Fall of 2005 marked the 130th anniversary of one of the great thrill rides of all time – The Great Flume Ride of 1875.

In the 1870s, lumber was a highly desired commodity.  The construction of railroads and the development of underground mining caused an upsurge in timber demand.  The Sierra Nevada responded by giving up this precious product in abundance.  Millions upon millions of board feet of lumber were produced annually to feed the devouring monster of commerce. 

An important question in this pursuit was this --- How do you transport the lumber across the mountain ridges to places far, far away?

The answer came in a variety of packages. Steam-powered lumber tractors were devised.  Another solution in North Lake Tahoe was to build a giant conveyor to move timber from the lakeshore east over the ridges to the waiting Carson Valley beyond.  This giant conveyor was called an “incline.”  It was located in the town named after the conveyor – Incline Village.

Another more common solution was the construction of flumes – V-shaped troughs that used running water to move the lumber.  One such flume was built along a 15-mile stretch on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe from near Incline Village to approximately where US50 splits at Spooner Lake.  It is here that our story unfolds.

The flume was the effort of the Pacific Wood, Lumber, and Flume Company.  It was built by a collection of mine owners to provide lumber for the burgeoning mines of the Comstock Lode.  Most notable among the stockholders were James C. Flood, James G. Fair, John Mackey, and W.S. O’Brien, principal mine owners in the Comstock region.  The flume as constructed for the then astronomical sum of nearly $300,000, but Flood estimated that the flume saved nearly $500,000 annually in transportation costs.  It was an expensive but cost effective investment.   Called The Bonanza V, the flume snaked through the mountain ridge above Lake Tahoe on a trestle that ranged from 20 to 70 feet above the ground. Constructed in only ten weeks, the flume required two million feet of lumber and 28 tons of nails to build.  About 500,000 feet of lumber was moved daily – an amount that would have utilized about 2000 horses to accomplish. The pieces of lumber averaged 16 inches square and ten feet long.  The drop in elevation was about 1750 feet along its path. It took about 25 minutes for the lumber to travel the fifteen miles.  Today, the route of the flume is a popular hiking and mountain bike trail called the Old Flume Trail. 

In 1875, reporter H.J. Ramsdell of the New York Tribune was invited by James Flood and James Fair to visit the flume and take a ride along its length. Ramsdell accepted and two boats were brought forth.  “These were nothing more than pig-troughs,” Ramsdell recalled in an 1876 article for the Williams’ Pacific Tourist magazine, “with one end knocked out.  The boat was built like the flume, 16 feet long, V shaped … The forward end of the boat was left open, the rear end was closed with a board, against which was to come the current of water to propel us.”  James Fair and Ramsdell were in the first boat, and Flood and the superintendent of the flume were in the second.  Anxiously, they jumped into the boats and while interested bystanders yelled “hang on to your hats” -- they were off.

H.J. Ramsdell was petrified. He wrote: “The terrors of that ride can never be blotted from [my] memory…. A flume has no element of safety. You can not go fast or slow at pleasure; you are wholly at the mercy of the water.

You can not stop; you can not lessen your speed; you have nothing to hold to; you have only to sit still, shut your eyes, say your prayers; take all the water that comes, filling your boat, wetting your feet, drenching you like a plunge through the surf, and wait for eternity... it is all there is to hope for after you are launched in a flume-boat. At the start, we went at the rate of about 20 miles an hour, which is a little less than the speed of a railroad train, then we picked up to 30 miles an hour... a mile in two minutes.

There I was, perched up in a boat no wider than a chair, sometimes 20 feet high in the air, and with the varying  altitude of the flume, often 70 feet above the ground…. If the truth must be spoken, I was really scared out of reason.”

At times the flume had a 45 degree inclination. The boats careened wildly from side to side.  At one point, Fair lost his grip and his fingers were crushed between the boat and the sides of the flume. The flume, said Ramsdell, was “small and narrow, and apparently so fragile,” and “the mountains passed by like visions and shadows.”

They zoomed along at speeds that James Fair estimated at 60 miles per hour, and which James Flood figured had to be 100 miles per hour.  Ramsdell stated, “My deliberate belief is that we went at a rate that annihilated time and space.”

Flood’s exaggerated estimate is understandable.  His boat caught up to the Ramsdell/Fair vessel during the perilous ride and slammed into its rear.  Flood fell on his face and the waters engulfed him, drenching him thoroughly.  Flood’s fellow passenger, the flume superintendent, was also saturated and scared stiff.

Finally, thankfully, the intrepid voyagers reached the end of the flume after less than 30 minutes (although Ramsdell said it felt like hours).  Wet and shaken, they assessed their journey.  James Flood stated that he would never make this trip again, even for all the value of his mine holdings.  The trembling Flume Superintendent said he was sorry he ever built the flume.   As for H.J. Ramsdell, his feelings were very clear.   “For myself,” he wrote, “I had only strength enough to say... ‘I have had enough of flumes.’”

Today, many amusement park owners who have flume rides (such as Knotts Berry Farm) point to this 1875 flume ride as their inspiration.  But nothing today could possibly compare to the original thrill ride.