Plain sight
On Jan. 10, 1862, California governor-elect Leland Stanford arrived at his inauguration in a rowboat. As fate would have it, the deadly Great Flood of 1862 — which swept through Oregon, Nevada and the Golden State, leaving staggering amounts of rain and snow in its wake — had eclipsed Stanford’s political ascendency, forcing him to adopt a new mode of transportation. In his address, Stanford...