Train Ride, Part II: Cedar and Granite
Dec. 3rd, 2007 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebAll of the following history is as I heard it from the volunteer on our car, and was not checked for accuracy.
The ride starts in Cedar Park. The soil there is thin and rocky. It's difficult to grow anything, so it's grazing country. But ash juniper trees grow there. They are evergreen, gnarly, scrubby, beautiful, allergy-inducing, and referred to as "cedars." (If you are allergic, you suffer from "cedar fever.")
The area was not settled by newly freed slaves because there were no jobs. It was not settled by immigrants because there were no jobs. Basically, if you got any land, you would work it yourself and have children to help you work it.
In the 1930s, you could get a job cutting cedar on someone's property, then they would sell it and give you half the profits. After subtracting any rent from living on the land, etc. It was good money in The Depression, but cutting cedar was difficult work. It's tough on the blade. And the sap is so sticky that you had to lubricate the blade with gasoline (or some other explosive-sounding liquid--I forget) just to get it through. And the folks who did this horrible back-breaking work were treated like the lowest of the low. To this day, you can get a rise out of some people by calling them "cedar choppers."
In addition to the cedar, the landscape includes various grasses including a tall orangish-reddish one, red oak, possum haw holly(?) covered in red berries but hardly any leaves, and shin oak which spreads by runner into very thick groves.
Then you pass near Marble Falls which has a mountain made of granite. It's actually a magma bubble (like Enchanted Rock) from which the surrounding limestone has eroded. And that granite is now a part of the state capitol building.
What does that have to do with trains?
Back when train tracks were being built, the builders didn't like to build them into existing towns because then they couldn't sell so many lots. But the folks at Marble Falls had an idea. When the state capitol was being built, its builders discovered that limestone would stain over time and were looking for a more perfect local material. Marble Falls offered free granite, so long as the state would come and get it. So the state got prisoners to cut it and they extended the railroad to Marble Falls to pick it up.
I don't have any pictures of granite, but here is a picture of one of the sinks on the train, with a piece of countertop over the front half:
The ride starts in Cedar Park. The soil there is thin and rocky. It's difficult to grow anything, so it's grazing country. But ash juniper trees grow there. They are evergreen, gnarly, scrubby, beautiful, allergy-inducing, and referred to as "cedars." (If you are allergic, you suffer from "cedar fever.")
The area was not settled by newly freed slaves because there were no jobs. It was not settled by immigrants because there were no jobs. Basically, if you got any land, you would work it yourself and have children to help you work it.
In the 1930s, you could get a job cutting cedar on someone's property, then they would sell it and give you half the profits. After subtracting any rent from living on the land, etc. It was good money in The Depression, but cutting cedar was difficult work. It's tough on the blade. And the sap is so sticky that you had to lubricate the blade with gasoline (or some other explosive-sounding liquid--I forget) just to get it through. And the folks who did this horrible back-breaking work were treated like the lowest of the low. To this day, you can get a rise out of some people by calling them "cedar choppers."
In addition to the cedar, the landscape includes various grasses including a tall orangish-reddish one, red oak, possum haw holly(?) covered in red berries but hardly any leaves, and shin oak which spreads by runner into very thick groves.
Then you pass near Marble Falls which has a mountain made of granite. It's actually a magma bubble (like Enchanted Rock) from which the surrounding limestone has eroded. And that granite is now a part of the state capitol building.
What does that have to do with trains?
Back when train tracks were being built, the builders didn't like to build them into existing towns because then they couldn't sell so many lots. But the folks at Marble Falls had an idea. When the state capitol was being built, its builders discovered that limestone would stain over time and were looking for a more perfect local material. Marble Falls offered free granite, so long as the state would come and get it. So the state got prisoners to cut it and they extended the railroad to Marble Falls to pick it up.
I don't have any pictures of granite, but here is a picture of one of the sinks on the train, with a piece of countertop over the front half: