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This CPRR “Expense Bill” covers the cost of shipment of 50 bars of track iron, 6 kegs each of shoes and nails, and various quantities bar iron, wire and twine from San Francisco on October 10, 1878, to the CPRR depot at Palisade, Nevada, arriving on October 14. The following contemporary description of Palisade, NV, is from “The Pacific Tourist.”
Palisade —576 miles from San Francisco with an elevation of 4,811 feet. It is the initial point of the Eureka & Palisade Railroad, is a growing little place between the wall rocks of the river, and has a population of from 150 to 200 souls. It has one or two hotels or lodging-houses, stores, saloons, two large freight depots, and the machine and repair shops of the Eureka & Palisade Railroad. A new station-house, ticket and telegraph office has been constructed here—the finest in Nevada—to be occupied and used by both the Central Pacific and Eureka and Palisade roads.
Eureka & Palisade Railroad, Expense Bill, 1888.
The town is located about half the distance down the cañon, and the rocky, perpendicular walls give it a picturesque appearance. The lower half of the cañon is not as wild and rugged, however, as the upper half. All freight, which is mostly base bullion, that is shipped from Eureka and other points on this branch road, has to be transferred here, and the traveler may sometimes be surprised, in passing, at the immense piles of bullion which may here be seen the platform of the railroad companies. On fill to the right is a wooden reservoir supplied springs, from which the water used in town taken. The cañon above was not used for the purposes of travel before the passage of the Central Pacific road—not even a horseman venture through it.
Courtesy Bruce C. Cooper Collection.
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