For those of you not familiar with the history of the area. Shasta County was once the premier place for copper. However almost all the remains of Shasta County's once thriving "Copper Belt" are now under the waters of Shasta Lake except for the few mines south of Shasta Dam and portions of the mine on Bully Hill on the Pit River branch of Shasta Lake. Now there has been talk every once in a while of being able to extract more copper from Iron Mountain due the advances in mining technology and the price of copper (which is why the area died off after WWI becasue of a fall a coppers prices made it not profitable to mine it anymore and the copper in some places was getting to expensive to extract.) I doubt this will ever happen, nor will it be enough to build a railroad up to Iron Mountain. Also Lakehead doen't seem like the greatest place to put an interchange for a railroad anyway. Also parts of the original SP mainline and the narrow gauge Iron Mountain Railway are either being used for a biking trail (Sacramento River Trail) under a lake (Keswick Lake) or have been built by roads, houses, ect. Just some thoughts of mine. I've lived in Redding since I was 3 (I'm 22 now) and I am pretty familiar with the area geogrphically and historically.

Tim Stricker