Books About the Summit

For Vicarious Adventurers:

Winter is coming along with some pleasant days around the fire with some hot chocolate and popcorn. Besides keeping up with your family and guests, here are some literary nuggets to help you get through those days after you've finished shoveling off your decks. For vicarious excursions through our environs, as opposed to walks and rides, there are a number of sources. First, the public library in Auburn will be happy to give you a library card and let you check out books. They have a branch in Colfax to which you can return books as well. Their hours are very good and printed right on the library card.

They have the regular fare of library things and then there is a a glass case of old books you can look at. Other sources are: Sierra Heritage magazines indexed, a pamphlet file, and newspapers dating back to the 1850's. Their 1882 History of Placer County includes: "Soda Springs Valley is at the head of the North Fork of the American...in natural beauty, picturesque scenery, and romantic landscapes, it stands out unique and wonderful in all the features that compose it, surrounded by lofty mountain peaks, with their bare, rugged granite sides exposed, and with shaded depressions filled with snow. It is as this point where the great tunnel of seven miles in length, proposed by Col. Von Schmidt to divert the waters of Lake Tahoe into the North Fork, has its exit to the California side of the Sierra." (pg. 406. This, of course, is Old Soda Springs next to the Cedars.)

Reading through these histories you'll find interesting little nuggets like Soda Springs being the ne plus ultra place for quiet literary people to hide away in, Hollywood beauties, in their long fur coats and moccasins, [who] look half willing to be run away with by some fur capped voyageur who looks suspiciously like some Boca ice cutter in Truckee, or the lady and her husband who decided to winter in American Valley. She finally emerged into the sunlight after months of darkness. She crawled up a trail her husband had shoveled to the roof and discovered snow was still five feet high up there. A final example: through the late 1800's and early 1900's, a can was kept at the top of Tinker's Knob to record climber's names. I wonder if it's still there. If books of your very own are what you want, go down to The Bookshelf at Hooligan Rock next to Safeway or to the Donner State Park Museum. The first has a really impressive section of books about California, Lake Tahoe, local history, and women's history. Both, of course, have maps of the Emigrant Trail, books on Sierra geology and flora and fauna. Some books are primary sources (original diaries for example). What I Saw in California is one. First printed in 1848, it chronicles a young explorer's travels in California just as the gold rush started. You can read his description of crossing the Sierra and going through, coincidentally, Serene Lakes. Somewhere near Cascade Lakes he stumbled across the skull of of a hapless earlier traveler.

Here are some books to try: Bogus Thunder Mountains - hiking areas in the Auburn foothills taking its name from a gorge north east of Foresthill that was so noisy, miners thought it was thunder. Gold, Guns, and Gallantry - short historical stories of the Sierra, Distant Voices, Different Drums - same as above but covering more California. Truckee Trails - local trails, History of the Donner Party - about guess whom. The Left Hand Turn - about the Donners too. More Tales of Lake Tahoe - newspaper columns from the Tahoe World, Sojourning in Rough Country - foothills and northern California trips. The Trail of the First Wagons over the Sierra Nevada - You can see where they really went in our area. Share your favorite titles. Send annotated titles to me for the next newsletters.