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Roaring Camp No. 1 "Dixiana"

The Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad is one of two preservation lines that bring tourists from the beaches of Santa Cruz to the forests of Bear Mountain, meeting the standard-gauge Santa Cruz, Big Trees & Pacific at Felton, California.

No. 1 Dixiana was the first engine on the RC&BT, and the one that shoulders most of the traffic. It was built in 1912 for the standard-gauge Alaculsy Lumber Co. in Tennessee, and rebuilt as a three-footer when it was sold to the W.M. Ritter Lumber Co. in Georgia, and from there bounced between various logging and mining roads until the mid-'50s.

In 1958, California businessman F. Norman Clark went down to Georgia looking for an engine...not to steal, but to buy for his under-construction tourist railroad, and in Dixiana, Virginia, he found his engine. The old derelict was cleaned up and shipped to California, and in 1963 began a preservation career that continues to this day.