DYER: Now, you’ve mentioned that there would only be two crews working in an area like the Spring Gap area.  One would be the flume crew; another would be the electric crew.

CASTLE: But another one now, something else though, when you would supposedly have a major flume break, you know, like I showed you in the picture, a major flume…where everybody would go. 

DYER: I see

CASTLE: The line crew and everybody.  All of them that they could get would go over and prepare the flume. All of them that they could get a hold of.

DYER: After leaving your position as a crew foreman, you became a field manager.

CASTLE: A field foreman, yeah. 

DYER: What’s the difference in the field foreman?

CASTLE: Well, a field foreman has a number of crews, not only one.  He has maybe, oh…like in Angeles—they had four crews in Angeles—and they had three or four crews here see?  And I would commute between Angeles and hear and line the work up, you know? You’d take…and you’d have to line you work…you’d have to figure, “well, today we’re going to do this, and tomorrow we’re going to do that,” and you’d have to get all of your cord minutes so you could get your material.

DYER: did you take your orders from…

CASTLE: I took my orders from a general foreman.

DYER: A general foremen. 

CASTLE: Bob Summer.

DYER: And he would be in charge of the region?

CASTLE: everything.  Everything.

DYER: I see.

CASTLE: Bob would be in charge of everything.

DYER: and then you would then pass these on as you saw fit to…

Castel: Yeah, yeah. To different crew…

DYER: …crew foremen.  So, was that a desk job Mr. Castle?

CASTLE: No.  No, that was a field job.  See, that’s why they call it a field foreman. I was out in the field all of the time. Well, most of the time.  I had a lot of desk work to do too, but it didn’t bother me too much.

DYER: Did you…you didn’t like the desk job, huh?

CASTLE: Not too much.  No. I didn’t like too much of that.  That’s what Mr. Shorter used to tell me all of the time, when they were they were putting nothing on paper.

DYER: I’m glad you can remember that.

CASTLE: the minute you put something on paper, you are in trouble.

DYER: It becomes permanent.

CASTLE: It becomes permanent, and you’re in big trouble. You know, when that country started to grow on highway four, they only had one crew with four men in Angeles; and they just got too big, you know, that they couldn’t handle it so they sent me over there to build up more crew.  So that’s what…you see, all these jobs now, with the unions and all that stuff, they’re big jobs.  But for a guy in San Jose seeking a job in Angeles or Sonora, well he would bid on it.   Well if he had more time than the guy here, he would get the job.  See what I mean, there was this seniority deal, you know?   And…

DYER: Sort of like politics.

CASTLE: It is, it is. It’s politics all the way through.

DYER: Well, as you think back to the earlier decades, were there favorite positions that you held? Jobs that…

CASTLE: No. I didn’t have any favorite positions.  I just done it as a fellow would…as the best I could.

DYER: as field foreman, even though you operated in Calaveras County?

CASTLE: yeah, that was my territory—Calaveras County.  And I used to come over here and have my little bit too until I got a field foreman here.  Then they finally got one here and I didn’t have to bother them too much.

DYER: Well, let’s got back a little bit and talk about some of the major projects that  you were responsible for or activities that you had while you were working out in the field and along the Stanislaus River.  You refer to the Spring Gap Project.  Would you describe the location of that and…

CASTLE: Yeah.  The Spring Gap Project was from Stanislaus to Spring Apara.  That’s sixteen mile of line. 

DYER: So that would be a flume line then?

CASTLE: No.  That was on the side of the mountain.  It was built separate, way up on the hill above the flume.

DYER: Oh, it was above the flume.

CASTLE: Yeah, above the flume.  All of it was above the flume.

DYER: I see, okay.  And the Spring Gap power plant itself—when did that go in?

CASTLE: That was built in 1919-1920. 

DYER: …1920, and PG&E did the work on that?

CASTLE: Yeah.

DYER: Were you involved in the construction?

CASTLE: No, not on the construction.  Just on the line work.  That’s all I was involved in.

DYER: Now, that would be downriver from Beardsley.

Castel: Yes, yes. 

DYER: When Beardsley had gone in a little before that?

CASTLE: Oh, after that.  Way long after that.

DYER: After that?

Castel: Oh yeah.  Long…

DYER: so the first one on the river was Spring Gap.

Castle…Spring Gap…

DYER: And the one that’s there now, is that the same one?

CASTLE: that’s the same one, yeah. 

DYER: Same bar house. Okay.

CASTLE: But that line…that power line between Spring Gap and Stanislaus is no more. When they’d done away with the flume and burned that up after they put the tunnel in.  From San Bart to Stanislaus, well, then they done away with the power line and then they took that up the hill and tied in into the Beardsley Line.

DYER: Oh, I see.

CASTLE: And then it come down…now that power comes down from the Beardsley line now.

DYER: And the Beardsley Line goes from where the damn is…

CASTLE: From Beardsley to Curtis Creek Sub—out here on Curtis Creek by Standard.

DYER: So, actually, it cuts down south of the Stanislaus Basin. Whereas the Spring Gap went right down the river.

CASTLE: …right down the middle floor. That’s the way the flume went.

DYER: Where was the Phoenix plant at?

CASTLE: It’s right up there when you go up…like you’re going up Lyons Street.  Go as far as you can go, and when you come to the end of the road, well, that’s Phoenix Plant at.

DYER: And that one went in after the Spring Gap?

Castel: Oh no.  that was the San Francisco Power company.  That one was the old one.

DYER: That’s the oldest.

CASTLE: That’s the oldest.  That’s one of the oldest powerhouses we had.  And then later they build a new one.  They build a new Phoenix Powerhouse…like the one that’s there now.

DYER: same site though.

CASTLE: Same site.  Just below it a little bit.

DYER: These power plants, did they supply the local counties or…did it send…

CASTLE: you see, originally, it was built…Phoenix Powerhouse was build to supply power for the mines—like the Jumper Mine and the Harvard Mine and the Crystalline Mine and, oh, four or five mine down the road.  Then eventually it went to Moccasin, you know.   And then the other line that came from electric power. 

DYER: where is that?

CASTLE: that’s over on the Mocolome.—just four miles outside of Jackson.  And it came a long and went over to…went as far as the McAlpine Mine.  That’s over at Mount Bullion.

DYER: that would be down in Mariposa.

Castel: Mariposa.  Yeah, that’s what that line was really just built for the local mining. And then later, Moccasin Clerk came in.  The Hetch Hetchy Project came in later, you know, after that. And they we tied in with Airpa.  They’d build a power line from Moccasin Creek to early intake, and they had a generator up there that they—for their own use—that they shoved down to Moccasin creek Powerhouse.  And then after the mines all shut down, then we would abandon it from Moccasin Creek to Mount Bullion—they just tore it down.

DYER: Well, now, there were several dredges operating…

Castel: Yeah, well, that was later.  That was…

DYER: …Tuolumne River…

Castel : right at Jackson—this side of Jackson—they were going to, by the old Kyle Mine—they had a big dredge in there and the Munn property.

DYER: the Munn property, yeah.  In fact, I guess Elton Munn was one of the operators of the dredge down there during…

Castel: Well, he might have worked there, I don’t know, but he, later, he was surveyor and locator the PG&E.  I don’t know just exactly what he told you, but I know that that dredge was right opposite the Kyle Mine and the river there. And then we had the big flood and everything went down the river.  But we’d saved the transformer anyhow.

DYER: But before Moccasin Damn went in though, the Phoenix power plant supplied some of them in the area.

CASTLE: Oh, yeah, yeah.  When it went from electric to standard—Standard Electric they called it then, it wasn’t PG&E; it was Standard Electric. That was taken over later by San Francisco Park Company and the PG&E. 

DYER: evidentially, one interesting aspect of your work had been the construction and maintenance of the flumes.  Why don’t you give us a description of what these were?

CASTLE: what, the flume?

DYER: the flume.

CASTLE: Well, I told you about the million board feet of lumber that we…

DYER: You’re using a million board feet of lumber a year…

CASTLE: ….a year on the flume.

DYER: On constructing and maintaining…

CASTLE: On maintaining—just maintaining—the flume.  That’s all.  That the maintenance of it. And I worked in the board gang for, oh, maybe six months or so.  And then I went with the rest of the guys—went underneath to change the stringers and the ties and all that stuff.  And…

DYER: Well, was there that much weight, or was it from the moisture?

CASTLE: Well, we’d turn the…you see, they’d rot out. You know, the stringers underneath to hold up the flume were six-by-sixteen-by-sixteen feet long. 

DYER: That’s a pretty big one.

CASTLE: That’s a good size. And they’re heavy. 

DYER: And it would take, what, three…four men to handle something like that?

CASTLE: Well, two on each end.  You see, when the water…you turn the water out of the flume.  We have what we call a “turnout.”

DYER: that would be a place where you…

CASTLE: …where we dump it.

DYER: …dump the water.

CASTLE: …dump the water.  We’re working on one section, say, like from C-4 to 4 (___), we’d dump the water up about C-4 someplace and then when the water would go down to about, oh, maybe eight or ten inches then we start jacking the flume up to get the timbers under there.  And then we had four hours…you had four hours to get this work done.  How may bench you were going to change.

DYER: So if you are working on a section, you had four hours because…

CASTLE: four hours after that the guy to o up there and close the gates and you get water.

DYER: …you get more water so you better be finished.

CASTLE: You better be ready when the water came in. So, sometime we’d have to hustle a little bit to get stringers and stuff under there.  And then you’d have to quirk…

DYER: climb up on the…

CASTLE: no, you’d have to quirk the flume.

DYER: oh, quirk the flume. 

CASTLE: so it wouldn’t leak. 

DYER: what did you use?

CASTLE: Oakum. 

DYER: Oakum.  It’s a kind of caulking that would…

CASTLE: Caulking, yeah.  You had caulk and knife and you would go along and…

DYER: So four hours…how much a flume would you be able to do in four hours?

CASTLE: Oh, maybe we’d change forty or fifty stringers.  See, there was five stringers wide.  See, and we’d change about maybe forty…maybe not so many. Some were tough and some weren’t. 

DYER: so that means that you really would have to be moving pretty fast.

CASTLE: You’d have to work.  If twelve o’clock came and lunchtime came, that didn’t make no difference as long as there was no water in the flume.  But when the water came in, why, you’d better be ready.  And then you can go up and take your tin clothes off and dry out.  In the summer time it was no problem, but the winter time was not so hot, you know.  So in that way, why, men in the course and after we had what we would call ties, and box posts, and yokes.  That’s the tie one underneath—with a game in it, you know—and the box posted on top of that into that with a bolt it and the yoke went across the top under the track. 

DYER: so what you had was a, not only a trough for the water, but you also had on top of that the tracks so that you can get the men and the supplies in and out. 

CASTLE: You had to keep that tacks to that those tractors could run over too.  You couldn’t leave a wall in if you had to make that the tractor was going to go over.

DYER: You don’t want it to go down a canyon.

CASTLE: yeah.  And you see, they had big hydraulic jack for it that were about three feet high, but they were about twenty-ton jacks.  And then we’d have, what they’d call, a jack post.  And then you put this chain around and you’d just jack the Flume up.  That’s all there is to it—on each side jack it up and get it so that your string doesn’t go under there.  Take the other ones out and throw them down the hill and that was it.

DYER: So, by using this jack then, they have made it easy for you to…

CASTLE: Oh, we had to.  You had to get it under there.  You had to have a little clearance to get that sixteen inch timber under there.  We’d jack it up in, oh, maybe three inches.  Not over three inches because if you did you’d separate the bottom of the flume.

DYER: Yeah, and then you’d have to caulk it again, huh?

CASTLE: oh boy, sometimes we’d have some dandy leaks.

DYER: What kind of wood did you use in the flume?

CASTLE: Pine.  And most of it was clear. 

DYER: Clear pine, huh?

CASTLE: Most of was.  In those days, you know, this knotty stuff didn’t go.  Not like it is today.

DYER: Knotty pine, huh?

CASTLE: They’d call it knotty pine, and oh, that didn’t uh…

DYER: Well, you needed stronger material.

CASTLE: Yeah, we needed strong stuff. It used to weigh, that water in the flume and a full head weighed twenty tons at the bend. 

DYER: Now, I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.  A full head…

CASTLE: A full head of water—that’s five-foot four-inches of water in a box.  

DYER: Okay. A head would be five foot four inches in a box.  Is that as much as it would hold?

CASTLE: that’s all I would hold without slopping over the top.

DYER: Okay.

CASTLE: and that would weight twenty ton to the bent.

DYER: And a bent was…

Castel: Sixteen feet. Sixteen feet long.

DYER: and what would the width be of something. 

CASTLE: ten-foot wide.

DYER: Ten-foot by five-foot-four and then the…

CASTLE: take it out to those arithmetic guys.  Let them figure it out.

DYER: Well someone must have figured it out, I’m sure. 

CASTLE: Well, that’s what they used to tell us. It weighed twenty ton to the bent.

DYER: …twenty tons.

CASTLE: …twenty tons. Moving water.  Eight miles an hour—the water moved eight miles an hour in that flume. And that was supposed to have been twenty ton to the bent. 

DYER: Have you ever had people ride the flume?  I understand that some of the loggers, when they had their flumes, they had specially constructed…

CASTLE: No, we didn’t allow anybody in the…they didn’t allow anybody in the water.

DYER: there wouldn’t be much clearance between the water and the track I suppose.

CASTLE: Only about three or four feet. We wouldn’t allow anyone in the, or the company, wouldn’t allow anybody riding in the water. 

DYER: did you check the flume from above on the track?

CASTLE: Yeah, yeah. 

DYER: …whereas some of these loggers, I guess they had to ride the flume.

CASTLE: …I’ll get you that picture…

DYER: Now we’re back on again, and we’re looking at Mr. Castle’s scrapbook. Some of these will be reproduced for other people…

CASTLE: Now, you see what I mean by the water.  Now, you see the water in there?

DYER: now, we’re looking at, let’s see, the flume, and there’s the tractor on top with a load of timber, and then there’s the flume—it’s got the…it looks like it’s rippling down along there.

CASTLE: You see, now, this is the box post.

DYER: Okay.

Castel: this is the yoke.

DYER: that’s a…

CASTLE: yoke—goes over the top.

DYER: It’s a vertical post and then the yoke goes from one post to another.

Castel:…then on the other side there’s a twelve inch galvanize spike that goes down through this—through here.

DYER: But that’s to hold the yoke to the…

CASTLE: that’s to hold the yoke to the box post. And then when you put your boards on inside them, you’re inside here and there’s no (___) and you nail the flume boards to the box post.   

DYER: Well then, we can get back to some of them a little bit later then.  How about the source of the water, where was the intake of this, Mr. Castle?

CASTLE: the water? Sandbar.

DYER: At Sandbar.  And you took it right from the Stanislaus River?

CASTLE: That’s the river, yeah.

DYER: …itself.  And then it rained…

Castel: right from here. 

DYER: okay, it’s sandbar with the small check damn.

CASTLE: yeah, and then it would run into the flume right here.

DYER: …and then it ran into the flume.

Castel: …the gates…

DYER: …is that a wooden damn?

CASTLE: Yeah.  A wooden faced damn.

DYER: and then it went hoe many miles?

CASTLE: sixteen miles.

DYER: sixteen miles. 

CASTLE: those are the gates and into the flow right there.  You see, the flume tenner could regulate how much water that was going in.  Had then we had a meter over here telling how much feet of water was going down the flume.

DYER: and then what was the exiting point of the water?

Castel: four Bay.

DYER: Four bay which was the generating point.

CASTLE: that was where they stored the water for the powerhouse…for the…

DYER: now, a lot of your work depended on being able to get in and out of the different area by use of the little battery operated car.

CASTLE: …and later the Four.  It all was a battery D at first.

DYER: A battery operated the tractor. How many batteries did it use?

CASTLE: Four.

DYER: Four batteries.

CASTLE: Four big long ones; oh, they were about this long…

DYER: Five foot ling?

CASTLE: Well, every shift they’d take the batteries that they used that day and put the new ones in and put those on the charger. 

DYER: and these batteries were sufficient to pull the tractor and a load of lumber?

CASTLE: M hm.  That’s it right there.

DYER: That’s two flat cars and must be, oh, I don’t know, what would that be?

CASTLE: Oh, that’d be…oh, let’s see: twenty-six stringers—six-by-sixteen-by-sixteen—and then maybe a few boards—two-by-twelve—fifteen or twenty two-by-twelve-- two-by-twelve-by-sixteen surfaced on one side.  Then they had, of course a cross-brace, and then all of that all that…(mumbles).

DYER: Was there a man who was specialty trained to operate the tractor?

CASTLE: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah.

DYER: and that was his job?

CASTLE: That was his job only.  That’s all he done.  That’s all he done, was operate that tractor.

DYER: well, in order to keep the flumes maintained, you had to use a million board feet of lumber a year.  Where did you get the lumber?

CASTLE: We got if from Manuel Lumber Company and we got it from Rodger Brothers and Pinkert…later.  Pinkert was later when they had the rail road and they took it in on the rail road. 

DYER: did they get it up to you, or did they cut it up in the high country and…

CASTLE: No, they cut it down there at their plant at in Standard.  And then they shipped it back up there and then they had a siding up there at, well, Sandbar and we had a tramway down there and they’s shoot the lumber down to Sandbar on a tramway. 

DYER: Oh, they took it up in their own little…

CASTLE: they took it up on their own rail road. 

DYER: …rail road. 

CASTLE: they had siding, you now, they had a siding uniform. 

DYER: and then the tramway would take it down…

CASTLE: …to Sandbar.

DYER: …to Sandbar so that you could use you battery operated tractor?

CASTLE: Well, we had a framing mill.  We had a framing mill in Sandbar too. They framed it there and took it down to…down long the flume.  We’d just dump it on the side…on the top of the flume…wherever they…the boss would go along and say how much this and how much that and what he wanted, and then the tractor driver would dump it right on top of the flume there.

DYER: But you had your own mill there though so that you could have it cut into the proper lengths, or…?

CASTLE: No, it all come in sixteen-for links.  All we’d done was frame it.  We’d just put it together, that’s all.  Like this little deal right here.  Right there (looking at the picture again).

DYER: this took another crew to build or a few men to keep It going?

CASTLE: Well, when the lumber started coming in, well, then they’d move the framing and they’ d frame all of the lumber and we’d stack it all and that’s…

DYER: Did you have to have blacksmith to do any…

CASTLE: Oh, we had blacksmith at…he’s still alive.  He lives over here on Oak Drive.

DYER: What’s his name?

CASTLE: Oh, let’s see… He’s (____) painter, his father-in-law. Well, I can’t think of it right now.  I know him too, as well as I know my own name, but I can’t come up with it.

DYER: but you had the blacksmith, he worked up there in a full time job?

CASTLE: He worked right there in the blacksmith shop.  At the old shop right in C-4.  I don’t think there’s any of the tractor drivers alive right now that run track.  I know Pete Conrado is gone, Charlie Loopy’s gone, Turk is gone…

DYER: Turk was a photographer…

CASTLE: Turk was a photographer and a tractor driver. And who else? Yeah, I can’t think of the other person’s name right now. 

DYER: what was it like to construct the flume and attract (___) back in that country?  From the photographs, it’s pretty obviously in this country, there’s not only rattle snake problems…

CASTLE: No, no, it wasn’t the rattle snake problems, it was a slide problem. You see, after all of that water, after the flume broke, well, all that water came down and it would undermine and make all of this mountain go down forever, you know?   So that was…the job was to get footings in first.  Wherever Mr. Conrad figured where the footings would go.

DYER: Was that concrete?

CASTLE: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.  We got a place like that and we’d put two-seater things this way an two seats this way and put the post on top of that.

DYER: All made up of these large beams.

CASTLE: yeah, all six-by-sixteen.  See, we had cedar for the footings and then pine of the rest of it. And that’s where they used to get their firewood. All of these stringer and stuff that we tore out during the winter time, you know?

DYER: So you won’t find any up there now then?

CASTLE: No, you won’t find…So they’d just let them go down the hill and dry.  And then when they’d want a lot of bunch of firewood, well, they’d just go down there and his at them back up and saw then up into whatever lengths they wanted for their stoves and that was your firewood. 

DYER: For the bunkhouse?

CASTLE: For the bunkhouse and the cookhouse and all of that.  See, in those days there weren’t any gas or all of that stud for cooking, and you’d use wood—whatever wood you could get.  And one time we got a bunch of timber from some other outfit and they thought, “well, we’ll creosote this.” So they put a creosote plant in and they creosoted everything.  Well, that almost killed everybody off, that creosote.  One year.  One year.  That was it.

DYER: yeah, that doesn’t make very good firewood.

CASTLE: No, but I mean getting creosote ordered and then take that…

DYER: Just the job of doing it.

CASTLE: Oh, it’ll burn you up. It will blister the devil out of you. 

DYER: you’ve mentioned blowouts before. Is this just a collapse of the flume?

CASTLE: Well, it’d get a leak that they wouldn’t find and it would start leaking and leaking and soften the ground up, and all of that weight on that flume pretty soon whishhht and bounce you go. 

DYER: It just undermines the…

CASTLE: …footing, and aways you go.

DYER: and so this would then be an emergency nature and people then would have all of their crews go out to help them.

CASTLE: Well, when they had a big one.  Like when we had that big slide over, I forget what year it was, but we had a big slide and we lost five men.  They were working on the flume and pretty soon the mountain gave away.  Down she comes. Just took everything right out—men and all. Right down the…

DYER: were any of the men seriously hurt?

CASTLE: Oh, we lost four. It killed four.

DYER: when was that?

CASTLE: Oh, I’ll have to ask Luke.  There’s a kid here in town that worked on that and—Luke Tyler—and I forget what year that…I forget what year it was that we lost one of the foreman and we lost two guys Stemp, one guy we didn’t find for a day, a day and a half.  You know those pump cars that I showed you about…

DYER: you pump them. 

CASTLE: …lumber

DYER: …you had to move

CASTLE: It towed lumber up the Flume on that too once in awhile, and he was standing on this pump car when this whole mountain gave away and he went—pump car and all—almost clear down to the river. And I forget, gees, I forget what years that was.  I’ll have to ask Luke.  Because he’s…you know Luke’s Janitorial Service? Luke Tyler, well, he rode the box—one of those boxes—clear down the river; well, most of the river.

DYER: And survived?

CASTLE: and survived.  See, in the morning, first thing in the morning, I Iost one Mexican kid—he broke his neck.  The flume…the water was out of the flume and so he grabbed one of these yokes and was going to slide and come down and hit him on the neck and killed him, so…

END OF TAPE: Please proceed to the third tape (castle_w_2)

General Information:

Interviewer: Dyer, Richard

Interviewee: Castle, Walter

Name of Tape: P.G.& E. in Tuolumne County (castle_w_1_1)

When: 8/31/1973

Transcriber: Ariella (12/8/08)