George Rebane

Last Friday Jo Ann and I put the cats in solitary, jumped into the Cherokee, and were on our way to discover McCloud.  This town of about 1,600 sits on Highway 89 less than ten miles east of where it joins I-5.  The dominant landscape feature of the surrounding territory is Mt. Shasta whose 14,000+ft peak looms more than two miles above the town.  We pulled into McCloud about 3pm as the sun was already dipping below the tall pines that are by far the most numerous residents of that country.

Our reservations were at the century-old McCloud Hotel located on Main St. right across from what used to be the railroad station.  The dinner train on the track was being provisioned for the evening’s round trip to the neighboring town of Mt. Shasta.  That train is the community’s last commercial hurrah, everything else over the years has pretty much closed down.

After settling in at the hotel – a no mean feat since Jo Ann had to look at three separate rooms/suites – we did our usual exploration of the environs with map and Carli (our anthropomorphized GPS) to guide us.  The hotel manager was surprised to learn that we did not come to McCloud to ride the dinner train.  And we were surprised that she was surprised, since during these months the train makes the trip in the dark, and the spectacular landscapes, framed by the big snow-covered volcano, are visible only to the extent of the lights that shine out of the dining car windows.  But such surprises went a long way to explain the fortunes of the town.

Instead, we had dinner at the River Grill & Bar which was reputed to be the best place to eat in town that was not on wheels.  This steak and potatoes haven looked like it mostly served the locals (the ribeye steaks we ordered were excellent).  The wait staff was friendly, attentive, and without any airs about this being a locale for fine dining.  We actually figured that out as soon as we saw the naked formica tables with mis-matching chairs that filled a small dining room with booths on one side.  The room adjoining was the bar with a roaring fireplace, and a covey of folks settling in for a comfortable Friday night in McCloud.  In the distance we could hear the whistle of the mostly-empty dinner train starting its downhill run to Mt. Shasta.  It was already dark.

By fits and starts McCloud got started in the 1800s as a timber and mill town.  Its fortunes reached apex when the railroad spur from the mainline connected the community to the rest of the world.  Logs were hauled out of the vast forests located on mostly obliging terrain formed by the endless lava fields supplied by the volcano during its heyday.  In the last century McCloud became a company town of the McCloud River Lumber Company whose owners also built the railroad that made the whole operation profitable.

Folks enjoyed this kind of cozy life in the shadow of the mountain, and the economic embrace of ‘Mother McCloud’, as the company was known to its employees.  People still remember the days when, if your faucet or roof leaked, Mother would send over a maintenance team to fix it for you.  For a number of reasons, including failure to upgrade the mill’s technology, this cared-for existence came to an end in 1965.  Mother left, and the town was privatized.  The only part of the railroad that remained was someone’s bright idea to turn it into a $100/head dinner train since the right-of-way ran along some of the most spectacular country on the continent.

The town still maintains its tidy look, but it appears that the people had little idea of what to do with the place after Mother McCloud hitched up her skirts and left.  The place advertises itself as a tourist destination and annually welcomes a crowd of RVs to do some country dancing.  But that’s not enough to keep the town going as witnessed by a very peaceful Friday night.  We asked the waitress about what keeps the young folks in the community, what do they do?  Her answer, “They leave.”

Now we would have gladly taken the dinner train had anyone there figured out what time the sun sets in fall and winter.  The afternoon ride would have been spectacular with the goliath volcano all decked out in the season’s first snows towering over the seemingly endless forests.  But somehow that solution has been left for the next generation of entrepreneurs to discover.

We had a workmanlike breakfast in the hotel’s dining room the following morning.  Then we packed our bags into the trusty Jeep that still had traces of the night’s frost on it, pulled out on ol’ 89 to take the long way back to Redding.  Driving through the forests reminded us of our own Nevada County and our own economic problems.  We are blessed and cursed by our proximity to the I-80 corridor, so our situation is a bit different from theirs. 

But I keep wondering how much having been a kept community on the apron strings of Mother McCloud influenced what could have become of the town but didn’t.  With Mother in charge, they didn’t have to think much about having to solve the bigger problems of keeping the community green – just do what you’re told and your needs will be satisfied.  But then again, maybe McCloud was ahead of its time.  That seems to be the same message now coming down to all of us from Sacramento and Washington.  It is comforting to know that someone cares.