The Humboldt River Highway

The Humboldt River Highway. . The California Emigrant Trail extended approximately 2,000 miles from the Missouri River to California. Today you are standing on a segment of the trail that followed the Humboldt River for about 280 miles across northern Nevada. It was the only water course across the high desert of the Great Basin. , , The Humboldt River begins at Humboldt Wells, springs near present-day Wells, Nevada, and flows west and southwest to the Humboldt Sink. It generally took 16 days for emigrants to make the journey along the river. Most travelers crossed Nevada in the heat of August, when the trail was very dusty, the river was nearly dry, and the water alkaline. , , From 1849 to 1853, at the height of the California Gold Rush, approximately 200,000 emigrants passed by this location, with 50,000 more making the trek before the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869. , , When they reached this point, the emigrants had been on the trail for three months, had traveled about 1,600 miles, and were 400 miles from their destination. Still ahead of them lay the crossing of the dreaded and waterless Forty-Mile Desert and the climb over the Sierra Nevada Range. , , (Drawing Caption) , "Aug. 25. We hunted down the River 3 miles more and found but a very scanty picking for the oxen. Everybody hungry and out of humor as usual. From what I can hear and I speak to almost every company I see, I don't think there is ever a body of men left the states, on any expedition, that had so much quarrelling and fighting, (the strong abusing the weak) as the California expedition of 1849." , James F. Wilkins, 1849