Month: August 2023

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Signal Peak and the Southern Pacific Fire Lookout

On my latest sketching odyssey I headed to one my favorite locations in California, if not the world: Donner Pass.

Before I set out, I sketched the rail route of the East Slope of Donner Pass, heavily influenced by a map drawn by John Signor (author, artist, and former Southern Pacific employee) in his marvelous book: Donner Pass: Southern Pacific’s Sierra Crossing.

I would be driving parallel to the Central Pacific side of the first Transcontinental Railroad on Highway 80. In 1865 the railroad became Southern Pacific.

I was looking for a stone structure that was built in 1909 as a fire lookout and I reckoned that Cisco, which is directly across the valley from the building, would be my best position for seeing Southern Pacific’s fire lookout on Red Mountain.

The lookout on Red Mountain was built because, from this vantage point, the rail line from Blue Canon to Donner Summit could be observed. Because 50 miles of the trackage was above 5,000 feet in elevation, snow was a real problem for keeping the line open during the long winters. The solution was to build wooden snowsheds to keep snow off the tracks. Work on the snowsheds began in 1867 and the sheds were completed by 1873. In total, 30 miles of sheds where built.

The view from Donner Summit. On the right is the original rail bed of the Transcontinental Railroad. The east portal of the Summit Tunnel (Tunnel #6) and Tunnel #7 is beyond. The snowsheds are made of concrete, replacing the flammable wooden sheds. In the middle ground is Historic Highway 40 and in the background is Donner Lake.

When you combine wooden snowsheds with wood burning steam locomotives the result can be fire.

Southern Pacific employed fire trains that could be called into action to put out fires in the snowsheds but first someone had to observe the smoke. This is where the fire lookout came into play.

The fire lookout was in continuous use until 1934 when it was abandoned.

Before I got to Cisco, I pulled off Highway 20, just before it merges into Highway 80 at Yuba Pass. From here I looked down the line and just above the signal gantry was Signal Peak and to the right I spotted the prominent silhouette of the fire lookout.

Yuba Pass with Red Mountain and Signal Peak in the background.

I headed east on 80 for one stop, I took the Cisco exit which just a service station stop. I pulled behind a parked truck and looked to the northeast across the highway.

Behind me, further up the hill was the mainline. In front of me was Red Mountain and Signal Peak. To the right was antennas and towers, to the left was the Southern Pacific fire lookout.

Red Mountain and Signal Peak.

Now it was time for a sketch using my Delta panoramic journal (featured sketch) to capture the peak.

Close up of the Southern Pacific stone lookout built in 1909 and used until 1934.

I returned to Yuba Pass to get a sketch of Red Mountain from this perspective. The signal on the gantry was green so an eastbound freight was imminent. Before long I could hear the rumble of a Union Pacific intermodal freight train climbing the grade towards Donner Summit. This consist contained six locomotives and I lost count of how many cars it train contained. (In truth I didn’t attempt to count. Seeing this long freight train mean less truck traffic on America’s highways).

What follows is a series of photographs of the UP freight making the climb to Donner Pass with Signal Peak in the background.

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The Coastal Hoosegow

The big house, the bucket, the calaboose, the cooler, the gray bar hotel, the hoosegow, the joint, the jug, the pen, the pokey, the slammer, and stoney lonesome.

These are all slang for jail.

On my way down the coast, I did a Friday afterwork jail sketch in the town of Half Moon Bay.

On a side street that parallels Main is a small building that sits alone. In case anyone wondered what this building was, it reads “JAIL BUILT-1909” in big black letters across the top. (The jail was actually built in 1919.)

This was Half Moon Bay’s small two-cell jail. This isn’t, even with the wildest imagination, the Big House.

The jail is built of reinforced concrete on a concrete foundation, built to keep people in. Not like it’s formerly interned were serious criminals. The cost of the jail was $3,000.

The Half Moon Bay Jail reopened in 2018 as a historical museum.
The two cells and constable’s office.

The jail held prisoners until they could be transferred to the county jail in Redwood City. Locals also spent the night here having had too much fun in Half Moon Bay’s saloons.

The jail was used as a jail and sheriff’s office until 1967 where it was little used until it was reopened as a historical museum in 2018. It is the oldest public building in Half Moon Bay.

I then headed 45 minutes south on Highway One to the small town of Davenport to sketch their small jail.

This two-cell jail was built in 1914 of Santa Cruz Portland Cement, made at the Davenport Cement Plant. This small jail was built to last and looks solid for a building that is over 100 years old.

The jail housed two horse thieves from San Mateo and like Half Moon Bay, locals that had imbibed a bit too much in Davenports’s saloon.

In 1936, when the new jail on Front Street in Santa Cruz was built, the Davenport clink became redundant.

It is now a historical and art museum.

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Visiting a Troll’s Cave

Keflavik is where the international airport is location, about 45 minutes from the capital of Reykjavik.

I had some time to kill before my flight left (a whole day and a half in fact) so I did what I always like to do to pass the time, sketch.

One of the more intriguing sites of Keflavik is a troll’s cave near the harbor. As mentioned in another post, about 50% of Icelanders strongly believe in hidden people such as trolls, elves, and dwarfs.

So I sketched Skessuhelir, Giganta’s Cave. This attraction is a little bit like an amusement park without the rides, games, or food stands. It’s an attraction that defies description. It’s like a roadside attraction without the road. It is more like a harborside attraction really.

On the way to Giganta’s Cave. Keep you children close. Real close!

Trolls in Iceland function a bit like the bogyman in American culture, “If you don’t eat your broccoli, the troll will come and get you!” or “If you don’t clean up your room the Bogyman is coming for you!” Here was a chance to visit a troll and live to tell the tale.

Inside the cave, everything is oversized, the chair, toothbrush, shoes, and bed. In the darker end of the cave stood what looked like a Christmas tree but instead of being covered in lights and decorations, the troll’s tree was covered in baby’s pacifiers! I liked this Icelandic dark humor.

The troll herself!!
The troll seems to be a bit of a celebrity here in Keflavik. There is even a mural dedicated to her.

There was plenty of public art along the jetty and I sketched a bird sculpture of course. The sculpture mirrored the gulls, Arctic terns, and fulmars flying along the jetty.