110 Years Ago Today

When the railroad was built, the Dollarhide family owned the Siskiyou Pass wagon road, which became the Pacific Highway, U.S. Highway 99, and Interstate 5 later. They also owned a sawmill, for which they had originally purchased this right of way. The material for the pictured trestle came out of the nearby Dollarhide Sawmill, and Southern Pacific therefore named it "Dollarhide Trestle". Like all the wooden trestles along the Siskiyou Pass route, it was filled with rock and soil later, and is a dam today. On some maps, the location is still called "Dollarhide Curve". The nearby settlement "Dollarhide" has been abandoned, like most of the small settlements along the railroad pass route.
It must be a very steep grade. There are two engines at the front of this train and one at the back, pushing. The Oregon & California Railroad proposed an alternate route for the Oregon and California rail connection, which would have avoided Siskiyou Pass. However, Oregon politicians decided in favor of the present rail route. When Tunnel 13 was completed in 1887, beneath the Siskiyou Pass, there was finally a rail link between Oregon and California. In the 1920s, the Southern Pacific Railroad constructed the Natron Cutoff, a faster, cheaper route between the two states.

The message on the back is simply letting someone know that the writer arrived in Salem, Oregon safely and that the weather was much better than she expected.