The Humboldt was the one water route west across the Great Basin's grain, so some 21,000 people and 50,000 animals crowded along it in 1849 alone. The trail worsened the farther emigrants went, ending at the Forty Mile Desert, where a 1850 count found 1,061 dead mules and 953 graves. The episode argues the horror is hydrology, and weighs diaries against the Paiute record.
Who's who
- Reuben Cole Shaw1849 diarist who described the river's alkali water and the Sink
- Alonzo Delano1849 gold rush chronicler of the river's meanders
- Gilbert L. Cole1852 diarist who described drinking Humboldt water
- Luzena Stanley Wilson1849 emigrant who crossed the Forty Mile Desert
- Sarah Royce1849 emigrant memoirist of the desert crossing
- Sarah WinnemuccaNorthern Paiute author of Life Among the Paiutes
- Horace Greeley+2 more episodesEditor who crossed by mail wagon in 1859
- John C. Frémont+1 more episodeDescribed the valley's grass in 1845, which emigrants later resented
Where it happens
- Humboldt River, Nevada+2 more episodesThree hundred miles of bad water on the California Trail
- Forty Mile Desert, NevadaWaterless gap beyond the Humboldt Sink
- Humboldt Sink, Nevada+2 more episodesClosed basin where the river evaporates
- City of Rocks, IdahoLandmark on the route from Fort Hall
- Humboldt Wells, NevadaWhere the trail reached the river
Timeline
- 1841Paiute guides pilot the Bidwell-Bartleson party down the river and across the desert.
- 1846The Donner-Reed party reaches the Humboldt, three weeks behind other wagons.
- 1849About 21,000 people and 50,000 livestock camp along the river in one season.
- 1850A survey of the Forty Mile Desert counts 1,061 dead mules and 953 graves.
- 1869The Central Pacific reaches the corridor, ending the heaviest wagon traffic.
Still debated
Emigrant numbers cannot be reconciled into one year-by-year table. Sarah Winnemucca's claim that a specific party burned Paiute seed is her testimony, and popular accounts of Paiute raiding are wrong in both directions.
