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Kirkwood Inn |
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The curious must wonder about the pictured inn, Kirkwood,
still standing beside the trans-Sierra route over 140 years after some
of it was constructed. Some of it? You don't think that anyone would
on purpose build an inn partly log or timber and the rest milled lumber?
The Archives' snoop found out long ago that Zacharias Kirkwood built
a log cabin circa 1858 when he claimed the land called Kirkwood meadows
today for summer pasturage for his cattle. When voters approved a bond
issue to construct a toll wagon route across the Sierra in the early
1860s, and contractors pushed creation of the wider wagon road to completion
in 1863, Kirkwood, among others, took advantage of it. He probably
got milled lumber some high Sierra Amador mill and built the two-story
hotel addition. Of course, it has been rehabilitated many times but
its appearance is much the same as when emigrant wagons, and packers
and freighters came by long ago.
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