A Journey to Mount Lowe
Last Updated: Wednesday, 12 August 2015 04:28 Nick Spark Hits: 1074
Florence "Pancho" Barnes' grandfather was one of Pasadena's most prominent and interesting citizens. Professor Thaddeus S.C. Lowe was a self-made man who made and lost several fortunes during his lifetime. He is remembered famously as a pioneer American balloonist, but he also invented an early ice machine, and improved upon various technologies associated with the use of natural gas. During the Civil War Lowe persuaded President Abraham Lincoln that balloons could be important reconnaisance platforms, and thus for two years he and his Balloon Corps made observations above battlefields from Chancellorsville to Chickahominy. In the process Lowe became known as the "Most Shot At Man" in the war. In the late 1880s Lowe moved his family to Pasadena and began one of his most ambitious projects: building a railway up the side of the San Gabriel Mountains. The railway actually consisted of two stages. The first was a large funicular which ran a steep grade up to Echo Mountain. The second was a trolley car line that ran from the funicular to Mount Lowe's Alpine Tavern hotel. When it opened in 1893, the mountain railway was hailed as a singular engineering achievement, and a spectacularly beautiful addition to Pasadena. Unfortunately, just six years after the railway opened, Lowe was forced into bankruptcy. He would never recover from the loss. The railway itself was eventually acquired by the Pacific Electric, which operated it until the late 1930s when several disasters, including a fire at the Tavern and a torrential flood, forced its abandonment. It's safe to assume Pancho rode on her grandfather's railway sometime during her childhood. More significantly, in 1910 Professor Lowe took her with him to see the Air Meet at Dominguez Hills. This air show, the first in the history of the United States, must have put the balloonist Lowe in his element. According to Pancho's memoirs, her grandfather pointed at the aircraft zipping by, and told young Florence that one day, she too would learn to fly. She certainly did.