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The following appeared in: Foley's Yosemite Souvenier & Guide 1907 |
| NOTE: | "The 1915 Foley's Yosemite Souvenir & Guide" also included is very simular to this "1907 Foley's Yosemite Souvenir & Guide" - it was updated. |
The Canyon Route to Yosemite From Merced, the "Fountain City," where connections are made with both the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe roads, to the terminus at El Portal, the "Gateway," 85 miles to the east, in the canyon of the Merced, there is a panoramic succession of varied points of interest that will add ever so much to your visit to that famous place. El Portal is 12 ½ miles from the Sentinel Hotel. As you pass from one interesting point to another, and they come quite often, though the train is limited to about 20 miles per hour, you wonder just what is coming next. Up ahead in the mist or Alpine glow of the Sierra canyon, looms up a great mountain peak, and you are wondering how the train is going to get by it. Now it is heading for a rocky bluff in front, and you instinctively look for the tunnel. It is not there. At the right moment comes the turn of the grade, and new points and vistas and more wonders of the canyon are opened up ahead. And these pleasant expectations, sensations and disappointments (if the latter may so be used) are duplicated many, many times before El Portal is reached. In surveying this route the engineers, in charge of N. C. Ray, wisely hugged closely to the river banks, the track being hut a few feet above high water. In fact much of the rock of the grade was shot into the river, in many cases forming part of the roadbed. And so for nearly 60 miles the railroad track and the Merced River run side by side, this being one of the most pleasing features of the trip. In fact the story of the canyon had not, nor can it be, half told. And so the train had not gotten far up into the rocky canyon ere we found ourselves, too, a willing convert, and in imagination, we were the Yosemite visitors en route. Then slowly as the train wound its way up the gorge, toward the cast and the High Sierras, there was unfolded to us the beauties, the wonders the ruggedness of the famous canyon of the "River of Mercy," the Merced. Such is the life of a mining camp. The piles of rocks so carefully "corded up" upon the liars and Hats, like so much wood, mutely tell us where once the busy miners "sluiced" away the rich gravel of these "placers." On both sides of the river are to be seen the old, abandoned water ditches, and here and there are old trails over which the light-hearted men of the other days tramped to or from their camps. And here are many caved-in tunnels, and they come quite often as the canyon deepens, which mutely tell of blasted hopes or fondest realizations. And there are many old mills. and dams. and mines once abandoned now preparing to be worked again with modern methods. First we come to the Exchequer Mine, some miles above Merced Falls. This is a low-grade mine, with ore enough in sight, to run for many years. The canyon is narrow here and the outcroppings of the ledge can be seen upon both sides of the gorge. The ledge is from five to sixty feet wide with an average value of about $9 to the ton. A 50-foot concrete dam is being built here to furnish electric power for the 100-stamp mill to be build here, as well as for other mines in the neighborhood. These immense ore bodies can, it is claimed, be worked at $1 per ton. There is a station here. In the olden days this place was known as the Benton Mills, and sometimes as "Hell's Hollow." It was a part of the old Fremont Grant, once owned by Gen. Fremont, the "Pathfinder," and he named these mills in honor of  STEEL BRIDGE OVER MERCED, BELOW BAGBY On Line Yosemite Valley R. R. his wife, Jesse Benton Fremont. In the early days there was a hundred stamp mill here and another dam further up stream. The ore was brought down from the mines above on a tramway. 'Tis a pity that the pretty name has been changed, for around the old Benton Mills and Dam have clustered much of the romance and history of the early days of this State and the West. It should be restored. The pioneers and Native Sons of this county and State should try and have the historic name restored. It is not yet too late, for its modern name is yet scarcely ten years of age, while its historic and rightful name dates almost from the discovery of gold in this State. "Now boats replace that raft, a locomotive's whistle awakens echoes in Hell's Hollow, and soon the long trains tilled with sightseers will rush through the canyon," wrote the same young lady at a more recent date. There is a hotel here now and a railroad station, and the great dam backs the water up to Solomon's Gulch, two miles further up. Out of the latter there was taken about two million dollars in gold dust, hence the name. A short distance above here the granite walls come down to meet the waters of the dam. It is about a half mile around this crescent-shaped bit of roadbed. This was one of the hardest pieces of work upon the line. The walls are so steep here that the men had to lie let down from far above by ropes to survey and blast out the grade. It looks quite tame now. Upon the opposite side of the gorge, hundreds of feet above the river, is a great overhanging rock, an almost exact counterpart of the famous Overhanging Rock of Glacier Point, Yosemite. Did Nature in the long ages of the past, when the canyon was young and the Yosemite in process of making, chisel out this rock here to remind the returning Yosemite visitors of these late; times, of  IN THE DEPTHS OF THE CANYON (At The Broadheads) On Line Y. V. R. R.The Canyon Route that other rock at Glacier Point? Be that as it may the duplicate is here. Here, too, are flinty, upright rocks age-worn and beautifully colored, that may well be called the Interesting is the canyon here. For fifty years prospectors passed to and fro over the trail, across the ledge, far up the mountain side, its wealth unknown to them, though in plain sight, for the sides of the mountain is covered with rich float rock, too conspicuous, they thought, to be good, and so they passed it by. But it remained for two prospectors, F. X. Egenhoff and Geo. Merritt, to discover the mine on August 4, 1897. They sold it to the present company, supposed to be Standard Oil people. A balance gravity tramway brings the ore down from the mine 1250 feet above. It is one of the most valuable properties of the "Omparisa Gold Mining Co." It is about 20 miles from the Mt. King Mine to the terminus at El Portal, the "Gateway," and there is not an uninteresting mile between these points. A more suitable location for the terminus of the Yosemite Valley Railroad than El Portal would be hard to find. Well has it been named, the "Gateway" to Yosemite. It is Nature's entrance to the great wonders now so close. Here is a level section of the canyon of one hundred or more acres. It is mild, and quiet and peaceful here. Great oak trees are on all sides and across the river is to be seen the fringe of the sugar and yellow pine forests. Within a few hundred feet is Crane Creek, a living mountain stream, cool, refreshing and full of trout. This will be the water supply for El Portal. Plans for a tourist hotel are now being made. Prior to its completion a first-class camp will be used for the tourists. Here, too, is the headquarters of the Yosemite Transportation Co., of which D. K. Stoddard is Supt. Mr. Stoddard is a veteran in the Yosemite tourist business. He is now prepared to handle all the business than call be cared for in the valley. He can, if called upon, carry 250 people each way daily, in fact, more. 
MILL OF THE MT. KING MINE On Line Y V. R. R. The Canyon Route El Portal is 1800 feet above sea and about a mile west of the Yosemite National Park. It will require only about three hours to make this part of the trip. No doubt but that many parties will take a half day for it, for this part of the road is of intense interest - eight miles of it is in the real Yosemite - from the Cascades up to the hotel, and the boulevard is a fitting introduction to the greater wonders of the valley. It were useless to attempt to describe this part of the trip - it is like the Yosemite, it must be seen. Like the railroad it follows close to the river banks. To an ordinary person it looked impossible to build a wagon road here, but is was done in a very short period of time, at a total cost of about $12,000 per mile. The work was commenced in the early part of February of this year and teams were going over it on the 29th of April. Nearly a thousand men were employed upon it. There are great bowlders here as large as two-story buildings that had to be blasted out to make room for the grade, and between two of them, above the zigzags, a real tunnel has been blasted, through which the coaches will go. And across the tops of these two great rocks is another one still larger. And on all sides are the forest trees that vie with their kind upon the great walls above. The walls here rise up 2,000 or more feet, and at places the view, of its kind, is not excelled even by the Yosemite. From the Cascades up to the Bridal Veil Meadows, where the first general view of the Yosemite is had, there is a subdued calm, a sense of the restful, in strong contrast to the wild and thrilling scenery along the boulevard. Nature has thus arranged it, and it could not be better. But here we are at the  THE ROAD TUNNEL UNDER THE ROCKS Scene on El Portal - Cascade Road And we are not tired, thanks to the closer railway connections. As to the evening tomorrow - today is the only time we know anything about. Regular service will commence of May 15th of this year and at an early date there will be two trains daily. One will leave Merced at an early hour and will be made up of sleepers switched from the night trains of the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe. This train will reach El Portal in time for breakfast and then on to the Valley on stages. The other train will leave Merced at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and will include in its equipment elegant day coaches and an observation car. This train will reach the terminus about 6 o'clock that evening. A telephone and telegraph line is now being built along the route by the Sunset people and it will be completed to the Yosemite by the first of July of this year. The road was thus built in a record - breaking time, the construction being in charge of Jas. H. O'Brien, ever clever, and pleasant, the well-known contractor of San Francisco. The work is a credit to the men who have faith in the future of Yosemite. It is well founded, and their investment will not only be a paying one, but, too, a blessing to the untold multitudes to whom a visit to Yosemite is now a possibility, *without undergoing the necessary discomforts of the long stage trips of the heretofore, of the best and interesting though they were. They were all right in their day, but the time we are now in is today, and this is the time of the Yosemite Valley Railroad. When the airship comes there will then be an easier way of getting here. As we go to press we learn that W. M. Sell, of the Ahwahnee Hotel, Raymond - Yosemite route, will have charge of the hotel and camp here. This is the best of news for the Yosemite visitors, for it assures them an ideal camp and later on, a hotel. Under Mr. Sell's management, assisted by Mrs. Sell, El Portal will be as popular in the future as Ahwahnee has been in the past. |