DUNCANS MILLS 1

Old California

First a part of a large Mexican land grant, the town was founded not long after Alexander Duncan arrived in 1877 to began a sawmill operation. By the 1880s there were two hotels, a saloon, a meat market, blacksmith and livery stables and this general store.

With the lumber mill came the railroad. Duncans Mills became the funnel through which hundreds of thousands of board feet of redwood lumber were loaded aboard trains that followed the hills and creek beds down to waiting ships in San Francisco Bay.

For almost 60 years trains hauled freight (and passengers) to the the terminal in Sausalito. We sure don't think of Sausalito as being a railroad town, as trendy as it is now. The ledger in the foreground recorded the daily flow of rail traffic and the old fashioned phones at left kept the stationmasters in touch with each other and the outside world. It had to be a pretty busy place with three telephones.

Served by the North Pacific Coast Railroad and its unusually colored cabooses, the owners began building a narrow gauge steam line in 1874. It reached Duncans Mills not long after the mill opened. In 1902 new owners, at what must have been at great expense, transformed the track to standard gauge and installed powerlines to serve new electric engines. Redwood lumber remained the dominant item of freight. Since shutting down in in the 1930s, all of the right-of-way eventually became abandoned. The line stretched 93 miles to the Bay - what a wonderfully scenic journey it must have been as a passenger.

ALL ABOARD 2

High Prairie

From Minneapolis west the skies begin to open as do the landscapes. We lose a sense of geography though when the sun goes down.

The next day is full of sweeping skies and unbroken landscapes. It seems like most of Montana rolls by like this.

There is also lots of rail traffic. We've seen many "pig haulers" which is the nickname for trains that pull freight that is piggybacked or stacked as these containers are.

Where there are towns and tracks, there is a terminal or two for farmers. Wolf Point, MT., is one of many small towns that pop up through the day then slowly shrink back into the horizon. Wolf Point is also the largest town (2,621 population) on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

Before rail and the passage of time there were many loose clusters of settlers. Most had their own one room schoolhouse. If you want to get a sense of what things were like back then, go find Ivan Doig's "Whistling Season", which is centered around such a schoolhouse as the one above. There few Western writers better than Doig.

We travel through the last of Montana, all of Idaho and much of Eastern Washington in the dark. Overnight in Spokane our train is broken up. All but three or four cars go on to Seattle. By mid morning our much smaller train is crossing the Columbia and headed for its last stop: Portland, Oregon. Against all expectation, we arrive a half hour earlier. Home again.

ALL ABOARD

As Easy As...

There are lots of hard ways but only one easy way to get from Chicago to Portland - take the train.

Chicago must be the rail capital of America. Not only do they have a dozen or so intercontinental trains leaving daily, they have five major train stations. This was once the main boarding area at Union Station (now everyone descends one or more levels) and the station handles all the Amtrak passenger trains and some commuter traffic (50,000 passengers a day. Also downtown is Ogilvie Transportation Center (40,000 commuters a day), Millennium Station (20,000 passengers daily), La Salle St. Station (16,000 daily) and Van Buren Street Station (10,000 per day). Most of these stations have been operating in one form or another since the 1850s.

Here passengers are heading for our train, the Empire Builder. From Chicago the train passes through Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho then splits in eastern Washington. Most of the cars continue on to Seattle. A smaller train is formed to go to Portland, Oregon, our destination.

We briefly play peek-a-boo with downtown Chicago before heading north to Milwaukee, our first major stop. For a January, it sure doesn't look like winter.

Though there are rural portions of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin that are visible, what really strikes the eye are the abandoned warehouses and old, long dead factories. Graffiti "artists" have tagged anything.

SAVANNAH SQUARES

And A Round

Perhaps the most visited square in Savannah is Monterey. Folks don't always come to enjoy the beauty - they come to see the Mercer House, site of a murder made famous in both book and movie form: "Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil." Do you remember the story? Now do you remember that there were 4 trials - all ending in overturned or innocent verdicts. The OJ of his day, that was James Arthur Williams. Pity he was remembered for the gruesome details and not for the over 50 homes and mansions that he also restored in Savannah.

A Church, yes? Well, call it Temple Mickvie Israel and you'd have it right. This is the only synagogue in the US designed in the Gothic Revival style and the temple houses the third oldest practicing Jewish congregation in the US. It anchors the other end of Monterey Square.

In 1730 British colonist James Oglethorpe began working on what would be one of the most liveable city plans anywhere. Gridded neighborhoods designed around a common square became the blueprint for what is now Savannah's Historic District.  Oglethorpe lived to see 6 of the squares completed. Today 22 remain as "Progress" claimed two of them.  Most photographed is Forsyth Park, above.

Though many individuals like Mr. Williams have contributed over the years to the restoration of Savannah's historic core, few entities have done as much as SCAD in recent years. Founded as a private college in 1978, Savannah College Of Art And Design created an innovative program that has brought over 67 buildings back to life as architectural treasures. In addition to charging tuition the school also sells bonds (to many of the student's parents). The bonds have offered a generous payback to bondholders while at the same time allowing the college to purchase core structures. Then SCAD focuses academically on the restoration of those buildings. All the school's disciplines are brought to bear in examining each structure and students are involved in all facets of the rehabilitation. Revenue for the bondholders comes from the new tenants that move into these restored gems.

Not all historic houses are in the original District. As the town outgrew its grid of squares and neighborhood, housing spread west and so in many neighborhoods there is the touch of Victorian and other styles.

This is the "Round" mentioned in the subtitle. I had thought that working roundhouses were a thing of the past. Apparently no one told the Roundhouse Railroad Museum in Savannah. They have bragging rights to the "oldest and largest existing nineteenth-century railroad complex in the nation."

American Evolution

FIRST CAME HORSES

Sand Station Ruins, US 50, Nevada

The Pony Express was established in 1860 and one of the 184 stations spread across the middle and western portions of the US was this stop.  All accounts have it that it was a poor excuse for stopping. Here is what famous explorer Sir Richard Burton had to say about the place in 1860: "The water near this vile hole was thick and stale with sulphury salts; it blistered the hands. The station house was no unfit object on such a scene, roofless and chairless, filthy and squalid, with a smoky fire in one corner, impure floor, the walls open to every wind, and the interior full of dust." William Cody, aka "Buffalo Bill" at age 15 rode to this Pony Express stop. By 1861, it was abandoned. For many years it lay covered in sand. 

THEN THEY WERE IRON

Electric Locomotive #13, Ely, Nevada

Less than ten years later, the continent was linked by the Iron Horse. The West, indeed the nation, became a spider web of rail lines by 1900. This old locomotive was parked pretty much for good at the Nevada Northern Railroad yard in Ely. Though this locomotive was inoperative, the NNR operates tourist trains throughout the year.

HOW MANY HORSEPOWER DID IT TAKE?

Homer In Ely, Nevada

It didn't take many horsepower to replace the horse or the train once roads began to probe the far reaches of our continent. When we arrived in town there were at least several dozen classic cars clustered in different parts of the city. The decal on "Homer" proclaims it to be a veteran of a 1997 cross country race.