Dunsmuir

Upper Soda Springs on the Stage Road

A brass plaque on a boulder near Tauhindauli Park, under the I-5 bridge off River Avenue, marks Upper Soda Springs in north Dunsmuir.³ The Siskiyou County Historical Society placed it in 1986 and calls the spot a campsite of Indians and Hudson’s Bay trappers, then a popular resort on the California-Oregon Trail from 1857 to 1920.⁴ The trappers’ stopping place became a waypoint on the Siskiyou Trail and then a stage stop when the trail was widened into a wagon road, which opened in 1858.³ In the mid-1850s Ross McCloud bought the property and its crude inn from the twin Lockhart brothers and built a wooden toll bridge at a major crossing of the Sacramento River.³ A large hotel replaced the log cabin, with extensive gardens planted to supply its kitchen, and guests came for bubbling mineral water said to have healing qualities.³

In 1915 the new Pacific Highway, later US 99, was routed across a concrete bridge high above the river, cutting off easy access to the springs.³ The resort survived only a few more years, and a few old fruit trees and a magnolia tree remain as evidence of the once bustling establishment.³

Pusher and the Dunsmuir Fountain

According to the fountain marker, the town was first called Pusher, for the helper engines needed to move trains north over a 2.2% grade and a 14 degree curve at Cantara Loop.¹ In 1886 Alexander Dunsmuir, son of the coal baron Robert Dunsmuir of Vancouver, British Columbia, passed through on his way to San Francisco.¹ He offered the city fathers a fountain if they would change the name of the town to Dunsmuir.¹ The fountain was built near the railroad depot, but Alexander Dunsmuir never saw it completed.¹ The Southern Pacific dismantled it in the ‘60s, and in the early ‘70s a new basin was made from the original plans and the fountain moved to the entrance of the Dunsmuir City Park and Botanical Gardens.¹

The Roundhouse and Locomotive 1727

A panoramic photograph of Dunsmuir shows a large railroad roundhouse at bottom center, smoke coming from one of its chimneys, beside a locomotive turntable and a number of railroad cars.⁵ Across the street stands a three-story building lettered “Hotel 1004 Weed,” with houses on the small hills behind and a mountain of pines beyond.⁵ In 1941 the railroad conductor and businessman Norman Green proposed a celebration to honor old-timers and to encourage young people to pursue careers with the railroad.² The first, called the Southern Pacific Railroad Celebration, was held on June 15 and 16 of that year.² The Dunsmuir Historic Commercial District, in Siskiyou County, carries a registration date of 11/10/1982.⁶ Locomotive 1727, a Class M-6 Mogul built by Baldwin in 1901, served Southern Pacific in California and Oregon until 1956.⁷ The railroad donated the engine, and in 1957 the City Council under Mayor Vic Petrovics brought it to Dunsmuir.⁷ Its marker says 1727 is one of only seven Moguls surviving out of 355 built.⁷