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Oral History |
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By Pappy Clay - February 2nd, 1969 This wreck is still fresh in the memory of the writer even after intervening lapse of 80 years. In the early Spring of probably 1888, eastbound traffic was up compared to westbound traffic on account of a growing market for California oranges in the eastern United States. This was before the day of refrigerator-cars on the Central Pacific so oranges in crates were being shipped braced in ordinary box-cars insulated with building-paper. During the heavy orange season whole fruit trains were put on "passenger schedule" and rushed east at speeds averaging almost 30 miles per hour. Even while going down treacherous East Promontory Hill there was a sense of urgency, so desire for speed sometimes got the better of caution, and at one such time and probably for that reason, four or five box-cars in the middle of an "orange special" jumped the track on the "hill fill" and rolled down the south embankment for some short distance causing the box-cars to split open and scattering of the orange-crates over the hillside with many of the crates themselves splitting open. This hill fill had at first been known as the "hill trestle" but soon after 1870 dirt and gravel from the upper Promontory Gravel Pit had been dumped on both sides of the trestle until it finally became the "hill fill", of the time of this story with broken box-cars and oranges scattered down the incline. A large quantity of these oranges were subsequently retrieved in a more or less bruised condition to the point where all the close ranchers on East Promontory mountain and local railroad employees in the area were eating more oranges in the ensuing two weeks than they would ordinarily consume in an entire year. The writer's father, Cassius M. Clay, was the telegraph operator and agent at Blue Creek Water-tank Station at the time and the Section-boss and his Chinamen from Kolmar had brought several broken cases of oranges from the scene of the wreck and given them to our family so consequently we had oranges all over the place. My mother had a rancher's daughter from down on the east side of Promontory peninsula to help her with the housework, and this young lady was called "Bee House". She had an older brother called "Hen House" and a younger brother by the name of "Clay House" who had been named in honor of my father. "Bee" had been eating more oranges than anybody else in the house and my father, just for a lark, was trying to get "Bee" to eat more of those oranges than she really could force herself to eat, so she said to him; "Mr. Clay, the oranges in that first box were mighty tasty but somehow the oranges in this box are tasting just like wild carrots". This made everybody laugh but persuaded my father to let the subject drop and "bait" Bee no further about those oranges from the "Great Promontory Orange Wreck of 1888". It took days for the wrecking crew, working between regular trains, and going to Surbin sidetrack to let trains pass then back on the job, to get the trucks and gear from the wrecked box-cars back up onto flat-cars on the main-line and otherwise repair the damage done, and this writer remembers he could distantly see the salvaging operation going on, on the Promontory hillside three miles distant from Blue Creek Water-tank Station. |
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