Verdi In 1864 a California lumber company established a logging and sawmill town at Crystal Peak on the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada a short distance north of O'Neil's Crossing on the Truckee River. By 1868 the town had grown to 1500 people, most of them engaged in cutting and sawing the timbers required by the eastward snaking Central Pacific Railroad, and in working small gold and silver deposits. The CPRR tracks bypassed the town, however, and by 1869 most of Crystal Peak's vitality had been transplanted to the new railroad townsite at the old crossing on the Truckee half a mile to the southeast. It was christened Verdi to honor the composer, but pronounced in the typical Nevada lunkhead fashion as VUR-dye. Verdi's saw, lathe, and shingle mills buzzed incessantly to serve the California market, and by the 1880s the little town had become one of the main collection and storage points for winter ice which found ready markets in California's valley and coastal towns during the summer. Verdi's place in history is secure as the site of the first train robbery in the West. Shortly after midnight on November 5, 1870, five men boarded the east-bound cars at Verdi. When the locomotive left the station, the passenger cars had been uncoupled and left standing on the track. The locomotive, pulling only the mail car and express car, chuffed eastward to a stone culvert, where the engineer was ordered to stop. The robbers opened both cars, putting the train crew in the mail car under guard while they struggled to open the Wells Fargo & Co. treasure boxes. The robbers found $41,600 in the shipment, hurriedly divided it at the edge of the roadbed, and scattered into the night after barricading the track. Within a week every member of the gang had been captured and $39,500 of the stolen money recovered. Two of the men turned state's evidence against the rest and were released; the others drew sentences of from five to 23-1/2 years in the penitentiary. The train robbery was the single exciting week in more than a century and a quarter of otherwise uneventful history. Nevertheless, Verdi could boast of a short-line logging railroad of its own before the twentieth century was very old. But by the 1930s logging had virtually ceased and Verdi was subsisting on the railroad and highway traffic. US 40 uncoiled itself to pass through the town after its sinuous passage over Donner Summit, and by the late 1940s and early 1950s the town was best known for the large Bill & Effie's Truck Stop here. Bill and Effie sold the truck stop, and the new owners moved it out of the center of town to the edge of the freeway and christened it Boomtown, a roadside phenomenon that has far surpassed its origins. The truck driver is still king here, but we ordinary mortals are welcome too. Verdi itself is far enough off the freeway to retain its old character. Travelers can find essential services, and the Verdi Inn has an enduring reputation. The old logging town shows evidence of its up and downs, but the setting alone is worth the short detour. A dirt road meanders into the Sierra by way of Dog Valley, and at several scenic points along its length the Forest Service has developed campgrounds. The Washoe County Park Department maintains the beautiful Crystal Peak Park at the river's edge just south of town as a picnic area.