Just so happens I was there both yesterday and Sat. They have signs up on Hwy 50 to mark the location of the future V&T bridge. Mound House was important rail stop during Comstock Era By Bonnie Matton Special to Dayton Courier August 27, 2008 Mound House was an important stop along the V&T rails and was integral to the gold mining boom of the 1800s that spawned Dayton, Virginia City, Gold Hill, Silver City and Mound House. Bruce Bunkowski's family roots run deep in the gypsum-laced soil that provided the foundation for several generations of his family to prosper in the area. He recently took me on a tour of Mound House. As we drove along, he told me about working most of his adult life with his grandfather and father in the area, which wasn't a residential community until the Bunkowski's built it. Our first stop was at a lone grave surrounded by a weathered picket fence. The fence is the oldest and only wooden structure still existing from Mound House's early history at the gateway to the Comstock. Concerned residents watch over Maria A. Kennie McLain's final resting place, 1835-1871, and have built a chain-link fence to protect the historic treasure, which lies on private property. The hand-carved grave marker was crafted from a one-inch piece of wood. Whatever the original carvings on the marker were have long since been erased by weather and time. The official name of "Mound House" was first used in the early 1870s. The area soon became a major rail siding linking Virginia City with the quartz mills along the Carson River. Two wealthy Virginia City mine owners constructed the first building in Mound House, which was initially a tollhouse that became a boarding house and later a hotel. The rail siding in Mound House provided the perfect spot to bring ore from gold and silver mines in the mountainsides above Mound House for transport to milling operations. In the gold rush heyday, about 20,000 people lived in the area's mining camps. Many of these early settlers were Chinese workers. Historians said that because the Chinese workers were shorter in stature than most other workers they could easily work in the cramped confines of the mines and were able to stand up while digging ore out of veins located in the ceiling. Bunkowski told a story of an eight-mule team that pulled a wagon too slowly, and how the wagon master reached back and picked up a piece of ore and chucked it at the rump of the lead mule to get the animal to move faster. Red Rock Road Today, Red Rock Road follows much the same route as the original rail bed where the V&T steam trains rumbled across the Carson Highlands carrying ore, goods and people to and from the Comstock. You can still see many mine tailing piles and even parts of the original railroad grades cut into the hillsides. The train turnaround was located behind the Mound House volunteer fire department's present day facility. There were also maintenance sheds and a large V&T Railroad Depot. During the peak of rail activity in Mound House, the V&T's trains would chug back and forth through the town as many as 40 times a day carrying ore, goods and people. The larger engines with lower gears pulled the trains up to Virginia City and back, and the smaller engines with higher gears pulled rail cars to Carson City, Reno and beyond. In 1905, new track was laid using standard gauge track. That rail line was called the Nevada & California Railroad. In 1934, the line between Mound House and Ft. Churchill was shut down. That marked an end to the 60-plus years of Mound House being a major rail siding for the Comstock. For many years, Mound House was nearly abandoned. Most of the wooden structures were dismantled and moved to other areas of Nevada where new gold strikes were discovered. Gypsum mining begins Mound House continued on as a mining and milling area, though instead of gold and silver, miners were pulling the mineral gypsum from an enormous outcrop of gypsum in Mound House. Gypsum is used predominantly in the manufacture of plaster and is used in many building materials. At the top of the mountain at the gypsum mine, workers filled huge buckets with the mineral. The buckets moved downhill using a clever gravity pull system that put the weight of the full buckets to work and hauled the empty ones back up the hill. The buckets ran on a cable loop to the corner of where Feldspar and Red Rock Road join today. That's where the gypsum was ground up and dumped into rail cars. According to Bunkowski, the mine workers and their families could go swimming in a man-made lake that had been carved out near the gypsum mine. Rumor had it that you could swim all day long and not get tired because of the mineral in the water, but swimmer's skin ended up looking like a dried up old prune. In 1922, Gioconda Isola Panelli, a local resident, worked with her husband at the Mound House Plastering Company where she made gypsum-shipping sacks. The gypsum mine is still operated under the ownership of Art Wilson. German immigrants Bunkowski talked about his then 17-year-old grandfather immigrating to the United States from Germany and settling in the Smith Valley area. The young settler and his son acquired gypsum-mining claims for most of the flat areas of land in and around Mound House. They provided gypsum to the region's ranchers who augmented their soil for growing crops. The Bunkowski family eventually wound up owning most of the land in Mound House on both sides of what we know as U.S. 50 East. In the 1960s Bruce and his father, Jules, opened a construction company in Mound House. Over the years they built most of the roads in Mound House and developed several residential subdivisions in Mound House and Dayton. Bonnie Matton lives and works in the Dayton Valley and enjoys the rich history of the area. She decided to spend her summer interviewing long-time Daytonites and writing about their Flashbacks for the Dayton Courier.
Mound House was once the northern end of the Nevada & California Railroad later Carson & Colorado and finally Southern Pacific. Mound House lost its importance when Southern Pacific relocated the connection to Hazen nevada and standard gauged the line north of Mina. The line south of Mina was used until 1938 when the line was abandon over Montgomery Pass to Benton. In 1943 the track was abandon south of Benton to Laws. The remaining 71 miles were in use until April 30 1960 when Espee shut down the line. Scrapper L.B.Foster pulled up all but some track near the Laws depot during the summer of 1960. There is a museum in the Laws depot and the turntable along with some other structures. The SP 9 some freight cars is also there.
Is there an on-line map, where I could look at how those railroads were situated in that area? Might be rather interesting to visualize what once was... Boxcab E50
Try http://narrowgauge.net there are some maps for the Carson & Colorado/SPNG Found this map on another net site that shows the entire route.
When Espee standard Gauged the section from For Churchill to Mina the new connection was built north from Churchill to Hazen. This change left Mound House with no connection south.
