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Newspaper List
Beatty
Bullfrog Miner – Beatty, Nevada [was called the
Bullfrog Miner during first two months of publication –
not to be confused with the Bullfrog Miner, of
Rhyolite, Nevada]
Inyo
Independent
– Independence, California
Inyo
Register – Bishop, California
Rhyolite Herald
– Rhyolite, Nevada
All
new additions to this page will be noted by this symbol --
Jordan / Lundy Lake, California
Newspaper Articles
Inyo
Register, March
16, 1911
“SNOW SNUFFS OUT LIVES: EIGHT PERSONS, KNOWN
HERE, KILLED AT LUNDY.”
The Hydro-Electric plant near
Lundy was destroyed and eight people killed by a snowslide. Among the
reported dead are R.H. Mason, who used to be an operator at Plant 4
near here, and his wife; Messrs, Peacock, Weir and Gallagher, and
three others. All are supposed to have been formerly resident in
Bishop creek canyon.
Inyo Register,
March 16, 1911
Mrs. R.H. Mason was rescued Friday from the snow
tomb in which she was buried for 60 hours beside the body of her
husband, at the Hydro-Electric plant near Lundy. Those who met death
in the appalling catastrophe were R.H. Mason, H.M. Weir, E.M.
Peacock, electricians, all former employees at the plants on Bishop
creek. It was reported that Greenleaf, another former operator near
here, was among the missing, but such was not the case. Four miners,
Patrick Stromblad, John Sullivan, Harold Hardy and Ben Pessner, were
also killed. Del Orme Knowlton, electrician, was killed at Lundy.
Samuel M. Smith, pioneer mine owner of Masonic, was killed by a
snowslide.
The scene of the more destructive slide is seven miles
from Lundy, the Bodie Miner says. The power house was concrete, as
were the two cottages which like the plant went down under the
avalanche. It was in one of the cottages that Mr. And Mrs. Mason
were. The buildings stood nearly 1000 feet from the steep part of the
mountain, but as it proved, not far enough.
Mr. Poole informs us
the plant contained one generator, of 2000 horsepower. The company's
financial loss he estimates at probably $75,000.
(Hawthorne, Nevada)
Mineral County Independent-News, February 26,
1969
“STORY OF THE BIG SNOW SLIDE IN MONO COUNTY IN 1911
TOLD BY LOCAL MAN.”
(Steve Scanavino, who was raised in
Mono County, California, and now is a Hawthorne resident, wrote the
following article for the Independent-News in 1960. Because the
severe snowstorms of 1969 parallel those of another era, the article
is reprinted in this issue.)
By Steven A. Scanavino
June 10,
1960
This is a true story of a snowslide disaster which happened
March 7, 1911, at 12:01 mid-night at Mill Creek, sometime called
Jordan, which is located about four miles North West of Mono Lake,
California, against the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, and a short
section of this range known as Copper Mountain is the first big
mountain directly ahead and a little north of where the pole line
road enters Highway 395 from Hawthorne, Nevada. It got its name
“Copper Mountain” from copper mining in the years 1880,
which produced a quantity of pure copper (called Native Copper). The
necessary water needed for this copper mining was taken from Lunday
[sic] Canyon; the canal to carry water was run high up on the
east side of Copper Mountain; the line of this canal is still
visible.
Previous to year 1925, during the winters, it was not
unusual for a snowfall of around twelve feet in Bodie, at least
thirty inches at Mono Lake, and the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range was
always covered with enough snow to hide almost all rock cliffs and
trees.
In the Sierra Nevada Mountains are many deep and rugged
canyons with almost vertical walls thousands of feet high, such as
Lunday [sic] Canyon, Virginia Lakes, Green Creek and many
other canyons all over the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range.
During
the winter months it snows almost continual and keeps piling up till
the weight of the snow becomes too great to hang on the side of the
canyon, then the snow lets loose and tons of it slides to the bottom
of the canyon which are called snow slides.
Snow slides are very
destructive, they can wipe the side of canyon walls of trees, loose
rocks and anything else that is not anchored solid enough to
withstand them. Many people lost their lives by snow slides and only
people who had lived in snow slide country knew how destructive and
deadly they can be. And when snow slide was mentioned within hearing
of the old timers, they felt sorry for any one or anything in its
path; they knew the tremendous power of a snow slide.
The Winter
of 1910, and the first months of 1911, were a record snowfall. It
started to snow in December of 1910, and kept snowing to the first
part of January 1911, and then changed to a wet snow and finally
stopped snowing January 16, and it turned to a very cold spell which
froze the wet snow and made a solid cake of ice all over the Mono
Lake Valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. Then on February
22, 1911, it started to snow again and it snowed continuously day and
night for three weeks until the 10th of March.
Twenty-eight feet of snow fell in Bodie, five feet at the Scanavino
Ranch – Mono Lake, and over 25 feet at Mill Creek or Jordan,
and the Sierra Nevada Mountains were covered like no one ever saw
them before. They looked like a mountain of solid snow, hardly any
trees or rocks could be seen. This great amount of snow piling up on
top of the cake of ice caused many snow slides in the steep rugged
canyons, which was unseen, at the time but the tremendous rumble of
the slide could be heard and felt for miles away, and the destructive
results of the slides which broke down all the small and large trees,
broke down large rock cliffs and took everything to the bottom of the
canyon where the slides finally came to a stop, leaving such a volume
of debris that required rerouting the roads and water streams in many
places.
The Power Company in 1909 built a large Hydro Power House
and four cottages at the foot of Copper Mountain. The water for the
power water wheels came from Lunday [sic] Lake. The buildings
were constructed of extra heavy concrete design to withstand snow
slides of the size which had occurred in that neighborhood during the
previous winters in case one did reach these buildings. There was no
indication that snow slides ever reached that far down to where the
new power house and cottages were situated. Proof of this was that
several large trees, estimated to be over 100 years old were standing
near where the power house and cottages were built. Also nearby wass
[sic] an old copper smelter building built in the year 1880,
which had never been disturbed.
But at exactly 12:01 midnight on
March 7, 1911, all hell broke loose. It was the largest snow slide in
the western history which covered over one mile long, half mile wide,
and from eighteen to twenty-two feet deep which was the entire east
side of Copper Mountain slid off, an estimated 4,000,000 tons of
snow. This big slide cleaned out everything – the power house,
cottages, the old trees and buildings. They were sheared right off at
the ground and carried 500 feet beyond its original location to a
snow covered field. To indicate the force and speed of this
particular snow slide, an Electric Transformer which was inside the
Power House, standing over 15 feet high and weighing over 20 tons,
was skidded vertically over 300 feet; it was still in a vertical
position when it finally stopped.
The Power Plant was put in
operation in the Fall of 1910. Electric power was transmitted for the
first time to Bodie, Aurora, Lucky Boy, Fairview and ended at the
Wonder Mine, these latter two being in Churchill County. All of these
places were operating mines and mills, each employing several hundred
men.
When the power went off at 12:01 mid-night, Bodie was the
first to assume responsibility, being the nearest to Mill Creek and
also the power company main office was in Bodie. Their first thought
that some place the long transmission line had fallen down. Tests
were made and found that the trouble was between Bodie and Mill
Creek.
After the test two Power Company employees started out on
skis towards Mill Creek to look for the trouble, bucking a fifty mile
wind with loose snow flying in every direction; it was a regular
blizzard. The men got lost and had to return to Bodie. Then a new
start was made with four more expert ski men joined them, each man
loaded himself with lineman tools, a supply of line materials enough
to make a small size repair job, also a portable telephone, and so
anxxious [sic] to locate the power trouble they forgot to take
along drinking water and food. They slowly made their way on the top
of over twenty feet of snow and fought a fifty mile blizzard all the
way to the Scanavino Ranch which was a distance of nine miles from
Bodie where drinking water and food and shelter was available. The
hard crust of the frozen snow wore the wax off the bottom of their
skis.
One the wax is worn off, the snow will stick to the bare ski
bottom and this makes it very tough going. As all old time ski men
carried with them a bar of fells naptha [sic] soap, so when
the wax was worn off and the snow stuck to the skis the soap was
rubbed on the bottom of the skis, which kept the snow from sticking
for at least a mile, so with several applications of soap five of the
men were able to reach the Scanavino Ranch at 6:45a.m. They were
tired, hungry and cold, the temperature was 12 below zero, the sixth
man broke a ski and in doing so sprained his ankle, when the other
five men had reached the ranch they reported the injured man and the
Scanavino boys and girls went out after him and brought him in on a
hand pulled sleigh, where first aid was applied, with the application
of Sloan's liniment.
On the Scanavino Ranch there was always a
good supply of ski wax and tools to apply the wax to the skis, so the
Scanavino boys and girls rewaxed the skis for the five men while they
rested until 11:30 a.m., then again they proceeded on towards Mill
Creek. I was sixteen years of age and an expert on skis, so I went
along with the men taking the place of the man who had to stay on the
ranch with the sprained ankle.
It was nine miles to Mill Creek
from the Scanavino Ranch. We pushed along as fast as we could go and
reached the vicinity of Mill Creek at 5:30 p.m. Not finding any line
breaks, we figured the line could be broken down between the last
hill and the power house, as the wind was known to blow very hard at
this place, and not unusual to hit 75 miles per hour.
At about
4:15 p.m., we passed the spot where Highway 395 is now located, which
is about one mile from Mill Creek power plant, and all up hill to the
top of the mountain ridge, then dropped in a hollow about 1000 feet
wide where the power plant and cottages at the foot of Copper
Mountain were located. As we pushed along up the hill bucking a very
strong wind and blizzard, we were beginning to get very tired. We
could hear occasional rumbles of snow slides far back in the high
steep mountain of Lundy Canyon and the Virginia Lakes canyon.
When
we reached the top of the high the wind died down. The heavy overcast
clouds hung a few hundred feet above the ground. We arrived at the
top of the hill at 5:30 p.m., March 8. We looked across the hollow
where we expected to see the power house and four cottages, but
instead, to our great surprise, we could see nothing but a tremendous
lot of snow. We realized then that a big snow slide had wiped out the
entire settlement.
It was hard for me to believe, as it was only a
short while before, that I had skied over to Mill Creek carrying the
mail to them. The power house, the cottages and many power poles that
supported the power distribution switch gear toward Bodie were all
buried in over twenty feet of hard packed snow. A few days before I
saw and heard the machinery running and then now for me to see
nothing but snow in its place was indeed a shock and sight I can
never forget. To make the sight even more gloomier, a high pressure
water pipe had been broken by the snow slide, and it was squirting
water over two hundred feet int the air and as it landed, it froze
which built up an iceberg over one hundred feet high and formed
icicles of many different shapes.
The next move for us was to call
the power company office in Bodie and give them the sad news. The
telephone line poles were installed at twenty feet high and he had to
dig down through eight feet of hard frozen snow to reach the two
telephone wires.
We did not know at this time how many people were
living at the plant, but when our portable phone was connected, we
soon got the Bodie office as a man was kept on the phone continually
after the power went off. The operator at Bodie told us that the
power house operator had called Bodie at 11:45 p.m., sixteen minutes
before the slide struck and said the eight men and one woman were at
the plant. He said that snow was falling hard and due to the
tremendous amount on the side hill, four men living in the cottages
got worried so they moved over to the power house and went to sleep
near the three big transformers. Heat from the transformers keyt
[sic] the room nice and warm, and the power house being built
of extra heavy reinforced concrete was considered a safe place to
stay. Two men were already in the power house operating the
machinery. One man slept in the old copper smelter.
It was around
8:00 p.m. when we completed the phone call to the Bodie office, we
thought about combing the area to see if any trace could be found of
the ones trapped in the slide. But after second thought realized that
it was too dangerous to be in that area on account of rocks and
boulders loosened by the first big snow slide would at intervals land
in the area with great force, and also we were very tired. We decided
to go to the Fred Mattly Ranch about one mile North for the night. At
the Mattly Ranch we saw one of the men that was reported to be at the
power plant at the time of the slide, but instead of him going to the
Power Plant with the others shortly before the slide he got his skis
and went to the Mattly Ranch. Fred Mattly cooked up a very good meal
for us and after a couple hours rest, two of the men decided to go
back to the Power Plant location and see if possibly some of the
buried people could have dug their way out of the deep snow and they
would be able to help them. When they got back to the slide area they
went as close as possible keeping out of danger, and called to the
top of their voice the names of the people buried, but gave up
several hours later to a sad situation. With no answer they went back
to the Mattly Ranch for the balance of the night.
The John Conway
Ranch and home was about two miles east of the Fred Mattly Ranch. We
decided they should be notified about the slide, so one man
volunteered to notify the Conways, leaving the Mattly place about
mid-night and arriving at the Conway place about 2:00 a.m., fighting
snow and a heavy wind blizzard all the way across the open fields,
the temperature was twenty-eight below zero. John Conway immediately
notified all the Mono Lake people by telephone.
Immediately after
the news reached the Bodie Power Company office, messenger men were
rushed to spread the news to the different saloons where most of the
town men and women were whooping it up, as the Miners could not work
on account of the Mines and Mills being without power. Gambling,
drinking and floor-shows were in full swing, but there was the
occasional question if news had been received from the repair crew.
However, it wasn't long until a messenger came running from saloon to
saloon. He hit the front doors with a bang and almost pulled the
doors free from their hinges. He called at at the top of his
voice.
“Attention everyone, I have news from the power line
repair crew.”
His words anxiously waited for, were no more
spoken when the racket in the saloon – the clatter of poker
chips, sound of silver and gold pieces jingling here and there on the
oak tables and walnut bars, the rattle of drinking glasses, and the
bar room singing and music – all very suddenly stopped and it
was so quiet one could hear a pin drop. The messenger
continued.
“Mill creek was struck by a snow slide and was
completely wiped out – seven men and one woman are known to be
buried in the slide.”
These words sent chills through the
veins of everyone. Their blood ran cold, and even though hard tough
miners wilted back in their chairs and dropped their heads with a few
words of prayer for the ones buried in the slide, as they knew from
past experiences how deadly a snow slide can be. Some of the men
quietly mentioned that they would go to Mill Creek; they left, and
others followed with the same intention. Gamblers dropped their cards
on the floor and walked out not even taking time to pick up their
money from the table, and drinking men at bars did not take time to
finish their drink, they just dropped their glasses on the floor and
departed from the saloon. Nothing else had seemed important except to
get to Mill Creek, and in less than one hour there was one hundred
men headed out of Bodie toward Mill Creek on skis.
The first four
miles of road out of Bodie included Bucker Flat, Sugar Loaf Grade and
Bodie Grade, which was known to be the most treacherous six miles
that anyone ever traveled in winter, bad enough with twenty-two feet
of snow, but far worse when a blizzard was on. It made it tough going
and only very good snow men could get through; the weakest men were
saved by shelters along the way.
During the winter months many men
were needed for mail, express and freight carriers from Bodie to Mono
Lake. Before the beginning of winters the carriers would set up
cabins at intervals along the route not over one mile aport [sic].
Each of the cabins was well stocked with food, water, bedding and
wood for the protection of their drivers that may become sick
exhausted or equipment broke down, or caught in seventy-five mile
blizzards, and snow blindness was common and proves to be very
serious unless a person can get shelter so at [sic] to be able
to treat the eyes, which in bad cases takes about one week before one
can step out in the glaring snow again. These cabins were life savers
for at least thirty of the one hundred men on the way to Mill Creek
when som became exhausted. Others broke their skis and sprained
ankles. Two stoicked [sic] cabins sheltered them until they
were helped back to Bodie.
The balance of the men on the way to
Mill Creek fought their way through the deep snow and blizzard and
were able to reach the Scanavino Ranch arriving there at 6:00 a.m.
which was March 9. Five of the men fell short of reaching the ranch
and were helped through by Indian boys.
After a large breakfast
and four hours rest, the crew was back in condition to resume their
trip toward Mill Creek. Lunches were made up for all. Only about 75
of the men were able to go on. Balance of them had to remain on the
ranch, most took colds and some were not used to skiing, and became
exhausted.
In those days not many drugs were kept around the
house. No matter what ailed one, my mother would boil up a pot of
squaw tea. Several cups of that tea appeared to cure almost any type
of ailment, and that is just what the sick men took and all of them
made fast recovery. Squaw tea was plentiful; it grows among the
sagebrush, and pine trees near Mono Lake. The Indians were the first
to use squaw tea for a medicine and that is how it got its name
“squaw tea.”
The approximately seventy-five men who
went on to Mill Creek arrived there at 5:30 p.m. They were very tired
and the area was dangerous with small slides and loose rock always
coming down. Rumbles of slides miles away could be felt and heard at
intervals. So we decided to go to the Mattly house about a mile
northwest for the night and get an early start the next morning.
On
March 10th, early in the morning, over one hundred men
from the entire surrounding country added to the Bodie men were at
work digging at the location of the power plant area where it was
definitely known that a man and wife were buried at the location of
Number One Cottage [punct] The six other men were found sooner
as they were all in the Power House at the time of the slide and were
skidded over 500 and were skidded out over 500 [doubled sentence]
feet along with Power House Machinery. One man was located by sight
of his right hand which was plainly visible sticking up out of the
loosened rocks and mud. The other two men were washed out of the mud
by high pressure water from broken pipes and were frozen solid to the
debris where most of the power house machinery came to a rest. It was
quite often we all had to make a run for higher elevations when
someone would yell out to take cover, slide and rock coming –
there we went the snow being frozen hard enough so that we could run
on top of the hard crust created by twenty-eight degree below zero
temperature and sure enough the slides kept coming and kept filling
up the holes we were digging and when we returned from the run to
safety, we had to start from the beginning again and most of our
tools buried in the last slide.
It was at 2:23 p.m., March 10th,
when we first struck a chunk of broken concrete; it was the cottage
Number One west wall, (which is shown on the attached photo). When
the big snow slide struck, the cottage wall was layed [sic] on
top of the bed where the man and his wife were sleeping. Near the
bedside where the wife slept, was her large trunk more or less used
as a temporary table. This trunk was built of heavy constructive
material having heavy metal brass corners and metal wall supports,
especially made for steamship shipping, and this trunk was four
inches higher than the bad [sic] and the concrete wall slab
came to rest on one brass corner of the trunk which kept the slab of
the concrete four inches above the woman's face. The balance of the
concrete slab weighing over two tons crushed the remainder of the bed
to the floor and the husband was killed instantly and his motionless
body was pinned against her leg in such a manner she could not move.
Her small black dog always slept at the head of her bed, and he also
only had four inches of space to move in. First indication that
someone was alive under the slab of concrete was the whimpering noise
from the dog which was very faint. We immediately pulled the dog out,
layed [sic] it upon one of the crewmen's coat, and rendered
first aid. He was both frightened and cold; he shook like he was
freezing to death, so we wrapped him in the coat. We could hardly
hold him, and finally he slipped out of the wrapping and took off
across the snow running as fast as he could, soon exhausted he hid
under a large boulder, he was then brought back and was carried along
with its master.
We continued to dig further beneath the slab of
concrete not knowing what we were to find for sure. Then suddenly we
heard faint groans, painful groans. It was the woman. We had found
her, and it was 62½ hours from the time the slide struck. She
was rescued from her coffin-like place and was given immediate first
aid. It was necessary because she had developed a very bad case of
gangrene in her left leg where her husband's dead body had rested
against it. The bath room was near the bedroom where this woman lay.
The force of the snow slide had ripped out the entire bathroom walls
and its fixtures leaving the ends of the sink and tub drain pipes
open. The other end of these drain pipes were connected to the large
water wheel discharge called the tail race which was not covered over
by the deep snow on account of the broken high pressure water pipe
kept washing the snow away. Both ends of these bath room drains being
open allowed fresh air to return to the original bath room and near
enough for the trapped woman to beathe [sic] fresh air which
no doubt was the one thing that kept her alive. No time was lost in
rushing her to the Conway Ranch two miles away. A toboggan had been
made up. It was prepared for such an occasion, with three teams each
with ten men on skis pulling the toboggan. A mad rush was made across
the open fields. It was thirty-seven minutes from the time the woman
was taken from her death bed to the time she was receiving medical
care at the Conway home, under the care of Mrs. Conway, a trained
nurse. Mrs. Conway verified the fact that gangrene had set in and it
was decided that a chance to save the patient's liwe [sic] was
to get her to a hospital was quickly as we possibly could, which was
Bodie the nearest hospital. In those days there was only a dirt road
to Bishop and it was closed all winter, the same as it was from
Bridgeport to Reno, just a poor dirt road and closed during the
winter months.
In previous months the road to Bodie could be
opened by many men with shovels and horses. But this winter the snow
fall was far deeper than ever before, and would take weeks to open
this road so that the patient could be taken to Bodie on a sleigh
pulled by horses. John Conway and other men well experienced in
opening roads through deep snows decided this method to be too slow,
so they decided that the only way this woman's life might be saved
was to get her to Bodie hospital within three days and could only be
done by teams of men on skis pulling the toboggan. The word was
passed around and everyone was in favor of the decision, and each and
every man got busy checking, waxing their skis. John Conway had a
first class blacksmith on the ranch, so he instructed him to
construct a toboggan with steel runners and that it would be equipped
with eight pulling ropes. Work went on all night and the toboggan was
completed on schedule.
We needed more skis too, so Lewie
DeChambeau who owned a ranch near the north shore of Mono Lake, about
six miles from the Conway Ranch and about four miles from the
Scanavino Ranch, made the best skis in this part of the country and I
knew he always kept at least a dozen pair in stock. Many time I went
to the ranch and helped him make skis. Two men took off for the
DeChambeau Ranch to pick up all the skis he had and was to meet the
toboggan crew at the Scanavino Ranch which was four miles away. Mr.
DeChambeau got the skis ready, and also gathered together all his
apparatus and materials for waxing skis, which is rosin, bee's wax
and pinion pitch. He also went along with the two men. At his ranch
were several Indians and when they heard the news they also
volunteered to go along and help carry the skis. A great help indeed
as Lewie DeChambeau put it, “when I need help, I can always
depend on my Indian neighbors.”
The toboggan with the
patient was pulled by a team of forty-eight expert ski men and left
the Conway Ranch at 4:00 a.m., early to take advantage of the frozen
snow. Maud Conway, a school teacher, and young niece of John Conway,
was an expert on skis and she went along with the team to care for
the patient. I went ahead as fast as I could on my skis to the
Scanavino Ranch, which was a distance of nine miles, to make
arrangements to feed around seventy-five people. This made it
necessary for the Scanavino boys to butcher a steer, two hogs, and
dig out from the ground potatoes and other vegetables. During the
fall harvesting of our crops, we would dig large holes in the ground
about four feet deep and put all our vegetables in these holes and
cover them over with dry sand. This kept the vegetables from freezing
and could be dug up as needed. We also milked several cows and made
our own butter.
To get all this done before the toboggan team
arrived from the Conway Ranch which we figured it would take about
six hours, the Scanavino family, consisting of six boys and four
girls and mother, with the help of several Indian families living by
the Scanavino Ranch, their children going to school with the
Scanavino children, everything was ready when the caravan
arrived.
The caravan arrived at the Scanavino Ranch about 3:30
p.m., somewhat delayed due to fighting a strong wind and the snow was
not frozen hard enough to hold the skis on top. They kept breaking
through the crust which made it very slow going. All of the crew were
very tired and many of them got some snow blindness and the skis were
in bad condition, the wax being completely worn off the bottom of
every ski. Lewie DeChambeau lost no time, with the help of his
Indians, they gave the 100 odd skis two coats of well made wax, and
made other necessary repairs, to the skis foot hold. Flour was
getting a little short so the Indians always stored away for the
winter many sacks of pinenuts. They offered to shell out several
hundred pounds of pinenuts and grind them into flour and mixed with
our wheat flour, made a very good bread. Over twenty Indians worked
all night shelling pinenuts and grinding the inside contents to make
the flour. The caravan rested at the Scanavino Ranch part of the
night.
The morning of March 12 everyone was up early. A big
breakfast was served, large lunches were made and loaded onto a
second toboggan along with a large coffee pot, a homemade stove, a
thirty gallon drum of water, pulled by a team of six men on skis. The
caravan pulled out at 1:00 a.m. The weather was calm and cool at 16
degrees below zero. The well waxed skis slipped over the crust of the
hard frozen snow with hardly any effort. The chief of the Indians
anticipated the trouble we were going to have pulling the toboggan up
the Bodie Canyon hills on skis. So he got about twnety of his Indians
to go along with the caravan. The Indians did not use skis to any
great extent. Instead they used snow shoes which the Indians made
their own by taking green willow and bending it in a circle about
fifteen inches in diameter and then lacing it with rawhide straps in
a criss-cross manner, and then tied them to their feet. They walked
with them like regular shoes. Then when we reached a hill with the
toboggan the men on skis kept sliding back so the Indians would take
over with their snow shoes and walk right up the hill which cut the
time of getting the toboggan to Bodie by several hours.
The people
in Bodie did not sit back and wait for us to pull the toboggan all
the way to Bodie. They worked day and night with horses and shovels
to open the road through the twenty odd feet of snow on Butcher Flat
and Sugar Loaf grade where the toboggan met them and the patient was
then transferred from the toboggan to a sligh pulled by four horses
equipped with snow shoes especially made for the horses, and it was
only a short time that the patient was placed in the hospital in
Bodie – it was then found that the gangrene was reaching a
danger point and required medical attention greater than the Bodie
hospital could offer, in order to save her infected leg. She was then
taken to an Oakland hospital, it was then found that the gangrene
could not be checked, so her leg had to be amputated. After that she
got well and the Power Company gave her a job in their main office
for the balance of her life.
Although we all endured much
hardship, we knew it was worth it because we had saved the life of
this woman.
The Power Company was very well pleased in the manner
in which everyone turned out to help in such an emergency and wrote
to us a very nice letter, of appreciation, and including
reimbursements.
The seven men who lost their lives in htis [sic]
snow slide disaster are buried on a small hill approximately three
quarters of a mile north and in view of the place where they were
killed. The location of the cemetery is approximately 300 feet east
of the old Fred Mattly home which was the north extreme end where the
large snow slide extended to and stopped within fifty feet of the
Mattly home.
The bodies of the seven men as they were removed from
the wreckage were taken to the Fred Mattly home on a toboggan pulled
by 8 men on skis. At the Mattly home they were carefully laid on a
wooden platform in the well decorated front room and guarded around
the clock by the men who helped in the rescue. These men helped in
freezing temperatures for a period of three weeks waiting for coffins
to be brought from Bodie. During the three weeks, the road from Bodie
was opened so that the coffins were hauled in by horse drawn
sleighs.
When the coffins arrived accompanied by an undertaker,
many neighbors from miles around this vicinity came to attend the
funerals, and to assist digging of the eight graves in the hard rocky
soil and to add to the hardship was that the ground surface was
frozen to at least twenty-four inches deep. The continuous hammering
on the cold chisel by a gang of over twenty men working in teams got
the job done in time to start the funeral at 1 p.m. sharp. Services
were held in the large front room of the Fred Mattly home. A priest
spoke the necessary words, and to fit in with his sermon incidentally
was occasional sound from the sleigh bells from the horses tied up to
the hitching post just outside the front door; it was cold and the
horses moved about just enough to ring at intervals the bronze sleigh
bells mounted on top of the hames [sic] on the horse collar.
After services the bodies were taken to the cemetery and placed on
their graves and one by one they were lowered to rest with the words
spoken by the priest, and songs to fit the occasion were sung by
various neighboring women standing on a high snow bank at the head of
the graves and facing the spot which could be plainly seen where
these people men their death.
It was clear and cool and all was
quiet. The words of the songs rose high in the cool air and passed
over the caskets which had been lowered in the graves and seemed to
climb high and disappear over the rugged Sierra Nevada snow capped
mountain range.
Now the laying away of the unfortunate, and the
sad rescue job was completed, and all felt that they had done all
that could be done considering the extreme weather condition which
existed.
Later when the snow melted away, the Power Company shaped
up the graves and built a fence around the new cemetery, which als
[sic] includes the grave of one man killed near Lundy by a
snow slide which happened about the same time as the Mill Creek
slide. Each grave is marked with a piece of white gray marble stone
reclaimed from the wrecked power plant switchboard.
The
switchboard which was installed in the power house to support the
power control switches and all the electrical meters, which made of
white gray high grade marble about two and a half inches thick. When
the slide struck the plant, it broke this switch board into many
pieces. Eight of these pieces, about the size of a pillow, were
gathered up and the name and date they were killed were carved into
the pieces of marble and placed at the head of each grave. Each year
the Power Company men dress up the cemetery and it is kept clean of
brush and other growth of weeds and the steel fence is given a fresh
coat of paint.
Headstones
at Cemetery of March, 1911 Avalanche Victims
H.M.
Wier
Died March 7, 1911.
D.O. Knowelton
Died
March 7, 1911
R.H. Mason
“Killed
in snowslide.”
March 7, 1911
R. Harden
Died
March 7, 1911.
P. Stromblad
Died
March 7, 1911
Patrick
Stromblad
Died March 8, 1911
Aged 42 years
L. Laveaux
Died
March 7, 1911
B. Pesen
Died
March 7, 1911.
Law & Order, Life & Death California Site List
Law & Order, Life & Death Other States List
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2006 D.A. Wright
All Rights Reserved
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