Dunsmuir: Named for a Fountain

The railroad workers who built this mountain division point in the late eighteen eighties called it Poverty Flats. The Central Pacific needed a place where extra locomotives could be staged to push trains up the steep grades north of town, and a settlement of railroad men and their families took shape fast. The station was briefly called Pusher.

Then in eighteen eighty-eight a wealthy British Columbian coal baron's son named Alexander Dunsmuir passed through, was charmed by the canyon, and offered the town a deal: rename yourselves after me and I will send you a fountain. The town agreed. The fountain followed, and a fountain can still be seen at the Botanical Gardens today.

Dunsmuir became the railroad heart of northern California, and for seventy years the switch from steam to diesel in the nineteen fifties slowly unwound what the railroad had built.