DETOUR: GHOST OF A HIGHWAY IN PLACER COUNTY, A HINT OF TOURISM CALLED THE LINCOLN

An estimated 75,000 cars sweep past Roseville every day on Interstate 80, carrying harried commuters and other travelers whom boosters of Placer County hope to lure from the frantic freeway. The hope is to get the drivers off the freeway that cuts through the heart of their county's biggest city and steer them onto a slower, quieter, nostalgic journey along the remnants of I-80's pioneer predecessor -- the old Lincoln Highway.

That historic road, the western end of America's first transcontinental highway -- 3,331 miles from New York to San Francisco -- wound its way down the mountains through once-rich gold mining camps, railroad towns and farm communities recognized now only as signs on a freeway off-ramp. Lincoln Highway revivalists see the road as an invitation to those speeding by on I-80 to slow down for a trip back to the glory days of the automobile through some magnificent scenery and places that remain locked in time.

Wally Lagorio, director of Placer County's Information Center, said preliminary efforts are under way to organize supporters from towns along the way and -- perhaps with the help of historical societies and the state Department of Transportation -- to mark the route with replicas of those original signs. "We must create a reason for the traveler to slow down or even stop to get a look at the scenic and historic spots,'' he said. "When you consider that Placer County's restaurants, hotels, bars, gift shops, and sporting goods stores did a combined $48 million in the first quarter of 1988, how much more could we accomplish with use of the Lincoln Highway and other seldom-traveled scenic back roads as a key to tapping an additional tourist resource?'' Lagorio said he and others are captivated by the idea of turning what remains of the storied Lincoln Highway into a longer version of the Monterey Peninsula's vaunted 17-Mile Drive. The near-forgotten route, he points out, traverses some lovely and isolated country and is lightly traveled now, mainly by locals. The pioneer national highway was marked by red-white-and-blue signs emblazoned with the capital letter "L'' and nailed to telegraph poles and fence posts as navigation aids for early-day motorists.

From his headquarters in Colfax, a once-booming railroad center, Russ Englestadt, marina concessionaire at nearby Rollins Lake, expressed his enthusiasm for promoting use of the old highway. "It would be the greatest thing since popcorn,'' he said of the route that might help revitalize his town. "A lot of people would be pleasantly surprised when they discovered what we have here.''

The idea that visitors could spend an entire day exploring on quiet back roads from historic old Auburn to Truckee -- through the storied mining camps of Gold Run, Dutch Flat and places named Clipper Gap, Applegate, and Alta -- shows promise, he said, of bolstering a lagging economy in those small towns.

Started by a group of astute Detroit automakers, the Lincoln Highway Association organized in 1913 to promote a coast-to-coast highway "open to all lawful traffic … without toll charges.'' Charted by adventurous motorists between 1913 and 1916, the route struck out from the New Jersey banks of the Hudson River and headed west across the plains and the mountains following emigrant trails and wagon roads. As it snaked down the mountain from Donner Summit, the ""highway'' actually rode the Southern Pacific right-of-way. Travelers were warned that approaches to the railroad snow sheds at Norden were hazardous. "Before entering the snow sheds, note whether trains are approaching,'' a map's footnote read, "This road is impassable in winter. Hotels are found at Towle, Immigrant Gap, and Truckee.''

Promoted and supported by the major car companies and suppliers before federal and state funds were available, the route was the first, life-giving artery of the national highway system. The Complete Official Guide to the Lincoln Highway, published in 1916, recently was resurrected by Sacramento automobile historian Lynn Protteau. Edited by her in 1984, it was re-issued in dedication to the pioneer highway builders and adventuresome tourists.

In 1921 Congress passed legislation to help develop a national highway system but with the start of government plans to number all highways, the Lincoln Highway lost its identity. Major portions of the route become Highways 30 or 40, predecessors of present-day I-80.

Today, with a little guidance, the remains of the route are fairly easy to follow. A run down Riverside Drive in Roseville puts a driver on what once was the old road. The road continues onto Atlantic Street and out to I-80, where a jog on Taylor Road through Rocklin puts the traveler back on track. The route then parallels the freeway, winding through Loomis, Penryn, and Newcastle before it enters Auburn passing the old Placer County Courthouse on Maple Street. The course runs up Maple to Lincoln Way and out of town headed east. The road proceeds through Clipper Gap, Applegate, and Colfax and on to Gold Run, Dutch Flat, and Alta. Weather permitting, another segment continues through the ski resorts at Soda Springs and Norden, over the twisting old Donner Summit grade, along the shore of Donner Lake and on to Truckee.

Typical of the places to be seen along the way is the quaint old town of Newcastle, briefly the head of the Central Pacific Railroad as it was being constructed in the 1860s. Rare old buildings bearing the stamp of Victorian and turn-of-the century architecture line Newcastle's tiny town square facing Packing Shed Row, from which a major share of California’s pears, apples, grapes, and other orchard products were shipped to Eastern fresh-fruit markets.

Travelers over the age of 50 may recall driving that twisting two-lane road where traffic often choked to a crawl and radiators boiled on hot summer afternoons before the advent of air conditioning. "It may seem ironic,'' Lagorio said, "that we're trying to turn a road that drivers once cursed into an opportunity for a leisurely scenic drive.''

AUBURN COURTHOUSE PROJECT BREATHES LIFE INTO PLACER’S PAST

Placer County museum curators are dusting off and repackaging some local history, hoping to capture the public's imagination at a new facility in the old Auburn courthouse. The museum, on the ground floor of the picturesque Placer County Courthouse on Maple Street, will open July 4 as the building is feted during a 100th birthday party.

Meanwhile, dust is flying in a part of the building that once served as a dark and damp men's prison. A combination of contractors, volunteers and current county jail inmates is hurrying to get the 2,200-square-foot main display area ready in time for the scheduled 1:15 p.m. opening on Independence Day, said David A. Tucker, the museum director.

The project has three parts, all under construction at once: (1) The main gallery, focusing on American Indians and the transportation chapters of Placer County history, (2) An authentic re-creation of the office occupied in 1915 by Sheriff Elmer Gum. (3) Five large display cases housing rotating exhibits.

"We hope to give the public a real sense of history," said Tucker, seated in his office but unable to relax because of frequent interruptions and the noise of hammers and saws nearby. "Everything is so transitory today. We're dealing with three-dimensional history here, far beyond the history books."

Once the sawdust is swept away and the museum is open on a regular 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday schedule, Tucker hopes to open up the pages of Placer County history to the region's schoolchildren. The county museum staff will prepare a teachers' guide to the museum that will help pupils understand and interpret local history.

There was a ready stock of artifacts for the museum, according to Tucker. An example: He was able to obtain almost every item of furniture from Elmer Gum's office, down to the confiscated guns the sheriff kept in a display case.

The county's transportation history highlights include a little-known first for the entire state, Tucker noted. The state's first railroad was three-quarters of a mile of track built in 1851 to link the mining settlement of Virginiatown with a gold-rich creek called Auburn Ravine.

The first transcontinental railroad also snaked through the county and Placer additionally played a part in the first transcontinental air-mail route, with lights spaced 20 miles apart across the Sierra Nevada to mark the aerial alignment of the route at night, Tucker said.

The new, $220,000 facility is something of a museum within a museum. Construction on the 130-foot-tall, domed courthouse began in 1894. It was declared structurally unsafe, vacated and restored during a four-year, $6.8 million project that ended in 1990 when its courtrooms were returned to service. One of the upstairs courtrooms was returned to its turn of the century flavor, complete with original oak furniture and green burlap wall covering.

If visitors to this sixth addition to the Placer County museum system aren't surprised to find a 120-year-old stagecoach on display, they may be intrigued by its history, Tucker said. The old "Yosemite" style, open-air coach carried the mail from Auburn to the mining camp of Michigan Bluff in the late 19th century. During a holdup on Foresthill Road, robbers stopped the stage by shooting the lead horse, Tucker said. The horse's roadside grave is marked with a monument.

The Big Move – Rail Yard Relocation 100 Years Ago Preceded Explosive Growth

When Roseville’s Ed Hammill and William Sawtell visited Southern California on a promotional business trip in March 1907, they took with them 5,000 handbills with the inscription, “Roseville, Placer County; Watch it grow.” And why shouldn’t the pair be confident? For the past year, the town had undergone such a population boom that it had literally run out of water, the result of what Roseville historian Leonard “Duke” Davis has termed “The Big Move.” This year the city is marking the 100^th anniversary of the railroad’s investment in Roseville, when Southern Pacific shifted operations to the city from its longtime Rocklin site, paving the way for Roseville to become the most important in Placer County. It all started with a rumor in late 1905: Southern Pacific Railroad would not complete scheduled improvements at its Rocklin facilities. The news sparked a firestorm of interest in the county’s numerous newspapers. “THE ROUNDHOUSE,” the Placer Herald, then based in Auburn, blared at the top of its Dec. 11, 1905, issue. A headline underneath read, “Will the Railroad Take It Away From Rocklin, and if so, Where to?” Quoting “reliable sources,” the Placer County Republican, also based in Auburn, corroborated the story. “If the reports prove true,” the Dec. 21, 1905, article concluded, “it will be a serious blow to Rocklin.” Rocklin’s own newspaper, the Representative, was more blunt: “If a bomb loaded with dynamite had been exploded in Rocklin last Tuesday, it could not have created more excitement than the news did.”

The next year, construction began in Roseville on what would become the largest railroad terminal in the West, changing the makeup of Placer County forever. The two-year move was part of a systemwide improvement program begun by H. H. Harriman, who presided over both the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific from 1901 to the time of his death in 1909, said Kyle Wyatt, Curator of the California State Railroad Museum. “Sacramento was running out of room because it had been built up around the railroad for the big classification yard they wanted,” Wyatt said. “And Rocklin didn’t have that kind of room for building the yard there.” While several other communities were listed as possibilities, Roseville, with its favorable location at intersection of the northbound and eastbound lines of Southern Pacific, it’s former name was Junction, won out. Until then, the town counted only about 250 inhabitants. But as construction started, hundreds of Southern Pacific railmen worked on the first roundhouse, pumping new life into the yet-unincorporated town. When completed in 1908 at an estimated cost of nearly $95,000, the roundhouse boasted 32 stalls, each one more than 87 feet deep. Construction on the huge Pacific Fruit Express ice plant in Roseville began that same year, boosting employment numbers further. The facility, jointly owned by SP and the Union Pacific railroad, built and iced “reefers” – refrigerated cars – and boasted 45,000 tons of ice storage by the 1920s, according to an article in the Southern Pacific Bulletin. A second roundhouse, providing 32 additional stalls, was completed in 1914; with it, no other facility in the West had so large a capacity.

But even before the first roundhouse was completed, the city was seeing changes outside the confines of the rail yard. Many in Rocklin simply up and moved to the booming town … taking their homes with them. In 1908, the year the first roundhouse was completed, the number of residents in the city had ballooned to 2,000, according to Davis’ “From Trails to Rail,” a history of Roseville published in 1964. All those new Rosevillians needed services. Shops, sewer lines, water facilities, and more sprung up around the town, a phenomenon not lost on the local press, which carried updates on the town’s frenzied changes almost weekly. “Times good, people busy, and money plentiful,” reported the July 20, 1907, issue of the Herald. “Everything moves here … The real estate men are busy and do not have to run down customers.” The influx of railmen – called “boomers” – also led to another business uptick, as a number of “drinking emporiums” sprung up all over town, catering to the newly flush community. Twelve saloons were already operating in 1907, reported the Register. “Around the 19^th of each month,” the paper wrote, “drunken men and intoxicated railroad employees have been common on the streets of Roseville.” Housing was also “at a critical state,” Davis said. “It was a tent city by the railroad tracks for a while. It was alleged even the storekeepers would rent out his place at night so a guy could sleep on the counter.”

The Roseville facility continued to be a major economic presence throughout much of the 20^th century. Economically, a period of decline beginning in the 1970s due to the competition from the trucking industry and other trends, was offset by a rise in high-tech industry. But the Roseville facility continued, and was reborn in 1999 with nearly $150 million in improvements. Today, the J. R. Davis Yard handles 90 percent of rail traffic in Northern California, according to Union Pacific’s web site. “It’s still a major force in Roseville,” Davis said. “For a while, things looked pretty gloomy to some people. But the key was the location. Roseville at the junction, so I don’t think it will every go away.”