Hot Times in the Big City

 

My great grandfather, George “Goggy”, was born in Caliente, Nevada. My grandmother and father were born there, too. My grandparents met and were married there. I have an idea to drive there and see it someday. But it’s an eight-hour drive, and it’s only one block big. So it would be rather anti-climactic. I’ve come to realize that Caliente and Disneyland’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad are related. My grandmother talked about being a girl and having picnics at Cathedral Gorge. Oddly, it looks exactly like Big Thunder. Caliente experiences a desert flash flood. And, yes, so does the Walt Disney World Big Thunder. Caliente looks like it was a happening place in the nineteenth century, so does the little town at Big Thunder. And finally, Caliente exists as a railroad town. The Caliente station is the big attraction in town as one of the last Mission style stations built. Big Thunder is a railroad! You be the judge.