The Surveyors
Lander County, Lander County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
The Surveyors. The federal government historically has supported numerous surveys for the purpose of measuring the domain which extended, after 1848, to the Pacific. These surveys sought railway routes, military relationships, water transport and wagon roads. The survey activity was extended to all territories, but not to states. Nevada, in part, was the site of two notable surveys. Honey Lake to Fort Kearny Wagon Road, completed in 1860 by Captain Lander, and the route surveyed by Lieutenant Simpson, Camp Floyd to Genoa, in 1859. Military engineers engaged in this activity included Stansbury, Marcy, Whipple, Beale, Simpson and Lander. The name of Captain F. W. Lander stands out as a contributor to Nevada’s history. He has been memorialized in the name of a prominent Nevada county. Nearby Simpson Park Mountains are named for Lieutenant Simpson.
Erected by Nevada Highway Department
The Story
After the nation's domain reached the Pacific in 1848, the federal government mounted a series of surveys to map railway routes, wagon roads, water transport, and military relationships across the new territories. Nevada figured in two notable efforts: Captain F.W. Lander's Honey Lake to Fort Kearny wagon road, completed in 1860, and Lieutenant Simpson's 1859 route from Camp Floyd to Genoa. Military engineers such as Stansbury, Marcy, Whipple, Beale, Simpson, and Lander lent their names to the landscape, Lander to a whole Nevada county.
Why it matters
These surveys were the unglamorous groundwork of westward expansion, translating a vast new domain into routes and maps that made settlement, commerce, and statehood possible.
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Related people
- · F.W. Lander
- · James H. Simpson
- · Howard Stansbury
- · Edward Beale
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Jacobsville
Lander County, NV
Founded on the banks of the Reese River in 1859 by George Washington Jacobs, Lander County's first sheriff, Jacobsville served as an Overland Stage and mail station and became a Pony Express stop in 1860. In its early-1860s prime it held some 400 people and claimed the first telegraph relay station, a post office, courthouse, three stores, and two hotels, and was the first seat of a Lander County that then sprawled across northeastern Nevada. The seat soon moved to booming Austin, and today only a few foundation stones remain.
New Pass Station
Churchill County, NV
When John Butterfield's Overland Mail & Stage Company began running the Central (Simpson) Route between Salt Lake City and Genoa in July 1861, this stone station—roofed with bundles of willow twigs—was a key stop for watering and changing teams. Because the hillside spring was too weak for both people and horses, a support ranch a mile west kept the station functioning. The transcontinental railroad soon doomed the stage line; Butterfield sold to Wells, Fargo in 1866, and Central Route operations ceased in 1869.
Edwards Creek Valley
Churchill County, NV
The springs and streams of Edwards Creek Valley made it a vital gathering ground for Native peoples, where Shoshone families moved seasonally for seeds and small game and wintered in camps later shared by Northern Paiutes. In 1854 Colonel John Reese found a route through the valley shorter than the Humboldt trail, and after surveyor James Simpson formalized it in 1859 it carried the Pony Express, the Overland Telegraph, and the overland stages. Serving too as a passageway to the 1862 Austin gold rush, it remained the region's principal commercial artery until 1880.
Rock Creek (Cold Springs Station)
Churchill County, NV
Rock Creek was a vital stagecoach stop on the Overland Mail & Stage Company's line along the Simpson route between Salt Lake City and Genoa, offering fresh horses, blacksmithing, and wagon repair to travelers under John Butterfield and later Wells, Fargo & Company. Nearby stood the Pony Express's Cold Springs station of 1860 and a telegraph repeater serving the transcontinental line completed in 1861. When the transcontinental railroad and its parallel telegraph reached the Humboldt corridor to the north, both the stage route and telegraph here were abandoned.