[Illustration: A WESTERN MINNEHAHA Copyright by F. A. Rinehart, Omaha.]
[Illustration: AT RENO MODERN BUILDINGS AND THE FINE BRIDGE THAT SPANS THE TRUCKEE MARK THE UPBUILDING OF NEVADA’S PRINCIPAL CITY]
Reno is at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, the great wall rising to the westward and separating California from the rest of the country. This highest of mountain chains in our country extends several hundred miles north and south. Perhaps no other range of mountains in the world has attractions so great or of such variety. The Sierra Nevada, the Snowy Range, or, as John Muir has more aptly termed it, the Range of Light, has many main ridges extending from 6,000 to 12,000 feet above sea level, with guardian peaks over 14,000 feet high. Highest of all and greatest mountain peak in the United States outside of Alaska is Mt. Whitney, 14,529 feet high. These mountains which the Overland Route crosses on its way to the Pacific have the greatest coniferous forests on earth. Among its peaks nestle the largest and most numerous of mountain lakes. Between its walls are unsurpassed mountain chasms. Its streams, unexcelled in beauty, possess the greatest potential power of all the waters of American mountains.
The Sierra Nevada is crossed by the Overland Route along a scenic pathway associated with much of interest in history and tradition. Here were the greatest obstacles in the way of the pioneer railroad builders. Nature seemed here to have rallied her forces for a final stand. Here Theodore Judah, the pioneer pathfinder of the railway, found his most difficult work. The climb up the mountain side is up the canyon of the beautiful Truckee River, a famous trout stream, a journey lined with beautiful forests of pine and mountain walls.
[Illustration: A STREET IN CARSON CITY, NEVADA, WHERE FAMOUS FOOTPRINTS AND FOSSIL REMAINS OF PREHISTORIC MONSTERS HAVE BEEN FOUND]
At Boca, Prosser Creek and Iceland, the “chief crop” is ice; at Floriston, paper; at Truckee, lumber and box stock; and at Lake Tahoe, a very good time. Boca is junction with the Boca & Loyalton road, a forty mile line northward through Sierra and Plumas Valleys—noted for its forests, beautiful little valleys, and lakes. Truckee is a lumbering and railroad town of two thousand people, Thence, a distance of 14 miles farther up the river, runs the Lake Tahoe Railway to the shore of Lake Tahoe.