Nevada City

Image

Nevada City Sketching

One sketching target in Nevada City is the Nevada Hose Company No. 1. (Just to avoid confusion, Nevada City is in California.) I have always wanted to sketch this historic building but had not gotten around to it.

This firehouse is very detailed and complex and it seemed like the perfect subject for a continuous-line sketch. I suppose this method can become an excuse if the sketch turns out all wrong! But there are no mistakes in sketching.

The historic firehouse was opened May 30, 1861 and was in use until 1938. Throughout its history the hose carts were under different motive power: human, horse, and combustion engine.

What’s surprising about this building is that it exists at all. Most wooden structures in Gold Rush towns were destroyed by fire. That would certainly be ironic, a firehouse destroyed by fire.

The firehouse is an iconic symbol for Nevada City.

After my morning’s sketch I drove off to look for other Nevada City sites to add to my sketchbook. I settled on a flat car on static display from the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad.

The railroad ended near here, the depot was destroyed in a fire, and the opposite terminus ended parallel to the mainline in Colfax.

I rendered the car in a loose broken continuous-line sketch.

While reading the interpretive signs for the narrow gauge railroad I read a notice of the upcoming Steam Days at the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum where two of the locomotives in the museum’s collection would be under steam!

One of these days would be today, Father’s Day, and the museum would be opening in 45 minutes. So I knew where I would be next sketching next!

The star of the museum’s collection is the “Tahoe” No. 5. This 2-6-0 Mogul type is a narrow gauge steam locomotive that hauled freight and passengers on the line. The locomotive was built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1875 for the Carson Tahoe Logging & Fluming Company.

A period photo of No. 5 in front of the rail director’s house in Grass Valley.

The locomotive was purchased by the NCNGRR in 1899 where it was in service until the 1940s when it was purchased by the Frank Lloyd Productions to become a Hollywood locomotive. No. 5 was first featured in the John Wayne film, “The Spoilers” (1942).

By the 1970s the locomotive was sitting neglected on the Denver Street back lot at Universal. No. 5 was last featured in the doomed film, “The Twilight Zone”, in 1979. No. 5 was briefly featured in the first segment of the film, featuring actor Vic Morrow who was killed with two child actors in a helicopter accident.

The museum leased the locomotive from Universal and it returned to Nevada City in 1985.

When I first visited the museum with my stepfather, the No. 5 was on static display, having been a movie locomotive for Universal Studios. The locomotive had been electrified and pushed during movie production, and had not been under steam for a really long time. The locomotive was featured in about 100 film productions. So I was excited to see this 1875 locomotive under its own steam power.

Seeing the No. 5 under steam was a thing of beauty! It was like seeing the dead brought back to life.
The third driver is further back from the second to support the weight of the firebox.

Image

Haunted Hospital

There was always that house that your mother told you to stay away from. The odd boxy house at the end of the street. The one where the dogs in the neighborhood wouldn’t even use the front lawn to relieve themselves. That house.

I wanted to sketch Nevada City’s version of that house only it was not a house but a madhouse. The former Nevada County Hospital. The hospital that most locals don’t want you to know about.

The original hospital was built in the 1860s and different wings were added to the main building over it’s lifetime. The building served many purposes over the years but the reason the structure in now infamous is because of a January 2001 shooting spree.

In 2001 the building housed the Nevada County Department of Behavioral Health when a patient, a former school janitor, who was suffering from mental health issues, entered the building and shot three people, two of whom died. He then drove to a Lyons Restaurant near Grass Valley and shot two more people because he thought that they were trying to poison him.

In all, he fired 20 shots from his semi-automatic pistol leaving three people dead. The killer was declared incompetent to stand trial and he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He is currently at the Napa State Hospital for mentally ill patients.

There are no maintenance vehicles in the parking lot of a building that needs lots of maintenance. All the windows of the former hospital are boarded up.

Five years after the tragic events of January 10, 2001, the hospital closed it’s doors for good. The windows were boarded up and the doors locked and the the massive structure sits alone and abandoned, just off a two lane country road, across Highway 49 from downtown Nevada City.

It is hard not to think of the the ghosts of the past as I stood in front of the closed hospital. The structure must have many stories within it’s boarded up walls, some uplifting and happy and others quite tragic. These tales are all silent now and the only sounds I hear are the calls of red-breasted nuthatches and Stellar’s jays from the trees above.

If there was any good that came from the tragedy of January 2001, it was the creation of Laura’s Law, a law that assists outpatient treatment for the mentally ill. The law is named after Laura Wilcox, the first victim that was murdered at the hospital. She was a 19 year old intern who was working at the Department of Behavioral Health during her winter break from college.

Michael Moore’s 2002 Academy Award winning documentary about America’s gun violence epidemic, Bowling For Columbine, is dedicated to Laura Wilcox.