Reno | Page 9

winter sports; it has the advantage of
being only thirty-six miles from Truckee, California. While flowers are
blooming and birds singing their spring songs in Southern California,
the Snow Queen reigns at Truckee in the mountains, six thousand feet
above the sea. Here people from San Francisco and other large cities
gather to indulge in winter sports, such as skiing, tobogganing and
sleighing, and many professionals go there to display their art in skiing
and skating; the Switzerland of the West, I would call it. It was all too
fascinating and too beautiful: six feet of snow everywhere, and
everything sparkling white in the sunshine.
[Illustration: AMID THE SNOW AT TRUCKEE, CALIFORNIA
illustration shows a dogsled team]
Once I started out to see Donner Lake, which reposes between Summit,
the highest point on this trip across the Great Divide, and Truckee. We
were in a sleigh drawn by a team of huskies: real Alaskan dogs. I have
ridden pretty much everything from a broomstick to a bronco, but this
was my first experience with huskies. I thought it was going to be hard
work for the dogs, but they frolicked about in the snow with their pink
tongues out, showing all their teeth as though they were laughing in
fiendish glee and enjoying every moment of it.
Truckee is only about thirty-three miles from Reno by automobile, and
the distance by train is thirty-six miles, so there should be no excuse for
not visiting this American Switzerland.
Another point of information which I discovered and think will interest
you quite as much as it did me, was that most all the great moving
picture companies go to Truckee to take their Alaskan scenes. And now
whenever you see a beautiful arctic picture on the screen, you will
realize that you are not looking at the frigid regions of Alaska, but at
the glories of California.
The Snow Queen knows, however, that when she tires of her realm of
snow, a really, truly fairy land awaits her only a few hours distant,

where she may play Fairy Queen and wander through fields of golden
poppies, filling her arms with spring blooms, in beautiful Southern
California.
In Reno itself moonlight skating parties on the river and the University
pond are popular also. Dull in Reno? Absurd!
Nevada is necessarily a mining state. Apart from the $700,000,000 in
gold and silver taken from the Comstock Lode, Nevada's mines have
supplied the world with thousands of tons of other materials, such as
lead, zinc, etc., and thus when one thinks of the industries in Nevada, it
is quite natural to think of mining first. There it is in the air.
Everywhere you are confronted with specimens of ore: in the offices of
mining companies, in your lawyer's office, on the doctor's desk, on
your friend's dressing table, next to the Bible in the minister's home. A
chubby baby will gurgle and coo over a piece of this polished rock, and
hold it in a little pink fist; old, white haired men will feebly finger a
rough specimen streaked with green and amber. The spell of Nevada.....
Walk out over the desert or ride over the hills, and as far as you can see,
the sides of the mountains are perforated with holes made by
prospectors; thousands and thousands of them, every one representing a
hope. A promoter will take a piece of this beautifully colored rock and
explain to you about the percentage of gold or copper it contains, the
cost of extracting it and the enormous profits to be made; a friend will
show you a marvelous specimen and explain that he or she owns a half
interest in the claim which is sure to turn out at least half a million.....
Then you will perhaps think of Robert Service's "Spell of the Yukon"
and you will understand the enthusiasm and spirit of optimism.
After all, why should they not be enthusiastic and optimistic? The
whole state is piled high with mountains which look just like the ones
in which so much gold and other valuable minerals have been
discovered; if they are the same on top, why are they not the same
below the surface?
Tell us, you opal colored mountains of Nevada, what stores of precious
treasures are you guarding from the greedy hand of man and how soon

will you throw open another door of your treasure house?
After having lived in the West and visited the mines and talked with the
old-timers, I can easily understand the fascination of prospecting and
mining, and why, in spite of all the hardships it entails, so many have
become enslaved by the spell of it.
The Crystal Saloon, at Virginia City, was built during the days of the
first great boom, and on its