Beckwourth Trail

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Beckwourth Trail (also Beckwourth Emigrant Trail) was the name of a road for covered wagons over the northern Sierra Nevada in Northern California. The road was built in 1851 by James P. Beckwourth , a fur hunter and dealer in the pioneering days of the Wild West, over the Beckwourth Pass , which was also named after him, and was the simplest variant of the California Trail on the prospectors and settlers in the wake of the California gold rush from the east into the gold fields of Northern California.

The road led from Truckee Meadows , the region around what is now Reno , Nevada , into the mountains to California, over Beckwourth Pass and to the west on a ridge between the arms of the Feather River down to Marysville .

course

The California Trail ran from the settlements in the eastern United States to the Missouri River , through the steppes and deserts of Kansas, and along the North Platte River and its tributaries up into the Rocky Mountains . Over the South Pass , the route led past the Great Salt Lake and on the edge of the desert of the Great Basin to the west. Here the trail split into different variants.

The Beckwourth Trail began on the Truckee River above Pyramid Lake, around today's Reno. From there it ran in a north-westerly direction to California and up into the Sierra Nevada, largely on today's US Highway US 395 and the railway line of the Western Pacific Railroad . With this it turns west along the present-day California State Highway CA-70 over the 1591 m high Beckwourth Pass , the lowest pass over the Sierra.

West of the pass, the route ran in the Sierra Valley on the middle arm of the Feather River to Beckwourth's own ranch, near today's Beckwourth , where it turned north along the small Grizzly Creek . Its valley followed the route upwards and over a small pass into the neighboring Genesee Valley and into the valley of Spring Garden Creek where it came across today's guidance of the CA-70. Via Quincy , then called American Valley , it led on the ridge between the middle ( Mid Fork ) and the northern ( North Fork ) arm of the Feather River over Bucks Lake down to Oroville and finally Marysville , the largest city in the northern gold fields where prospectors and settlers could equip themselves with tools and equipment.

history

James P. Beckwourth discovered the pass in 1850 and built the road in 50 and 51. Should they finance businessmen from Marysville, the mayor of the parish guaranteed the total amount. Beckwourth personally led the first settlers' march over the mountains and into town in August 1851, but when he called for payments in the fall, the town was unable to pay due to two large fires . In the second half of the 1850s he tried again to collect the outstanding sums, but failed because the then mayor was no longer available as a witness and the surety was not properly entered in the municipality's books.

He settled on his road in the Sierra Valley in 1852 and opened a ranch with a small hotel and trading post to supply travelers and trade with the Indians of the region. In late 1858 he left California for Missouri and later Colorado .

Part of its road was selected as a route for a narrow gauge line of the Sierra Valley and Mohawk Valley Railroad in the 1880s , in 1905 the Western Pacific Railroad built another line in parallel. Coming from the east, the railroad runs along the trail to about Beckwourths Ranch, but then keeps west and later north, where it leads over elaborate bridges and viaducts in the Feather River Canyon . Today the CA-70 runs largely parallel to the railway.

Between Quincy and Oroville, the route of the Beckwourth Trail has been preserved as a gravel road, the section along Grizzly Creek and the Genesee Valley no longer exists today.

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