By Dennis Cassinelli
On Wednesday, June 17th, Dayton was dealt a tragic blow when the historic 1881 Carson and Colorado Railroad Depot on the corner of Highway 50 and Main Street burned to the ground, fanned by strong winds out of the north-northeast.The depot is one of three remaining Carson and Colorado Depots and the only one remaining in Nevada. This tragic event has prompted me to re-run an article about the Carson and Colorado Railroad I wrote back in 2017.
By 1880, the owners of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad decided to pursue another venture to tap into the new mining districts developing in the south-central part of Nevada. The idea was to construct a new railroad line to connect Carson City and the Comstock to the Colorado River at the southern border of the state.
The Carson and Colorado Railroad was started at the Virginia and Truckee station at Moundhouse just east of Carson City and wound its way through Dayton, Hawthorne, and points south in hopes of cashing in on new mining developments along the way. As new discoveries were made, the route of the line was changed to suit the needs of the developers. When a major discovery was made in the Candelaria region, the C&C followed.
The line then veered off to cross the White Mountains into California, finally ending at Keeler, California, 300 miles from the starting point at Moundhouse. Unfortunately, the line never did make it all the way to the Colorado River as originally planned. Residents of Pizen Switch in Mason Valley renamed their town Yerington after the builder and General Manager of the Carson and Colorado, Henry M. Yerington, in hopes this would entice the railroad to come through their town. The trick did not work, however, and it would be many years later before Yerington would get a railroad.
In addition to serving the mining interests, the C&C helped in the development of agriculture in the region by providing a means to ship crops and livestock to market. Many of the farms and ranches along the way had their own siding where an empty boxcar could be left and picked up again by the next train after being filled. My own family, who owned a ranch near where the C&C crossed the river at Dayton, used the trains in the 1890s to ship potatoes, hogs, and cattle to the Comstock and to California.
Unlike the standard gauge V&T, the Carson and Colorado was a narrow gauge line. All the engines and rolling stock of the C&C were much lighter and smaller than the V&T equipment. The railroad men assigned to work on the new line were not accustomed to working with the smaller equipment, so they nicknamed the new train the “Slim Princess” – and the name stuck. the operation of the Slim Princess line was a casual affair at best and was no model of how to run a railroad.
In order to cross over Indian land around the east side of Walker Lake, the owners made an agreement with the Indians that they could ride on the trains for free any time they wanted – not in the passenger cars, but atop the freight cars. On most trips, it was common to see eight or 10 Indians riding atop the boxcars as the train chugged its way across the desert. The Slim Princess was notorious for making unscheduled stops along the way for one reason or another. If a passengers hat would blow off, the engineer would stop the train and back up so the passenger could retrieve it.
In the fall, passengers had to wait while the crew stopped to hunt a few sage hen or wait for a flock of ducks to fly by in Mason Valley. Other times of the year, they found it great sport to take potshots at passing jack rabbits from the open boxcar doors. One of the conductors, who later became Nevada Governor Fred Balzar, often stopped the train while he took a buggy ride to have dinner at his sweetheart’s ranch. Sometimes in the winter when the summit over Montgomery Pass was covered with snow and ice, the light Slim Princess did not have enough weight to get traction. When this happened, the fireman would get out and sprinkle hot ashes on the tracks so the train could continue on.
When I worked in Hawthorne several years ago, I visited the Mineral County Museum and saw a big steamship anchor on display that had recently been discovered when the water in the lake had reached a new low. I learned that in the 1880s a steamer had crossed Walker Lake from the east shore to bring supplies and passengers from a siding on the east shore to the town of Walker on the west shore near present Highway 95. Somehow the anchor was lost until discovered when receding water in the lake reached a new low point.
By 1900, the owners of the Carson and Colorado decided to cut their losses and sell the line to the Southern Pacific Railroad for more than 2 million dollars. Although it had been a fun ride, the investment had just not lived up to their expectations. The sale proved to be an unwise decision, however, because two months after the sale, the Tonopah rush began, followed by the Goldfield Boom. These were just the type of discoveries the former owners hoped they could cash in on.
The Southern Pacific Railroad Company soon converted the Carson and Colorado to standard gauge in order to better serve the new mining districts. With this development, the Slim Princess was taken out of service and soon faded away into oblivion as one of the most casual railroads in history. Railroad enthusiasts in Keeler and Laws California at the far south end of the C&C line are active in restoring rolling stock. Hopefully something similar will be done with the Dayton Depot.
This article is by Dayton Author and Historian, Dennis Cassinelli. You can order his books at a discount on his blog at denniscassinelli.com. Just click on “order books”