![]() In 1901 the mill was taken to the top of the mountain at Pino Grande and a steam plant furnished the power for the saws and other operating gear. The mill operation at Folsom was never a success, with a number of different problems, most of which had to do with what they were trying to do with moving and storing logs on the river. Prisoners from Folsom Prison had built a dam and put in an electrical generation plant that operated the saw mill as well as the trolley system in Sacramento. There is a very comprehensive history of it in a book published in 1984 by Steve Polkinghorn called “Pino Grande: Logging railroads of the Michigan-California Lumber Co.” The mill that operated for about 50 years at Pino Grande started out as the world’s first all electric sawmill at Folsom, CA. A narrow gauge railroad took the rough cut lumber from the mill to a tower on the north side where the carriage was loaded, moved across the gorge and unloaded in a tower on the opposite side onto the narrow gauge railroad which took it to the mill in Camino. The distance of the cable over the river was 2,650 feet ( other sources say 2814 feet) and it was about 1,200 feet from the the cable to the river below. The Museum has a piece of cable that was donated to us that is very interesting and historic.The cable we have was used by the Michigan-California Lumber Company to move lumber across the American River from the Pino Grande Mill on the north side to the Camino mill on the south side of the river.Briefly, it was installed in 1901 and was in operation until 1949. Photo of our piece of the cable on display (click on image for larger and clearer image) Wikipedia says that the original name was Pinogrande Come to find out, it was pronounced Pie no Grand.Who’d have known if Steve Polkinghorn hadn’t told him. Being a Californian, I gave it the Spanish pronunciation. I just recently found out that I’ve not been pronouncing the name of the mill correctly.
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