SNOW A HUNDRED FEET DEEP.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 171, 7 July 1876, Page 13

SNOW A HUNDRED FEET DEEP.

(' lowa State Journal.') The telegraph had reported a fearful snow-storm in the mountains, coramenciug on March 12. All along the Sacramento Valloy everything was smiling. The cattle were luxuriating in the grass knee high, and the plains were decked with flowers. At 2 p.m. the train turned eastward to ascend the Nevada Mountains, and by ten o'clock reached Blue from which to Truckee the snow was from four to twelve feet deep, and in the gulches it was in some places 100 feet deep. Those who have kept snow guages on the Nevadas, report a fall of 389 inches of snow during the winter. Immense snow-ploughs, operated by locomotives and hundreds of Chinese, had opened the roads over the Nevadas, and the train was on time until it reached the town of Wells, on the Humboldt Mountains. There they overtook the trains which had left Sau Francisco for the four days "previously. The road from Well 9to Toano (thirtysix miles) was still blockaded, no trains having passed over that section for four days. The snow was any depth from four to fifteen feet. As the wind was still blowing, to open the tr.iek with shovels was as futile as emptying the orean dry with a spoon. Seventeen locomotives were assembled at the western end of the blockade, eight of which were put behind an immense snow-plough. The five passenger trains were massed into three, and thus arranged, a charge was made on the obstruction. As such power was hard to resist, in three hours the snow-plough was pushed through to Toano, and the caravan of trains reached Ogden only three hours behind time. But the successful trial demonstrates that trains can be pushed through any blockade ever likely to impede any road. The change coming down the mountains was as great as that going up them. In the valley of Salt Lake farmers were ploughing and the atmosphere was mild. Starting out ag-un in a few hours, the deep snows were encountered again on the Wasatch range, so deep that at some of the villages the combs of the roof of some of the houses could alone be seen. But there was no obstruction ; yet the cars crowding along between snow-banks as high as the roofs, were interesting to the passengers. On Saturday, the 18th March, the train encountered a fearful snow-storm on the Rocky Mountains, at Sherman, lasting until midnight of Sunday. _^