After the snow thaw, we headed for “the Hill,” hiking along the rails and sheds overlooking Donner Lake. I peeked under and inside the old wooden sheds, sometimes rained on by dripping snowmelt, enveloped in smoke from locomotive exhaust, or eaten alive by mosquitoes. But mostly I stumbled along trying to keep up with Dick, the ever-consummate hiker and storyteller, as he told me about the heroic efforts of thousands of Central Pacific laborers who had built 37 miles of timber sheds and carved tunnels through solid granite 116 years before.
A year later in late June, Dick and I were coming back from Truckee and drove up old Highway 40 approaching the 7,017-foot summit, when we looked up and saw another wooden shed gone, heaps of freshly cut timbers strewn about the hillside. Entering the summit parking area, we hoped to find a railroad employee, but no one was around. Noticing the Bridge & Building crew house trailers at the site, we decided to come back the following week. Dick had an idea for another story.
On July 5, we hiked out to the site where Shed 37 used to be, looking for a project boss. We both had letters of permission from Southern Pacific to be on the property. The Sacramento Division surveyors were at work, along with Dick Carter, Bridge & Building supervisor. I didn’t hear the conversation between Stein and Carter, but after examining our letters, he gave us permission to photograph the construction site, probably thinking we’d show up a couple of times and be gone. Little did he know. We joined up with Carter’s B&B crew in late July and stayed with them until the completion of a new concrete snowshed on Nov. 5, 1984. The shed protected Track 1, part of the original transcontinental rail line over Donner Summit, which Southern Pacific ceased operating in 1993.
