” Well, you know how such remarks
make you feel. Not that you care a--bit what that clerk thought of you,
but you don’t like to realize that you are a molly-coddle or a coward.
Besides, my husband had laughed at my apprehensions, and that wouldn’t
do either. So I thought of our good fortune so far, of our slogan, and
of the old party of seventy, and I gave my pride a hitch and said,
“Let’s start”--and we did.
Our route lay over the same road back through Brigham, a beautiful
drive that far, then it turned northwest, over the northern part of
the Great Salt Lake desert, ninety miles to Snowville. The sand was
so deep that we crawled most of the way. The sun scorched our skin
and eyes until they felt dry as ashes. We had left the railroad and
telegraph poles and had but a single-file path through the sand,
with chuck-holes every few feet. When the wind blew it felt as if an
oven-door had been opened in your face, and the snow-white sand covered
everything, including the tracks in the road, which was not pleasant.
Nothing was to be seen except the endless sand, dry sagebrush, cactus,
and an occasional prairie-dog. We met but two cars that day. I can
conceive of nothing more utterly desolate and God-forsaken than the
desert. There is a silence of deathlike stillness that gets on the
nerves, and the sameness is wearisome.
We were glad to see Snowville, although Snowville was not much to see.
It consisted of one street, with possibly twenty houses, a garage, two
stores, and a few trees. The people who owned the grocery-store rented
rooms. They were kind and hospitable, and made us comfortable as they
could. One cannot pick and choose in the desert. You are glad and
thankful to find anything that looks like a bed and water. The woman
told us that the two stalwart young men were her sons, just returned
from service; one was a major. They were running the garage and helping
in the store. The whole family were educated, intelligent people,
except the old man, whose vocabulary was limited to “You bet!” and “By
heck!” What they could find in life in such surroundings, with nothing,
absolutely nothing, to commend the place, was hard to conceive. And
yet the mother told me that the women in the village had done more Red
Cross work during the war than those of any town of its size in the
state, and they had oversubscribed their quota in the Liberty Loans!
“The war did not seem very real to us ’way out here,” she said. “What
we read in the papers seemed like a novel. But when my boys went it
brought it nearer home to _me_. We were so far from the busy world our
lives were too limited to realize what was going on across the seas.”
I could understand that, for one day of the desert made me feel an
isolation that I never had felt in the middle of the Atlantic.
They had a bathroom; but if the water was being used in the garage or
kitchen, it would not run upstairs. Someone had driven miles away to
get some meat for supper; so it was quite late before we had anything
to eat. Fried meat, fried eggs, fried potatoes--all soaked in grease;
no milk or butter, and the coffee and tea we could not drink.
Across the street was a little patch of green corn. I went to the house
and asked the woman if she would sell me a few ears. She told me that
they were leaving the next morning--moving away--as her husband could
not make a living. He was a professor of languages from Massachusetts,
a cultivated gentleman! When he rode up on horseback I went out and
shook hands with him, and laughingly said:
“I am your long-lost sister from Massachusetts.”
He was off his horse and bowing in a Chesterfieldian manner. “You are
most welcome, madam; but, alas! we have nothing to offer you.”
“Oh, but you have, sir--the pleasure of meeting you both and some of
your green corn.”
He picked me a half-dozen ears, and when I offered to pay him, he said,
“Please, no!”
He asked where we were from. “The East sounds very far away. I wonder
if I shall ever see it again.”
I gave one of the children a dollar, and returned with my precious
corn, which the good-natured Irish cook boiled to a rock for our supper.
There was a small piazza in front of our room, the only place to sit
except in the street or in the private parlor of the family. The moon
was coming up over the distant mountain, red as blood and big as a
cart-wheel. While we were getting cool and enjoying the scene, Mary
appeared with the remainder of the raw meat, saying:
“We put it out here to keep cool; there ain’t no ice in this hole
of a place. I’m going to leave first of September. Gee, but I’ll be
glad! They couldn’t hire me to stay here any longer for fifty dollars
a month!” (She evidently felt that it was up to her to entertain us.)
“Nothing but work and heat--and not even a movie!”
“How early can we get breakfast?”
“Seven o’clock. I wouldn’t get up before that for President Wilson.”
(The picture of President and Mrs. Wilson in that place made us smile.)
“Try a little vamping on Mary,” I suggested to friend husband. It
worked. She called us at five, and by six we were out again on the
desert, with the sun rising behind us, and Montello, the next town, 115
miles to the west.
That day stands out as the worst experience of the trip. We went fifty
miles without seeing a living creature except jack-rabbits and one
coyote. The coyote ran across the trail and stopped fifty feet away,
watching us drive by. The sand was deeper and the chuck-holes, even
with the most careful driving, seemed to rack the car to pieces. If we
had had an accident, the outlook would have been decidedly vague for
us. Not a car or a telegraph pole in sight. By ten o’clock that morning
the sun scorched our skin through our clothing. But we had one good
laugh. Over a deep chuck-hole there had been built a stone bridge. On
one end, in large black letters, was “San Francisco” (the first sign
we had seen with that welcome name) and on the other end was “New
York”! The incongruity struck us as being so absurd that we roared
with laughter. Here in this God-forsaken desert, a “thousand miles from
anywhere,” to see that sign! It took _some_ joker to conceive of that.
By noon we were in sight of the railroad, feeling as if we had found a
long-lost friend. A freight station, some oil-tanks, a few shanties,
and a lodging-house for the men, where we got some food--that was
all. We filled up with water, and on we went. A wind had come up and
the sand blew in eddies, almost blinding us. The Nevada roads were no
improvement on Idaho, and the trail was obliterated many times by the
swirling sand, making the going almost impossible. Before reaching
Montello, a real desert sandstorm so covered us with sand that the car
looked white; our clothes and our eyes and ears were full of it. We
thought the top was coming off, or the car would turn over, and it was
difficult to see the road, much less to keep in the trail. By crawling,
we reached the town and stopped in front of the first building and got
out. We were blown off our feet. We staggered and waded through the
sand, hardly seeing where we were going, until we reached a door; then
we were blown in! After we recovered our breath and had shaken off a
little of the sand, we watched the storm, which by this time was a
howling gale and the sand so dense that you could hardly see fifty feet.
“Just suppose this had happened out there?” pointing back of us.
“Don’t think of it. Come and get some ice cream.”
I had not noticed that we were in a small café, with drinks, ice cream
and cakes, etc., for sale. The ice cream washed down the sand and
cooled our dry throats. A nice little woman ran the place, and she gave
us this information: There was a Southern Pacific railroad hotel in
the town, but, owing to hundreds of men being idle on account of the
strike, the place was full, and it was the only place to get lodgings.
It was a hundred miles and more to Elko, where the next hotel could be
reached. We inquired if the way to that town was as bad as the roads
we had come over that day. “Worse,” was the reply; “you are foolish to
attempt it.”
As soon as the storm let up we went across to the hotel, only to be
told that there was not an empty bed or a cot. We canvassed the town
with the same result. So there we were, worn out, dirty, hungry, and
feeling “all in,” with the cheerful prospect of sleeping on a pile of
sand in the car or trying to drive across more than a hundred miles of
desert to find a bed that night. Here is where I “struck.”
“I am not going another mile,” I declared, with a finality in my voice
that spoke volumes.
“What do you wish to do?” asked a weary husband.
“Ship the car to Reno, and take the train.”
Our watches said five o’clock, and the Overland Limited was due at
6:15 P. M. Husband hunted up the freight agent. “Oh, yes, you can ship
the car; but--” The first “but” was that the car was too large to get
through the freight-shed door. We must leave it on the platform or in
a garage until an “automobile car” came through Montello, and that
might not be for several days. Besides, the agent said he could not
give us a bill of lading if the car was not in the shed. It was out of
the question to leave it on the platform, and to put it in a strange
garage, with no one responsible for it, was taking a long chance that
we might never see it again, or that it would be used or damaged or
detained indefinitely. Here friend husband asserted himself.
“I am not going to leave that car here unless it is locked up in the
freight-shed and I have the receipt for it. You take the train and I
will drive the car to Reno.”
“What! let you go on alone, as tired as you are? Nothing doing! Mr.
T. G. M., the car is going to be shipped, and we are going on that 6:15
train.” I admit that my language was not very elegant; neither was the
place nor my feelings.
“If that is the situation, then the car goes into that shed,” he said.
“It can’t be done,” said the agent. “We have tried to get Cadillacs and
other large cars in there before. If you get your car in there, I’ll
eat it!”
“What about time?” we inquired of the agent. He informed us that we
must set our watches back an hour at Montello; so we had over an hour,
and the train was marked up “late.” For the next hour my husband worked
over that car, backing a few inches, going forward a bit, turning and
twisting on the narrow platform; but the car was still diagonally
across the doorway. Two men pitched in and helped. An inspiration!--he
poured black oil on the floor under the rear wheels and then tried to
slide the wheels over. That would have worked if the floor had not
been so rough. Another inspiration!--he jacked up the wheels and gave
the car another shove. Over it went, with both rear wheels inside the
door! Then he backed the car into the shed as neat as a whistle. It all
sounds like a perfectly simple job. Try it some time in your leisure
hours. The freight agent took off his hat in admiration. “Didn’t
believe it could be done,” he said, looking at me with a grin.
It cost $3.85 per hundred pounds and $5.73 war-tax to ship the car to
Reno (or to San Francisco--no difference in the rate to either place).
It weighed, including four spares and other equipment, 4960 pounds, and
the bill was $196.69.
On inquiring about reservations, the agent said: “I doubt if you can
get even an upper berth; the Limited is always full. Now that the
strike is off, it is sure to be crowded.”
Would he wire?
“No use; the train has left Ogden hours ago.”
I would have gladly sat up all night in the train to be out of the
desert.
In another hour we were in a drawing-room, scrubbed and brushed,
looking less like two tramps and more like respectable people. Unless
you have been through a like experience, you cannot share our feelings,
as we sat down to a perfectly good, _clean_, wholesome meal in the
diner, and slept in clean linen that night. I am glad that we had the
experience and can appreciate that phase of Western life. I am equally
glad that we shipped the car, which reached us at the California border
a week later, in good order and still white with sand.
The road to Reno, after leaving the desert country, follows the
oldest transcontinental route to the Coast--the trail of the early
pioneers, the gold-seekers of ’49. For miles it follows the Humboldt
River, through Palisade Canyon, past the thriving town of Elko, Battle
Mountain, and Lovelock. Reno, the metropolis of Nevada, is the seat
of the state university. There is much of interest to see and many
side trips to the mining regions, all worth while. It is but a few
miles from the state line of California, where the motorists’ troubles
are ended, for from here to San Francisco the roads are smooth as
marble, with no dust, and the signs read “Smile at Miles”--“Miles of
Smiles”--our welcome to California, the beautiful land of sunshine and
flowers, of which so much has been said in song and story and the half
can never be told.
“Why do all the people have the tops of their cars up?”
“Why? Because the sun always shines.”
And we were soon to enjoy the glad sunshine that makes you feel young
and happy, with a joy in living like that experienced in the Riviera.
XIV
THE END OF THE ROAD
Beyond Reno the ascent of the Sierra Nevada begins, and you pass Lake
Tahoe, six thousand feet high, the most delightful summer-resort
region in America. The Lincoln Highway joins the other routes here,
and is really a highway, making a glorious finish in Lincoln Park, San
Francisco. One of the finest views is the mighty canyon of the American
River, with the timbered gorge and the rushing stream two thousand
feet below. You are held spellbound by the scenery, as you descend the
western slope to Sacramento, the capital of California, 125 miles from
San Francisco.
The city of Sacramento is beautifully situated on the river of the
same name, and has the distinction of being the first white settlement
in interior California. The old fort built by John A. Sutter for
protection against the Indians is kept as a museum of early-day relics.
It was an employee of General Sutter who first discovered gold in
California, and the first nugget was tested and its value determined
inside this old adobe fort.
The capitol building, a classic structure, is situated in a park of
thirty-four acres of wonderful trees and shrubs, brought from every
portion of the world. The Crocker Art Gallery boasts of the finest
collection of art treasures belonging to any municipality west of New
York. The ride to San Francisco, of one night, is a popular trip on the
fine large steamers through the Sacramento Valley, noted for its vast
wealth of agriculture and fruit.
Stockton, also, is an interesting city, with its eleven public parks.
Acacia, orange, umbrella, and palm trees line the streets, making the
city a veritable park. West of the city are the largest peatlands
in the United States, on ground that has been reclaimed by means
of levees. The fields of grain and alfalfa are equal to any in the
states we had visited. With four hundred miles of navigable waterways,
transportation facilities are exceptional, and it is small wonder these
valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin are the banner “growing
section” of the state. It was like driving through a private estate
all the way to Oakland, where our first view of glorious San Francisco
harbor greeted us.
Oakland and Berkeley, “the bedrooms” of San Francisco (as a prominent
banker explained to us), are on the east shores of the bay. On the
front of the City Hall in Oakland (which, by the way, we were told is
the tallest building in California) was the sign, typical of these
open-hearted people, “Howdy, Boys!” (to the returning soldiers) in
place of the proverbial “Welcome.”
Oakland is a large, rapidly growing city, with its fine
two-million-dollar Hotel Oakland occupying an entire block. The
Municipal Auditorium, seating thirteen thousand people, is near the
shores of Lake Merritt, in the City Park. It is a great railway center,
the terminus of the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, and Western Pacific
lines. From here you take the ferry to San Francisco.
Berkeley is so near that we did not realize that we were not in
Oakland. Days can be thoroughly enjoyed spent here at the University of
California, the second largest educational institution in the world,
commanding a view of the Golden Gate, the bay, and San Francisco.
Early in the eighteenth century, Bishop George Berkeley of Cloyne,
Ireland, came to America to establish colleges. In recognition of his
devotion to the cause of learning, this city was named for him. His
prophetic words, “Westward the course of empire takes its way,” have
been justified and realized in California. On the university campus,
the Sather Campanile towers above all the other buildings at a height
of over three hundred feet.
The most distinctive feature of the university is the Greek Theater, in
a hollow of the hills, planned on lines similar to those of the ancient
theater at Epidaurus. The equable climate makes it possible to hold
outdoor performances at any season of the year. We were told that ten
thousand people could be seated comfortably. “Every artist who visits
the Coast aspires to appear in our Greek Theater,” said our informant,
and added with pride, “Sarah Bernhardt, Nordica, Tetrazzini, Gadski,
Schumann-Heink, and Josef Hofmann have all been here--yes, and ‘Big
Bill’ Taft too.” Since then, President Wilson addressed a capacity
audience here.
As we knew that we should visit both of these cities many times, we
drove to the wharf and boarded a ferry-boat holding seventy-five cars,
which would land us at our destination, San Francisco. While crossing
the harbor, which is seventy-five miles long and in places fifteen
miles wide, almost surrounded by high peaks, let me try to picture to
you the scene that greeted our eager eyes. It was about seven o’clock
in the evening. The rays of the setting sun made a glow over the water
and the distant city, touching the tops of the hills with an artist
hand. To the northwest, crowning the scene like a giant sentinel, was
Mt. Tamalpais. What Fujiyama is to the people of Japan, Mt. Tamalpais
is, in a less oriental way, to the Californians. Whether you see it at
sunrise or sunset, or standing out in bold relief against the noonday
sky, or with the moon silvering its summit, or wrapped in a mist of
clouds, it is a glorious sight, a never-to-be-forgotten picture. Below
this summit is the dense wilderness of the Muir Woods, named in honor
of John Muir, the celebrated California naturalist, with 295 acres
of towering redwood trees, the famous _Sequoia sempervirens_, many
attaining two hundred feet in height.