Clara & Jake and the T&T

T&T Baggage Shed, Tecopa

I nteresting couple, Jake and Clara Mann. Met them in their trailer in Tecopa. Pat Smith at the
General Store referred me to Jake. I was asking Pat about the railroad that used to run
through here. “I don’t know much about that. Better go see Jake. He’s an old timer around
here. He’d know.”

I demurred. “Man, I’m on my way out of town. I gotta start heading back to the Coast. I’ll have
to see him next time I come through here.”

Pat considered this a moment, then replied, “Well, he’s old. Better get to him now while you still
have the chance. You don’t know if he’ll be here next year.”

I thought about past opportunities missed because it was inconvenient, or because I was scared or
tired. Like coming up on Kelso Depot years ago when it was still open, but not going in. And not
going in to the tiny general store in Darwin, because it looked dark and scary and tough-looking
miners were hanging around outside. And not going in to the old man’s glass-bottle house in
Rhyolite because I was too shy to walk up and talk to the guy.
So clearly, it wasn’t even a choice this time. It was back down the road to see Jake and Clara.

Clara came to her trailer door at my knock. She wore an old, heavy, faded housecoat even though
it was midafternoon and quite warm, even in December. I explained that I had a history question,
and Pat Smith had sent me up here. Clara said, “C’mon in. Me and Pa are still a bit sick, but
come on in.”

Clara looks to be a sprightly 70 or so; Jake seems a good deal older and a good deal more spent.
But Lord they know their history of the area. Jake first came to Tecopa in 1952, and seems to
have traveled all the canyons and hills between Mojave and the White Mountains. He tells of his
interactions with the murderous Charles Manson and his followers holed up in Goler Wash on
the way to Butte Valley. (“Ol’ Charlie didn’t do them killings. He’s too smart f’r that. He got the
others to do it. He’d con anybody into doing anything for him.”)

They talk about how Tecopa used to have enough kids to double-shift the primary school down
by the general store. Clara pulls out a worn Xerox copy of a 1914 AAA map, pointing out towns
and sites long since reclaimed by the blowing sands. The big town then was Silver Lake, a few
dozen miles south of here; now it’s not even a whisper.

And they tell me about the railroad. As I suspected, it was the Tonopah & Tidewater, which
never made it to either Tonopah in Nevada or to the tidewater near Los Angeles. They told me a
lot about that n’er do well railroad, who’s grade I had followed coming out of the Silurian Hills a
couple days before. Seems that Francis “Borax” Smith built the T&T to replace his 20-mule
teams coming out of Death Valley. The T&T wandered for 250 miles around the Mojave, from
Ludlow to Soda Springs to Tecopa and out to Beatty, Nevada. Jake says it mostly hauled ore,
salt, and clay from dozens of local mines, but sometimes carried fare-paying passengers as well.

Borax made Francis Smith wealthy but his railroad never did.

The railroad was completed in 1908. It operated for less than four decades, until the Great
Depression and severe flood damage forced its closure. The rails were torn up in 1940. Jake says
that even during its heyday, if it ever had one, the T&T was as eccentric and erratic as the remote
desert communities it served.

At some point I say I hope I’m not intruding on them.

“Hell,” Jake chuckles. “We don’t have any more pressing engagements this afternoon than to sit
here jawin’.”

Return to Contents