Full ArticleSpecial Arrives Behind Schedule
Source: Los Angeles Herald - Los Angeles, CADate Published: 1906-10-23
SPECIAL ARRIVES BEHIND SCHEDULE
EXCURSIONISTS WELCOMED AT BEATTY
Gloriously Good Time Promised Visitors and Memory of it Will Linger Long on History's Page of the District.
Special to The Herald.
BEATTY, Nevada, Oct. 22. -- The consolidated Los Angeles-Salt Lake special train of eleven coaches inaugurating the new Bullfrog branch of the Salt Lake road, pulled into Beatty at 8:30 o'clock tonight, several hours behind the schedule time.
The visitors were warmly welcomed to the new mining town by a delegation of citizens who met the train at Las Vegas.
The evening was devoted to a reception to the visitors held at the hotel. Speeches of welcome were made by members of the reception committee, to which Will Harris responded for Los Angeles and Vice President J Ross Clark for the Salt Lake road.
Tomorrow the formal program will continue, including trips to the leading mines in the district.
The one glorious good time which the miners of Beatty, Rhyolite, Gold Center and the rest of the Bullfrog district have been promising themselves ever since that day, now ancient history, when some one went into Beatty on a stage and spread the glad news that Senator Clark had his eyes and his train crews turned in that direction, began tonight.
It will end -- well, the memory of it will not end, for it has been writ on the history of mining camps of Southern Nevada in ink that is indelible.
Since the advent into the desert town of the first special train carrying more than 300 of the good people of Los Angeles and Salt Lake, there have been more people in Beatty than ever before.
The train was late, of course, after the fashion of trains, and by the time the headlight was finally seen shining across the desert into the evening sky the miners were beginning to have a "far away look" in their eyes.
Long before the train arrived at Beatty the visitors on the car new considerable about the wonders of the land.
At Las Vegas there was an advance guard composed of some of Beatty's most distinguished citizens and they were accompanied by literature enough to occupy the minds of the most studious for days, nay, weeks to come.
At every station along the desert there was a characteristic group of miners ready to send up a cheer and a hearty echo responded to from the cars.
Three brass bands enlivened the air and the sound which went forth fell upon the grateful ears, as many had not heard a musical note in months and few in years.
The bandmaster proved before the day was over that he had a sense of humor, and when something went wrong with the injector on the engine and it looked as if we would spend the night in the sagebrush and cacti, he struck up "We Won't Be Home Until Morning" and later "How Dry I Am," played in funeral time.
Half way between Johnnie and Beatty the old engine, which has always been considered the best on the road, refused completely to work and it was necessary to telephone twenty miles ahead for another engine.
The exhibition planned for Gold Center in the big tunnel had to be abandoned and when the relief engine finally arrived the train went directly through without further stops.
The crowd was good natured through everything and there was no disorder. Sage brush bonfires were built and with the assistance of the band and the voices of the musically inclined the waiting party passed the hours merrily.
Dana Burks of Ocean Park auctioned off lots of a desert tract for the amusement of the belated travelers and there was a vaudeville performance in which Attorney Will Harris of Los Angeles, former Senator Smith and half a dozen other shining lights of the party took part.
Some one related a story about the first train that went into Tonopah. It was scheduled to get into Tonopah early one evening and it did not get in until the next morning.
"But," he said, "take heart. We will do better than that."
This prediction was abundantly proved as soon as the locomotive was repaired.
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Submitted: 12/29/09 (Edited 01/08/10)
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