Similar to other flawed trailblazers chronicled in the annals of U.S. Western history, charlatans such as Lansford Hastings and Stephen Meek, Peter Lassen was not really a bad guy. But like the others he also made a rookie and impetuous mistake by not scoping out a new trail himself before risking the lives of others, especially young families with women and children unprepared for extreme hardship. It was a common trait among commercial opportunists those days when viable shortcuts were readily adopted by trail-weary wagon trains.
In Missouri, Peter Lassen struggled to convince people to follow him on the new (but still nonexistent) cutoff to his ranch, a shortcut that he had never seen.
Veteran trappers and mountain men turned guides such as James Clyman, Joseph Chiles and Joseph Walker, to name a few, understood the lay of the land from years of exploration. They could communicate with Indians and they had the tools, aptitude and skills for brute survival. Still, even these luminaries, on occasion, barely escaped with their lives. With the demise of the beaver and fur trade in the 1830s, men of that caliber found work as hired professionals that could safely guide wagon trains on rough trails during the 1840s migrations to the Pacific Coast. It was prosperous work until the California Gold Rush changed the dynamics and the trail west became a crowded free-for-all.
Read Part I of Mark’s story on Peter Lassen
Danish pioneer Lassen owned an immense cattle ranch of 34 square miles on the Sacramento River in far northern California. His Rancho Bosquero land grant was more than four times the size of the state of New Jersey and he wanted emigrants to buy 160-acre homesteads from him to settle the land. Unfortunately, his property was too far north of the California Trail and too far south of the Oregon Trail for him to benefit substantially from either. A reliable tract that branched off from the California Trail and led northwest directly to his rancho was required. To blaze that new route, Lassen should have traveled east from his ranch and explored the rugged country he intended to lead wagons through. Instead, he headed 90 miles south to John Sutter’s Fort, where in July 1847, Lassen joined a small American military detachment on its way east via Donner Pass.
The well-known Truckee route was a difficult, but established trail that most westbound emigrant families took, despite its notorious legacy from the tragic 1846 Donner Party. A small minority of pioneers used the Santa Fe Trail through the desert southwest into southern California. Soon, however, the formerly dominant Truckee route would play second fiddle to the Carson Trail, which followed the Carson River toward South Lake Tahoe and then west. It may seem counterintuitive, but the discovery of Carson Pass was accomplished from the west by remnants of the Mormon Battalion, which was heading east to Salt Lake City in Utah Territory. The military unit had been volunteered by church leader Brigham Young to serve in the Mexican-American War as a show of loyalty to the United States government. These 45 Mormon men spent two weeks moving boulders and cutting trees in a notable feat of pioneer road building. They hauled 18 wagons over Carson Pass and made their way to the California Trail. It was this group that first spread the exciting news to westbound adventurers that gold had been discovered in California.
After the opening of Carson Pass, the slightly easier crossing siphoned wagons from the Truckee route during the 1850s Gold Rush until the early 1860s when a rough road was constructed over Donner Pass to accommodate the near-constant freight wagon traffic between Sacramento and Nevada Territory’s booming Comstock mines at Virginia City. The California Trail can be compared to a long rope with frayed ends. Multiple routes fed into the main road from frontier supply towns on the Missouri River at the east end and then, after the bulk of the journey was completed, various strands at its western end led to different trails for the final approach over the Sierra Nevada into California. These alternative routes started near the Humboldt Sink, terminus of the Humboldt River.
In Missouri, \ Lassen struggled to convince people to follow him on the new (but still nonexistent) cutoff to his ranch. Like Hastings and Meek, it was a shortcut that he had never seen. Lassen’s reckless confidence bordered on insanity. Although a total of 2,335 emigrants had traveled west to California along the Humboldt River route since 1841, it was still a primitive, dangerous trail. The year before Lassen’s journey, 24 emigrants had been killed by Indians. It was also only the second time the prosperous millwright and cattleman had seen
the desolate region, having first reached California via the Oregon Trail and by ship in 1840. Testament to Lassen’s strong-willed but flawed character was given by his friend, John Bidwell, a California pioneer who traveled overland in 1841 and became a noted soldier, statesman, politician and philanthropist. He stated, “Peter was a singular man, very industrious, very ingenious and very fond of pioneering — in fact, of the latter stubbornly so. He had great confidence in his own power as a woodsman, but, strangely enough, he always got lost.”
After its confluence with the Little Humboldt River, an ephemeral stream that reduced to a trickle during the hot, dry summer months, the Humboldt River turned southwest. Fifty miles on — about 22 miles northeast of present-day Lovelock, Nev. — sojourners reached a large meadow at the edge of the Black Rock Desert, the last good grazing until the Humboldt Sink. This was the turnoff for the perilous Applegate Trail to Oregon and the first leg of Lassen’s hoped-for cutoff to his ranch. To the uninitiated, the vast, level playa seemed like a good place to detour to the northwest to outflank the high peaks and passes of the central Sierra Crest. It soon became known as Lassen Meadows and the detour to Lassen’s Trail.
In May 1848, the legendary trapper, James Clyman, left Missouri with the first of several wagon trains heading west that year. There were only about 400 California-bound settlers on the road that season — the war with Mexico scared some off while others joined their state’s volunteer militia. Crucially, there was no word of gold yet.
Ten days after Clyman’s departure, Lassen took charge of a small company with 10 wagons. After a relatively uneventful journey, Lassen reached the Applegate turnoff. There they let the oxen graze in the grassy oasis at the edge of the Black Rock playa before heading out. Near the approach to southeastern Oregon, Lassen led the wagons off the marked trail and headed south to Goose Lake, which straddles the Oregon/California border. Within two days, it became apparent that the confident trailblazer was completely lost.
Read the conclusion in the next edition and at TheTahoeWeekly.com.
