Development of Emigrant Trail Researc in the Truckee–Donner
Development of Emigrant Trail Researc in the Truckee–Donner Pass Regio ! #$%&'()* +#,&)(' · .,//%& 0!12 , beginning in the early s, trail historians have been conducting research on and searching for the earliest emigrant trail routes leading to and over the Sierra Nevada in the Development of Emigrant Trail Researc in the Post-Weddell Era Truckee-Donner Pass region of California. In the Fall issue of the Overland Journal , Marshall Fey ably explained in some detail the “First Marking of the Donner Trail,” begun in in the Truckee–Donner Pass Regio of Californi by Peter M. Weddell, with the assistance of C. F. McGlashan. Weddell’s unflagging trail research, marking, and mapping con- 34 *#)('* %. 3,67 tinued until his death in ", eventually covering the trail on both sides of the Sierra summit. In #" Weddell had gained the support of Bert Olson, who became “his ardent disciple.” Later, Earl Rhoads joined the effort to preserve Weddell’s wooden trail- marking signs with his distinctive white blazes painted on tree trunks in a pa%ern that resembled a triangular buffalo head.& (e next venture to mark the emigrant trail for posterity came in ) with the formation of the Nevada Emigrant Trail Mark- ing Commi%ee (henceforth +/012). Until the +/012 for- mally disbanded in )#, the group led by its trail authority, Walt Mulcahy, installed nine distinctive T-shaped steel-rail mark- ers. (ey were placed mostly on the Weddell-Olson-Rhoads- marked route from Verdi, in Nevada near the state boundary, to the Sierra summit at what would become known as Coldstream Pass. In )", as their last intended effort, the +/012 published a driving guide to all of the steel-rail markers they had placed along the emigrant trails in western Nevada and eastern California.4 A5er a half-century of trail research and marking of the Truckee Trail route in California to the Sierra Nevada crest, See Marshall Fey, “Peter M.
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