History: Phantom Railroad
Along with the Suffragettes and anti-Salooners, there were other people on the move. On a fine spring morning in May of 1911, the people of Lake County gathered at Somerset Hall in Kelseyville. They were going to build a railroad.
Stock had been issued and the magnificent sum of $284 dollars was subscribed. It was a cause for celebration. Now, at long last, Lake County would have its own rail line; a highway to the world. No more would Lake County be an orphan community, separate and partitioned away from the great centers of the world by a few paltry mountains and gorges.
Enthusiasm ran high. One might have easily imagined that Lake County was about to become heir to one of the most magnificent undertakings since the building of the pyramids. When Chairman, C. M. Hammand opened the meeting and announced that seventy-four thousand dollars had already been appropriated for the Railroad, there were loud huzzahs and cries of jubilation.
Laws passed by a jealous California legislature required that $1000 dollars for every mile of track and $100 dollars for every mile of telegraph line must be subscribed. In addition, fully ten percent must first be paid cash on the barrel head. Nevertheless, the citizens considered that puny obstacle of little account.
Had not Northwestern Pacific Company promised eighty thousand dollars for the project? What was more, that same Good Samaritan had raised the ante recently. They promised One hundred thousand dollars. That, practically, guaranteed there would be, one happy day soon, a rail line from Lakeport to Hopland.
Now came the grunt work. The best of several routes for the line had to be selected. Chairman Hammand wrote immediately to the Legislature to cinch the deal. In his letter he gave the pros and cons for each of three possible routes. They were, the Hopland Wagon Road Pass, the Ben Moore Pass, and the Adobe Creek Pass. Which would it be?
No easy choice. Like a group of Major League of Baseball fans, each of the rail routes had it own loyal disciples and believers. All were firm in their conviction their route was the best. A close horse race, the choice was difficult.
Supporters of Wagon Road Pass had two strikes against them going in. Wagon Road Pass was 2020 feet high. The favorite, Adobe Creek Pass, was 190 feet lower. Those two hundred feet were important, especially for a locomotive struggling to lift hundreds of tons over the pass.
While Adobe Creek pass was lower than Wagon Creek Pass and cheaper to build, Adobe Creek Pass, unfortunately for the folks cheering for that choice, that route did not serve the interests of the Clear Lake Valley nearly as well as Wagon Creek Pass and the other contender.
When the planners heard the cheers and happy cries of victory from those that were backing the favorite, Hammand the other architects, peered even deeper into the details of what would need to be done to ensure Wagon Road Pass would, indeed, be a perfect choice. Recalling the hoary adage, ‘Never look too closely at a gift horse’s mouth’, while perhaps not a perfect analogy, it served to point out what unforeseen difficulties the planners found when they got down to bedrock in their inspection.
There were problems with Wagon Creek Pass. There were difficulties in the digging and construction they had not foreseen. For one, to get up or down the east side of the pass, 1200 feet of altitude spread over the short distance of three miles, meant building a track that would end up like a nest of snakes.
Enthusiasm ran high. One might have easily imagined that Lake County was about to become heir to one of the most magnificent undertakings since the building of the pyramids. When Chairman, L. M. Hammand opened the meeting and announced that seventy-four thousand dollars had already been appropriated for the Railroad, there were loud huzzahs and cries of jubilation.