Humboldt River
Humboldt County, Humboldt County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Humboldt River. Peter Skene Ogden encountered the Humboldt River on November 9, 1828 during his fifth Snake Country expedition. Entering Nevada near present-day Denio, Ogden came southward along the Quinn River and the little Humboldt River. Emerging on the Humboldt main stem near this site, Ogden explored hundreds of square miles of the Humboldt’s course, left records of his trailblazing in his journal, and drafted the first map of the area. Ogden gave the name “Unknown River” to the Humboldt at this time, as he was unsure where it went. After the death of his trapper Joseph Paul, Ogden renamed the stream Paul’s River, then Swampy River, and finally Mary’s River, after the Native American wife of one of his trappers. In 1833, the Bonneville-Walker fur party named it Barren River. Ogden’s or Mary’s River were commonly used names for the Humboldt prior to the 1848 publication of a map of John C. Frémont.The Humboldt was the only natural arterial across the Great Basin. It funneled thousands of emigrants along its valley enroute to the Pacific Coast during the period 1841-1870.
Erected by Northeastern Nevada Museum Committee
The Story
Fur trapper Peter Skene Ogden reached this river on November 9, 1828, during his fifth Snake Country expedition, exploring hundreds of square miles of its course and drafting the first map of the region. Unsure where it led, he called it the "Unknown River," later renaming it Paul's, Swampy, and finally Mary's River before it became known as the Humboldt. As the only natural artery across the Great Basin, the river funneled thousands of emigrants toward the Pacific between 1841 and 1870.
Why it matters
The Humboldt River was the indispensable highway of the westward migration, guiding pioneers across the otherwise trackless Great Basin.
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Related people
- · Peter Skene Ogden
- · John C. Frémont
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Golconda
Humboldt County, NV
Golconda began as a Utah Territory mining town and a welcome landmark on the California Emigrant Trail, best known for the hot springs that fed a swanky resort hotel staffed by doctors. Its fortunes rose with the rails: in 1868 it became an ore-shipping point on the new Central Pacific, and renewed mining in 1897 prompted a short narrow-gauge line running south to the Adelaide mine. The town swelled to some five hundred residents by 1899, only to slump the following year when the mine and mill closed and rail service to the mine ended.
Stonehouse
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Long before the railroad, this spot on the Humboldt corridor was a natural camping place for Native people and for emigrants pushing west. In the 1860s the Overland Stage Company raised a stone house here as a dining and overnight stop, and when the Central Pacific pushed through in 1868 the nearby springs watered its locomotives. A little trackside settlement grew up to serve railroaders and ranchers, complete with a post office that ran from 1890 until 1915 before the place faded away.
Applegate Lassen Emigrant Trail Cutoff
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In the summer of 1846, brothers Jesse and Lindsay Applegate led a party south from Oregon's Willamette Valley seeking a safer eastern route, reaching a broad Humboldt River meadow—now Rye Patch Reservoir—and blazing the Applegate Trail. Oregon-bound emigrants used it successfully over the next two years. But in 1848, Peter Lassen guided a small wagon train toward his California ranch along a barely passable extension, and the emigrants suffered such loss of life and livestock that it earned the grim name "Death Route." The two branches shared this desert junction.
Battle Mountain
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