Centerville Flat

Centerville Flat today is a campground with undeveloped sites and few reminders that this was at one time a bustling western boomtown and is good access for fishing. The town, located along a stage coach route between Silver King Valley and the East Fork of the Carson River, was a commercial hub during the 1850s and 1860s. Described as a “small village” with stores, a tavern, and a hotel called the Centerville House, Centerville supplied local mines with lumber for flumes, bridges, tunnels, fencing, buildings and heating. Richardson’s sawmill was located at Centerville during the 1860s. The mill, operated by Lewis Chalmers until about 1868, produced eight to ten thousand feet of lumber per day. From here the old road to Bodie went to Gray’s Landing, across Silver King Valley, ascended Snodgrass Canyon, and continued on to the east side of the Sierra Nevada. An old road up Wolf Creek turns southerly from the junction, leading to Wolf Creek Pass and the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness.

Jeffrey Pines (pinus jefferyi), a very close relative to the Ponderosa Pine, are abundant on the flat. With the same overall look, cone size, needle bundle count (three), and some overlap in growing region, these trees are often mistaken for one another. There are, however, several ways to distinguish them: Jeffrey Pines prefer to live in the Lodgepole Pine forest and on the east side of the Sierra (although there are places where both pines are found together); the bark of the Jeffrey has a more reddish-orange tint on the plates and has a sweet aroma often described as “vanilla;” and the cones of the Jeffrey do not poke when you pick them up. An easy way to identify the two is to remember “prickly Ponderosa” and “gentle Jeffrey.”