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#357

Unruh
A similar congeries of route improvements, proliferating cutoffs,
and expeditions to retrieve beleaguered travelers characterized
the intra-state competition for overland emigrants on the
California end of the trail. There had been no California
Trail until 1844, when the Stevens-Murphy party
succeeded in taking emigrant wagons across the Sierra
Nevada into California. Crossing the forty-mile desert beyond
the Sink of the Humboldt, these resolute pioneers followed
the Truckee River to what would become known as
Donner Lake, struggled across rugged Donner Pass to the
Bear Valley, and then trailed down into the Sacramento
Valley. For the next three years this was the
route to John Sutter's fort, although the tragic
ordeal of the Donner party during the winter of
1846-47 did nothing to endear it to subsequent travelers.

In 1848 a party of Mormons departing from
California for Salt Lake City, carved out an alternate
trail along the Carson River. It was immediately
altered, also in 1848, by the Joseph Chiles party. Chiles,
already a venerable trail follower, was crossing the
plains for the fifth time in eight years. There was
relatively little difference between the Truckee and
Carson trails into the California settlements. In
length they were virtually identical, although the
Carson route was slightly less difficult. The Carson
Trail soon became, however, the preferred route.

P. 98

...Thus the "great migration" of 1843 not only departed from
Independence, thereby providing the town fathers with impressive
advertising arguments for future years.

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