The Road Genealogist: The Laws RR Museum

Saturday, March 26, 2011

The Laws RR Museum

Bishop, CA

    Visited the Laws Museum this afternoon; it was once an important stop on the Carson & Colorado Railroad which was incorporated in May 1880 and completed from Mound House, NV, near Carson City, to Laws, CA, approximately 4.5 miles by road to the NE of Bishop, in Mar 1883. The first run was on 1 Apr 1883.

    The shot was taken after I had walked by the camera display, the trading post, the general store [which had a 20s-40s, art-deco poster advertising Warren Gum (I had a brother & an uncle with that given name)], the stove display, the print shop, the pioneer bldg, the fire station, the medical bldg, the textile bldg, and the original 1883 agent's house. The white on the ground in front of the old tractors is likely salt used to melt snow.

    A wanted poster for The Wild Bunch, which included Butch Cassiday & the Sundance Kid; believe it was on the Assay Office. [If you click 1 or 2 times to zoom in.]

A view of the rolling stock donated by Southern Pacific, the successor to the Carson & Colorado RR, circa July 1964.

An oil wagon likely similar to the one our maternal great-grandmother Martha Elizbeth Farley Shackelford's second husband, Sam Colbaugh, drove near Big Springs, TX.

[If you click 1 or 2 times, you may be able to zoom in on the plaque in the center.] It explains that the North Inyo County School was move to Laws with financial help from two pioneer families: Verne & Sybil Summers and Thomas N. & Kathleen Murphy Wonnacot. The plaque to Maud Truscott was moved from a Bishop elementary school auditorium to Laws.

Here's a closeup of Tom & Kathleen Wonnacot; Kathleen's last position was as Dean of Girls at Bishop Un HS.