Before he became Master Mechanic for the Central Pacific
Railroad, Sacramento railroad pioneer A.J. Stevens was hired as a mechanic for
the San Francisco & Alameda Railroad. In January 1866, C.W. Stevens and
younger brother A.J. Stevens built one of the earliest steam locomotives on the
West Coast -- the “J.G. Kellogg.” Named after a principal investor for
the railroad, the J.G. Kellogg was sold multiple times throughout its
lifetime and renumbered as the Central Pacific No. 176, the Stockton &
Visalia No. 2, the Stockton & Copperopolis No. 2, and Southern Pacific No.
1100.
In July 1891, the engine was eventually sold as Anderson
& Bellavista RR No. 1, owned by the Shasta Lumber Company near Redding,
California. On the fateful day of November 17, 1893, it was transported by
ferry across the Sacramento River near Anderson where it failed to stop on the
ferry and fell into the deep water below. A month later on December 16, 1893, the Weekly Shasta Courier
newspaper printed an article which stated, “The Shasta Lumber Company’s engine
has been ‘snaked’ out of the river, where it has been in soak for two or three weeks.”
However, legend grew of the sunken locomotive, with some people claiming it
fell a second time in the river in the late 1890s and never recovered.
In his book Red River: Paul Bunyan’s Own Lumber Company
and Its Railroads, Robert M. Hanft, professor emeritus of transportation at
Chico State, writes: “In 1970 a new highway bridge was being erected just
downstream from the fiasco. Divers worked in the swift cold water and one
reported he had come across a steel hulk 40 feet down that appeared to him to
be an old steam railroad locomotive. Northern California newspapers buzzed with
the story in January of 1971 and speculation arose about what should be done
with this find, whose property it was, and how it could be retrieved. The story
of how it got there in the first place was revived, with no more than the
customary mangling of facts.”
Over the years, attempts to locate the lost locomotive have
been made by historians, railroad fans, and other curious individuals – but the
engine’s discovery has never been documented. In 2011, a group of individuals
set out to locate the locomotive and believed it had been spotted in a
sandbar near the Deschutes Road Bridge. A group of divers with metal detectors
turned up zero
results, however. Some people speculate it remains buried under a sandbar
near the bridge, while others purport the river current might have decimated it
or washed it further down the river. Still, others speculate it might have
already been removed either by construction crews or salvagers—but just never
reported. Whatever the case, the legend of the sunken J.G. Kellogg lives
on.
