Dashing down to the wharf at the foot of Market Street in San Francisco, during the height of a gold strike in 1879, you board a ferry for a two-day journey to a remote and hardscrabble boomtown among inhospitable hills just east of the Sierra Nevada. The side-wheeler steams across San Francisco Bay on a brilliant autumn afternoon before arriving at the Central Pacific Railroad terminal in Vallejo.
Stepping from the gangway, you board the Nevada-bound Lightning Express that chugs through the Central Valley and across the Sierras. Shortly before sunrise in Reno, you transfer to the Virginia and Truckee Railroad to Carson City, where you hop onto the morning stage that lurches past the statehouse.
