Forty Mile Desert
Churchill County, Churchill County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Forty Mile Desert. The Forty Mile Desert, beginning here, is a barren stretch of waterless alkali wasteland. It was the most dreaded section of the California Emigrant Trail. If possible, travelers crossed it by night because of the great heat.In 1843, the Walker-Chiles Party became the first wagon train to use the route. Regardless of the desert’s horrors, this became the accepted trail, as it divided five miles southwest of here into the two main routes to California - the Carson River and Truckee River trails.Starvation and thirst preyed upon people and animals every mile. A survey made in 1850 illustrated appalling statistics - 1,061 dead mules, almost 5,000 horses, 3,750 cattle, and 953 graves. The value of personal property loss was set at the time at $1,000,000.The heaviest traffic occurred between 1849 and 1869. The trail was still used after completion of the Central Pacific Railroad in 1869, although it saw declining traffic after that.
Erected by Churchill County Museum Committee
The Story
The Forty Mile Desert, beginning here, was a barren stretch of waterless alkali that emigrants regarded as the most dreaded section of the California Trail — many crossed it by night to escape the punishing heat. The Walker-Chiles Party first brought wagons through in 1843, and despite its horrors the route became the accepted path, splitting into the Carson and Truckee River trails. An 1850 survey tallied the grim toll: more than 1,000 dead mules, nearly 5,000 horses, thousands of cattle, and 953 graves.
Why it matters
This deadly stretch was the final gauntlet of the overland journey, where the westward dream was tested against thirst, heat, and death.
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Related events
- · Walker-Chiles Party
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pershing County
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This lush valley — the Big Meadows — was a vital rest stop on the Humboldt Trail, the route that carried some 165,000 emigrants west in the 1840s and 1850s. Travelers gathered water and grass here before facing the dreaded Forty Mile Desert, the trail's cruelest stretch. Mining began in the 1850s, merchant-rancher George Lovelock lent his name to the county seat, and the railroad's arrival in 1869 brought fresh growth; Pershing County itself was carved from Humboldt County in 1919.
Hazen
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Hazen sprang up in 1903 as a rough-and-tumble camp housing laborers on the federal Newlands irrigation project, one of the first reclamation efforts to green the Nevada desert. When the railroad to Tonopah arrived in 1905 and the Southern Pacific built a roundhouse and depot the next year, the town of hotels, saloons, and brothels boomed—alongside a reputation for lawlessness that included the 1905 lynching of 'Red' Wood. Fire nearly wiped it out in 1908, and the town named for Civil War general William B. Hazen never fully recovered.
Stillwater
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Named for the calm pools nearby, Stillwater took shape as an overland stage station in 1862 — two years before Nevada's statehood — gained a post office in 1865, and became Churchill County's third county seat in 1868. Its population peaked around 1880, and when the seat moved to Fallon in 1904 barely thirty residents remained. Though its town center is gone, the valley's fertile fields still testify to its pioneer ranchers, and the 163,000-acre Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge, created in 1949, now adjoins the Stillwater Indian Reservation.
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