• Auburn's first homemade airplane
  Excerpts from Auburn a Century of Memories
  published March 1988 by the Placer County Historical Society interview with Floyd Locher

Percy Root is the man in the white shirt standing to the right of
Carrol Locher's Hupmobile. The plane was built in the basement
of this garage in Auburn

Percy Root was a race car driver. He was the Chauffeur for Mr. Barclay who was Chief Engineer for the Southern Pacific Co. SP rented the old Kennedy House, an old hotel that was across from the Freeman Hotel on Railroad St., which is now called Lincoln Way, for their engineering headquarters, They had two huge cars one was an Olds Limited, that had 42 inch wheels. They used to say that Perry would drive that car up the side of a building if he had to.

Percy always wanted to fly, particularly after Bob Fowler made the flight here and landed in Auburn . So he started building a Bleriot Monoplane. He got the frame and the fuselage –never saw any wings. . .he got a great big engine, out of one of those big old cars. Percy set it on a free wheeling rack that swivelled and he was going to try the propeller. He had made a propeller that was about as beautiful thing as you would see. It looked just like a modern propeller, about four or five feet in diameter. He had it all varnished and shined up. He had a hub fixed so he could attach it to the drive shaft of the engine. The engine was bolted to the engine rack with those free wheeling wheels. He started to crank and crank and crank, flipping that propeller over like the kids used to do with their model airplanes.

Well, all of a sudden that thing took off with a roar and chased him around the shop. How he got out of the way, I’ll never know, but it took off right down through the back of the garage and went right out through the wash rack and went right through the wall. The wall at the back of the wash rack was about seven feet off the ground. If he had had wings, he would have been flying. He never tried to start it again. The fuselage laid under the edge of Al’s garage for a long time.
 

• GUNS IN OPHIR (from Ophir Once Upon a Town published in 1985)

  

  According to the Placer County History, in 1857, there was a big iron cannon mounted on wooden wheels, located at the corner of Commercial and Court Streets in Auburn.  This cannon was jointly owned by citizens of Ophir and Auburn, who alternated its use for sunrise salutes on the 4^th of July. 

  One year when it was Auburn’s turn, the cannon was heard booming in Ophir. The guilty parties then dumped it in the bottom of Jamison’s reservoir (near the corner of Lozanos and Chili Hill Roads) where it lay for several years before finally being located.  It was hauled to Auburn and placed on blocks in Sierra Park , next to the Veteran’s Memorial Hall.  Later the barrel was filled with cement and placed in the Old Auburn District Cemetery as a tribute to the unknown dead, where it can still be seen.  (See photo)

   

• Kathryn Howell wrote about her memories and recollections of the Aiuburn area. around 1900.  Here is a small excerpt.

  "About the turn of the centuty, fifty years after the rampage of Rattlesnake Dick, the road beside the babbling brook known as the Auburn Ravine, was little more than a mule trail from Sawyer Street to the  Margurite Mine and then up to the railroad tracks,.  The flat across from  Dairy Road, and the ravine, were favorite  picnic areas.  One took their lunches and tablecloths and sat on the ground, after getting there shanks mare" (on foot).  There were no tables, benches, manicured lawns or games provided as nowadays in Ashford Park.  Then years later there was a thriving pumpkin patch, about where Mikkelsen Drive is.  Under a beautiful full harvest moon, it looked like a field of floating heads.

  From Dairy Road to the Magrurite Mine were rocky hills on one side, and a cow  pasture on the other side of the ravine and perhaps a farm house or two somewhere along down to the Futhy's bridge, now the end of Placer Street and the start of Palm Avenue.