Fire Lookout on Red Mountain
Today a friend and I climbed to the lookout on Red Mountain. We took an unmarked trail from the Fordyce Lake Road, very steep but takes you right to the lookout. While up there we met a communications worker at the other end of the mountain and he told me he believed there was a railroad grade nearby, we never saw any grades. My best guess if there was a RR grade it would've been more than likely for logging and at much lower elevations. I have followed many of them in the Plumas and Tahoe National Forests and have become familiar with what they look like even after many decades of the rails having been removed.
Another guy told me the building was used by the railroads to look at the tracks below by I-80 (now) not there then for dangers such as snow blocking the path of the trains. There are still a few poles standing which I believe were telephone line poles, the poles going directly to the building.
Can you ... tell me if the building was used by RR personnel to look for dangers to the track or was only used as a fire lookout? Also any info about any RR grades relatively close to the building? ...
–Tim Roumph, Sparks, Nevada
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 10:43 PM
6 Comments:
Also see,
CPRR/SPRR Fire Lookout Station on Red Mountain (Signal Peak)
Also see,
Fires Always a Menace.
Also see,
"cost of maintaining fire lookouts both within the sheds and on adjacent peaks"
Also see,
"Lookout Peak is still accessible, used by the fire watcher from 1874 until 1935."
Also see, Reno Nevada, March 2, 1879: One of Reno's first major fires kills 5, burns 50 acres.
Did the Central Pacific Railroad fire lookout on red mountain have a telegraph connection?
Gemini AI:
No, the Central Pacific Railroad fire lookout on Red Mountain (also known as Signal Peak) did not have a direct telegraph connection.
Instead, it relied on a remarkably progressive piece of technology for its time: the telephone.
Sierra Nevada Geotourism
Established in 1876 to protect miles of highly flammable wooden snowsheds over the Sierra Nevada, the lookout was equipped with one of the very first telephones in California around 1877 or 1878—just a year or so after Alexander Graham Bell invented it. Running a traditional telegraph line up to the rugged, 7,700-foot summit and expecting lookouts to constantly tap out Morse code wasn't practical, so the railroad opted for voice communication.
National Historic Lookout Register
The emergency system worked through a coordinated chain:
The Lookout: The 24-hour fire watchers on Red Mountain would spot smoke rising from the snowsheds.
Sierra Nevada Geotourism
The Telephone Line: They used the telephone to call down to the railroad station at Cisco.
Sierra Nevada Geotourism
The Telegraph Relay: The operator at Cisco would take the voice report and immediately telegraph the precise location of the fire to the nearby stations where specialized steam-powered fire trains were kept on standby with full heads of steam, ready to rush out and combat the blaze.
Sierra Nevada Geotourism
So while the telegraph was the backbone of the railroad's communication network along the tracks, it was the telephone that connected the summit lookout to the rest of the line.
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