Historic Flume And Lumberyard
Carson City, Carson City, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Historic Flume And Lumberyard. Approximately one-half mile south of this point and west of the present highway lay the immense yard of the Carson-Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company, the greatest of the Comstock timber companies operating in the Lake Tahoe Basin during 1870-1898.Situated at the terminus of the 12 mile V flume from Spooners Summit in the Sierra Nevada, the lumberyard was approximately one mile long and one-half mile wide. A spur line of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad served the yard. The spur ran adjacent to this site and carried rough lumber to the company’s planing mill and box factory, one-half mile north on Stewart Street. It also transported timbers and cordwood to the Carson yards to be hauled to the Comstock mines and mills.
Erected by Carson City Historical Commission
The Story
Half a mile south of here once sprawled the yard of the Carson-Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company, the greatest of the Comstock timber operations working the Lake Tahoe Basin from 1870 to 1898. Rough lumber and cordwood arrived down a 12-mile V-flume from Spooner's Summit in the Sierra, filling a yard a mile long and half a mile wide. A spur of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad then carried the timber onward to feed the mines and mills of the Comstock.
Why it matters
The flume and yard reveal the enormous industrial machinery of moving mountains of Sierra timber to prop up the underground world of the Comstock silver mines.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Gardner's Ranch
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From 1870 to 1918 this site held the ornate two-story home of Matthew Culbertson Gardner, rancher and lumberman, headquarters of his 300-acre ranch in the meadows to the south. Alongside it stood the Carson-Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company's great lumberyard, and through the 1870s and 1880s Gardner logged south of Lake Tahoe—building the only standard-gauge logging railroad in the Tahoe Basin. Gardner died in 1908, and fire consumed the house in 1918, leaving only old shade trees behind.
Bliss Mansion
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Built in 1879 by lumber and railroad magnate Duane L. Bliss, this was in its day the largest and most modern home in Nevada. Constructed entirely of clear lumber and square nails, it was the first house in the state fully piped for gas lighting. It stands as a monument to the fortunes made from the timber and transportation that fed the Comstock mining boom.
Empire and the Carson River Mills
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Lakeview
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