Day 13: Susanville CA - Jackson CA

Susanville hav some very interesting history if you are interested in hist. which few boys are.  It was originally called "Rooptown" after one Isaac Roop, who was later the first Governor of the Nevada Territory, but got renamed after Roop's daughter in 1859.  As did the river that runs through it.  It was also the epicentre of the "Sagebrush War" of 1856, a non-vicious conflict over whether the area was in Nevada or California.  No-one actually got killed utterly to DETH at all, in fact, and the whole area was determined to be in California.  It also has some interesting switches for the bathroom lights:

Fascinating, no?

Highway 36 leads west out of town and immediately one is surrounded by trees.  Lots of 'em.  And over Fredonyer Pass.  This was named after one Dr Atlas Fredonyer, a Swiss traveller who was later convicted of incest.  You'd think they'd have changed the name after that, no?  Wikinaccurate says this marks the boundary between the Sierra Nevada to the south and the Cascades to the north.  Wowsa.  Down at the bottom of the western end is Lake Almanor, which sounds like it ought to be in Middle Earth but is actually a reservoir formed by damming the North Fork of the Feather River.  And named after the daughters of one Guy C. Earl, Vice President of Great Western Power: Alice, Martha and Eleanor.  This seems to be something of a theme round these parts.

There! Behind that tree...

If you turn left after crossing the top end of the lake you will find yourself in California Highway 89.  Like many of the roads in these parts it is pleasingly three-dimensional and heavily wooded.

Typical scenery for much of the day

After a Several of miles it forms a codeshare agreement with Highway 70 and passes by Keddie Wye, which is a Feature of the Rail-way.

With added trainy goodness!

It looks like a bonkers place to build a railway but the Western Pacific company wanted to find an easier route over the mountains than that taken by the first transcontinental railroad, viz. Donner Pass more or less west of Reno.  Their line leads up the valley of the Feather River and ultimately through a tunnel under the rather lower Beckwourth Pass before heading off into the Nevada desert.  This is also why there is a second set of tracks a couple of miles north of the ones that run through the middle of Battle Mountain, because the two lines stay separate most of the way across the state.

Eventually Highway 89 reasserts its independence after a while, so I went thataway before turning onto Highway 49 for the rest of the day.  This wends its way through more mountains all the way to Grass Valley, where it suddenly goes from being a single carriageway road through the forests to a suburban freeway.  This lamentable state of affairs continues to Auburn, where a certain TwatNav of my acquaintance will try to put you on I-80 for Sacramento.  This not being somewhere I wished to go, some manual navigation was required before the 49 reappeared.  The plunge down into the valley of the American River is even more three-dimensional that most of today's route but at the bottom there's a cool view of this bridge:

Foresthill Bridge

The other side is equally steep and twiddly, with the bonus of laden logging trucks coming the other way on the blind hairpins but after a few miles all the other traffic disappeared off to the west somewhere as 49 continues through the foothills, crossing this trip's outbound route a few miles from Jackson, wot is where I am now.  The hotel has its own bridge.  How cool is that?

Yes, I promised Gold Rush Stuffs but it was late.  I'll go look for them tomorrow.  In the meantime listen to "Days Of '49" off His Bobness' Self Portait.