Dick Dorn

Dick Dorn spent his formative years in the Bay Area, developing interests in railroad history and photography, but he chose to further his career in the heat of the Central Valley and to endure the cold and snow of the Sierra Nevada. While keeping his day job as an elementary school teacher in Yuba City Unified School District for 35 years, he began photographing the local railroads before ascending to the northern Sierra Nevada where he became best known for chronicling the process of snow removal at one of the country’s difficult and busiest summits at Donner Pass, and experimenting with light to record the passage of trains against the dark winter background. In recognition of decades of images from his multi-week, high elevation excursions, he was awarded the Fred A. & Jane R. Stindt Photography Award in 2019 from the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society. He also co-authored two books, “Diesels over Donner: Mountain Soul of the Southern Pacific” (Interurban Press, 1989,) and “72-82: Western Pacific’s Final Decade” (White River, 2014,) and has also contributed several dozen articles to several leading railroad magazines. As a resident of Yuba City, he explored the Sacramento Northern’s truncated “North End” from Chico to Pearson via the Reed Branch in the early 1970s. His fascination with the history and beauty of the Sutter Buttes led him to produce telephoto landscapes to align the Sacramento Northern’s Colusa Branch and its proximity to the eroded volcanic domes. By taking on this project alone in the fall of 1973 during the branch line’s final passage by the Buttes and the long Butte Slough overpass to Tarke, these images captured the beauty of the area and documented railroad history, the latter an important component of his art.