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.
