Our normal hike near the cabin took a dark turn this memorial weekend. In fact it took several. We decided to walk into the western entrance to the now trackless Central Pacific Railway snow sheds. Just dark enough to be eerie, they are a gathering place for local graffiti artists and the walls are covered with constantly-changing street art. I could walk in here all day, but the group decided to turn back before long. But not before I could capture a few bits of local graffiti.

This bit about the tunnels of the CPRR is excerpted from the July 2012 issue of The Donner Summit Heirloom, the monthly newsletter of the Donner Summit Historical Society:

The Summit Tunnel
The Sacramento Bee has the following remarks on the Summit Tunnel, on the line of the Central Pacific Railway: “The Pacific Railroad people are making wonderful progress on the Summit Tunnel. Some persons – even engineers – calculated that this great work would require three or four years for its completion, and so it would in other countries, or if it were under the control of laggards, but here, and in the hands of go-ahead Californians, tunnel-time is annihilated. The tunnel is 1,660 feet long. it was begun in September last – at four points – on the east and on the west ends, and two other faces were created by a shaft in the centre. Thus, there are four faces, with three sets of hands to each, or twelve sets in all. Each set works eight hours, and the work goes on night and day! And now, on the 1st of the present month, of all these 1,660 feet, there were but 681 remaining to be cut! The progress last week was sixty feet, and at this rate the tunnel will be completed by the middle of August next. By measurement, on the 1st instant, there were but 346 feet in the east heading and 335 in the west heading, making, as before stated, 681 feet in all to be cut. And so in the space of eleven months from the period of its commencement will this tunnel be finished!

Daily Alta California May 10, 1867