When the wreckage finally slowed at the base of the mountain, they jumped clear of the flume.Īccording to Ramsdell, Fair said, “I will never again place myself on an equality with timber and wood,” while Hereford said, “I am sorry I ever built the flume.” Fair estimated, “We went at a mile a minute.” But as Ramsdell summed it up, “My deliberate belief is that we went at a rate that annihilated time and space.” The impact flattened both boats, but their waterlogged riders hung on. Then, near the end of the run, the second boat caught up and rammed the first. Shooting down trestles as high as 70 feet, Ramsdell was terrified: “You cannot stop you cannot lessen your speed you have nothing to hold to you have only to sit still, shut your eyes, say your prayers, take all the water that comes -filling your boat, wetting your feet, drenching you like a plunge through the surf-and wait for eternity.” At one point, the first boat hit a submerged object, hurling the carpenter out the front of the boat into the flume itself. Ramsdell was reluctant but reasoned that “if men worth 25 or 30 million apiece could afford to risk their lives, I could also afford to risk mine, which is not worth half as much.” The men embarked in two boats: Fair, Ramsdell and a “volunteered” carpenter in the front boat, and Flood in the rear boat with John Hereford, the contractor who built the flume. Ramsdell found himself atop the 15-mile run in a makeshift flume boat-little more than a “pig trough with one end knocked out,” 16 feet long and V-shaped like the flume. Ramsdell, a reporter for the New York Tribune, was “lucky” enough to get invited along. Fair, principals of the Bonanza firm, decided to baptize their newly completed flume with a ride down the mountain. Two of the tycoons to emerge from the Comstock Lode, James C.
The Bonanza firm had just built a 15-mile-long V-flume that extended from its 12,000-acre timber tract on the high slopes of the Sierra Nevada to Huffakers Station on the Virginia & Truckee Railroad, in present-day Reno. Timber was a precious commodity for the mines and the only source was the Sierra Nevada, dozens of miles away.
In 1875 the Comstock Lode was still pouring out its riches in Virginia City, Nevada. Lumbering was the key to mining profitability. Square-set Timbering and the V-Flume Kept the Comstock Lode Running Strong Close
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