For a small man, Peter Lassen accomplished some big things in his life. But sometimes his insatiable optimism and opportunism led to bad outcomes.
Read Mark’s stories on Lansford Hastings and Stephen Meek
He was born Peter Larsen on Oct. 31, 1800, in Denmark to Joanne and Lars Nielsen. His last name was a matter of cultural tradition: Lar’s son. The Nielsen family was poor, surviving as itinerant farm laborers. During his teen years, he left his parents and siblings to live with his uncle who taught the boy the art of blacksmithing — an indispensable pioneer skill of turning raw iron into functional essentials like wagon wheels, farming implements, kitchenware and weapons.
Like other infamous, failed trailblazers before him, Lassen overestimated his ability as a trustworthy trail guide and underestimated the overwhelming challenges emigrants would encounter on an unproven route.
In his early 20s, he plied his new trade for a few years in Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital and largest city. Military service was required for certification as a master blacksmith, but he was barely 5 feet 3 inches, too short for acceptance into the army. Ever resourceful, he got around that obstacle in 1827 by petitioning the King of Denmark for permission to join Copenhagen’s Civic Guard instead. The royal office approved the request and he succeeded in becoming a master blacksmith.
Three years later, the 30-year-old again petitioned the king, this time for approval to immigrate to the United States. On his arrival in Boston in 1830, he changed his surname to Lassen. He soon caught the bug to push west and moved to the American frontier in Missouri, where he met and befriended John A. Sutter, a Swiss national, who would go on to play a major role in California in the decade before the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. Sutter had his faults, but he is still respected for his efforts to support the rescuers and survivors of the 1846 Donner Party.
In 1838, Sutter headed for the Pacific Coast and the following year Lassen followed suit taking the Oregon Trail, still in its infancy and exceedingly difficult. At the trading post of Fort Hall on the Snake River of eastern Oregon Country, Lassen’s small party was joined by nearly 30 trappers. These seasoned mountain men led the rest of the way and Lassen safely reached Willamette Valley before winter set in.
In July 1840, Lassen sailed to California. The ship landed in Bodega Bay where Mexican authorities attempted to arrest everyone on board until the Russian governor of Fort Ross, located on the coast north of San Francisco, intervened on their behalf. Ten days later, Lassen traveled to Sutter’s New Helvetia settlement at the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers where he was greeted warmly. Next, Lassen traveled to San Jose on Sutter’s launch where he received official permission to stay in California and was issued a passport by Mexican officials.
During the winter of 1840-41, Lassen and some partners built California’s first water-powered sawmill near Santa Cruz. In 1843, he converted to Catholicism and became a Mexican citizen — two necessary steps to legally acquire a land grant — and changed his name to Don Pedro Lassen. He secured an immense 22,000-acre parcel in the northern Sacramento Valley, located midway between Sutter’s Fort and the Oregon border, where he established a cattle ranch and raised grapes and wheat.
The Mexican-American War broke out in 1846, but Lassen remained on his rancho and avoided the conflict. In the summer 1848, Lassen decided to travel east on the California Trail along the Humboldt River in present-day Nevada to divert westbound emigrants to his rancho. The energetic blacksmith hoped to lead farming and ranching families into far northern California along a new trail where he could sell them land from his rancho and they could settle and civilize the vast, wild country. It was an ambitious dream, inspired by his friend Sutter, who had established himself as ruler of his own fiefdom in the southern Sacramento Valley. Lassen aimed to do the same in the north.
Like other infamous, failed trailblazers before him, including Lansford Hastings of the 1846 Donner Party and Stephen Meek on the 1845 Oregon Trail who, combined, led more than 80 people — mostly children — to their deaths, Lassen also overestimated his ability as a trustworthy trail guide and underestimated the overwhelming challenges emigrants would encounter on an unproven route. His plan was to redirect wagons off the difficult but survivable California Trail onto a new route that incorporated the so-called Applegate Trail to Oregon. This route branched off the Humboldt River in Nevada and ran northwest across the desiccated Black Rock Desert, through the rugged Siskiyou Mountains and into Rogue River Valley before finally reaching Oregon’s fertile Willamette Valley. In Lassen’s mind, all he needed to do was split off the Applegate Trail at the appropriate point and cross west into California to reach his ranch.
The Applegate Trail was born out of tragedy. Charles, Lindsay and Jesse Applegate were heading to Oregon Country in 1843, when, after abandoning their wagons in rough country, one of their rafts overturned on the turbulent Columbia River. Charles and Lindsay each lost a 10-year-old son. In response to the calamity, the brothers blazed a marginally safer wagon route to Oregon. In the following years, the Applegate brothers promoted their trail for those pushing toward the Willamette Valley. Jesse wrote a pamphlet advocating the crude path: “The advantage gained to the emigrant by this route is of the greatest importance — the distance is considerably shortened, the grass and water plenty, the sterile regions and dangerous crossings of the Snake and Columbia rivers avoided as well as the Cascade Mountain — he may reach his place of destination with his wagon and property in time to build a cabin and sow wheat before the rainy season.”
Despite the persuasive claims, the Applegate Trail was actually 255 miles longer than the old route, riddled with steep river canyons and cursed by long stretches devoid of reliable water and forage. One emigrant who took the trail wrote: “The roads were very bad, pasture indifferent, having heavy beds of sand without wood, water or grass, for 45 or 50 miles, to travel through; the dust was intense, and both man and beast had to cough and sneeze, the cattle would frequently bawl from suffering.”
The barren Black Rock Desert killed many oxen and the whole route was populated by hostile Indians who attacked wagon trains with lethal force. Instead of reaching Oregon City in time to build a cabin before the winter rains, each year found hundreds of starving settlers still on the trail when the rainy season commenced. More than a dozen people died in 1846 alone. Yet, Lassen was willing to use this trail and the unexplored landscape that emigrants would travel through to reach his ranch.
Read Part II in the next edition and at TheTahoeWeekly.com.
