Page 41 - 2002 DT 12 issues

What’ s I n s i d e!

Featured Articles
The Northern “Gold” Trail.................1
Boot Tracks.........................................6
Special
Thanks, from Kate...............................3
Quiz....................................................7
Departments
June 2002 News & Notes......................................2
Programs & Hikes...............................4
Desk Schedule.....................................6
Bulletin Board.....................................8

The Northern “Gold” ○ Apache Pass, Yuma, Warner’s Ranch and ○ ○ ○ Missouri and about 50 emigrants have
It is May, 1841 in Sapling Grove,
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then on to Los Angeles or San Diego. For
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Trail to California ○ ○ the rest, Nevada stood in the way. ○ ○ gathered. In contemplating the arduous
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The great trek took four or five ○ trek to California, they know little of what
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. . . but first, the barrier of Nevada. ○ months. Trails might be poorly marked ○ really lies ahead and they do not even
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by Chuck Kleber ○ or determined, but at least there was ○ have a guide. A school teacher, John
○ something. Many had been blazed by ○ Bidwell, joins John Bartleson as leader
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or those pioneers who set off from ○ ○ early mountain men and explorers; men ○ ○ of the wagon train. Then, in a stroke of
Missouri in the decades of the mid- ○ ○ like Jedediah Smith, reputedly the first ○ ○ luck, mountain man Tom “Broken Hand”
F1800’s, California must have been ○ white man to enter Nevada, John Golfer ○ ○ Fitzpatrick joins the party. They will
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a golden dream indeed, . . . a promised ○ who was the first to gaze on the wonders ○ need him.
land of lush meadows and valleys, mag- ○ of Yellowstone National Park as it was ○ ○ Near Fort Hall, the party splits as
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nificent mountains, the beautiful Pacific ○ in 1807, Kit Carson, Jim Bridger and Jo- ○ some head for Oregon. The remaining 32
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Ocean and, in 1849, gold. They expected ○ ○ seph Walker. head for Nevada. In the group is just one
hardship in getting there, but few ex- ○ family: Benjamin Kelsey, his 18
pected it to be as grim as it was. Many ○ ○ year old wife, Nancy, and their in-
never made it, and it must have been ○ ○ fant daughter, Ann. They will be
acutely disheartening for men and women ○ ○ the first females to make this
in the wagon trains to come across sights ○ ○ overland crossing. The party en-
like this marker: ○ tered Nevada near Pilot Peak,
“Mary Jane McClelland ○ ○ east of Wells and just over the
Departed this life Aug. 18th ○ ○ present border with Utah. Then
1849, aged 3 yrs. 4 mos.” ○ ○ they followed an earlier route
Very often, members of a wagon train ○ ○ taken by Joseph Walker, down
knew their companions only by a first ○ ○ the Humboldt River, across the
name. When one died or was killed, it ○ ○ desert and, eventually, through
could have been a military “missing in ○ the Sonora Pass into California’s
action” casualty. They were simply gone; ○ ○ ○ San Joaquin Valley. It was hard-
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families back home would never know. ○ In many ways, it was the sale of the ○ ship all the way. They were the first; oth-
Nevada’s unforgiving wilderness ○ “Louisiana Purchase” by France to the ○ ○ ers would follow.
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claimed a disproportionately large num- ○ young United States in 1803 that opened ○ ○ That route down the Humboldt, the
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ber of the emigrants. About one-quarter ○ the door to the great western migration. ○ ○ “Sink” at the end of the river, the terrible
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of the 2,000 mile journey from Missouri ○ In one swoop, Americans found their na- ○ “Forty Mile Desert,” the Truckee River
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to Sacramento and Sutter’s Fort was ○ tion doubled in size—over 800,000 ○ into the Sierra Nevada Mountains where
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through our state. If you were bound for ○ square miles had been added, stretching ○ Donner Party pioneers perished in the
Oregon on the Oregon Trail, you avoided ○ ○ from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian ○ ○ winter of 1846/47—it was a hell in which
Nevada by taking the cut-off just beyond border and from the Mississippi River to ○ ○ the dangers came from all sides. The
Fort Hall, Idaho. In the far south, the Gila the Rocky Mountains. The way to the ○
Trail led emigrants from El Paso through West was open. Northern Trail, continued on page 7