Canyons, Cutoffs and Hot Springs: Explore the California Trail Near Elko, Nevada

By Larry Hyslop

History Traveler Series #3

• Enjoy the silence of Carlin Canyon, between rock walls once echoing with cacophony of wagons, animals and people.
• View the sparkling water as the North Fork of the Humboldt flows into the Humboldt River, once a scene of dust clouds rising from oxen, horses and wagons.
• Stand in the shade of tall cottonwood trees, at the edge of a meadow once containing Fort Halleck.
• Feel the breeze moving through the narrow South Fork Canyon as you imagine emigrant wagons exiting its confines. Feel their despair at learning of the time lost by using the Hasting's Cutoff.
• Listen to the quiet sound of boiling water rising from Carlin Hot Springs next to a favorite emigrant camp site.

This book follows the California Trail past trail intersections with the Secret Pass Trail, Hastings Cutoff and Greenhorn Cutoff. The trail meanders along a growing Humboldt River through the narrow confines of Carlin Canyon. This book follows the end of the Hasting's Cutoff from Overland Pass, having finally bypassed the Ruby Mountains, to finally emerge into the Humboldt River Valley.

Along the way, historian Charles Greenhaw describes the Shoshone villages along Huntington Creek, fur trapper/explorer brigades crossing Secret Pass and the amazement of emigrants at the boiling water of Elko Hot Hole.

Maps and route descriptions help historical time travelers visit sites along both the California Trail and Hastings Cutoff.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Larry Hyslop
• Release date: Dec 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301595709

Larry Hyslop

Larry Hyslop lives in Elko, Nevada, where he contributes the "Nature Notes" weekly column to the Elko Daily Free Press. He travels extensively around the West, visiting national Parks. Larry has written nature descriptions covering the landscapes of national parks, along with guides to the Ruby Mountains and Elko area. He worked with Charles Greenhaw to develop guides to the California Trail through Northeastern Nevada. Grayjaypress.com

Book preview

Canyons, Cutoffs and Hot Springs

Explore the California Trail near Elko, Nevada

Charles Greenhaw

Larry Hyslop

Gray Jay Press

Elko, NV

Copyright 2004 C&L Publishing

All Rights Reserved

Reprint 2009 Gray Jay Press

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any means without the written permission of the publisher, with the exception of brief passages embodied in critical articles and reviews.

All photos and maps are by Larry Hyslop

For ordering information, contact:

Gray Jay Press

2033 High Noon Rd.

Elko, NV 89801

[e-mail]

Discover other titles by Larry Hyslop at Smashwords.com

Discover print copies at grayjaypress.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Printed copies available at

Grayjaypress.com

Cover photo: South Fork Canyon

Back Photo: Carlin Hot Springs

Thanks

As always, we thank Janet and Cindy for putting up with our ideas and projects. We also thank Paul Sawyer, Bob Pearce, and BLM personnel for looking over our manuscript and Great Basin College Media Services for the cover design.

Authors’ Notes

This book is the third in a series to aid commentaries on the emigrant roads across Northeastern Nevada. Each book uses a Nevada town as a starting point. The other books have centered on Wells, Ruby Valley, and Battle Mountain. The series is designed and written to help people appreciate the California Emigrant Trail, which follows along side and sometimes beneath Interstate 80. Because of Nevada’s rich historical tapestry, these books also offer other historical information unrelated to the emigrant trails.

We have one goal in mind, to get people to visit the Nevada countryside. There, they can appreciate both its wild nature and its historical depth. Hopefully, readers will use this guide to visit trail sites, gaining an understanding of the rich heritage of Nevada and the opening of the American West.

The tours in this book are meant to guide readers to important, specific sites along the trail. They are not meant as a guide to follow every California Trail site across the vastness of Nevada. With this in mind, the easiest route has been used to access an historical site. There may be other ways of getting there, perhaps by using a more historic route, or one approaching the site from the same direction as most emigrants did. Again, our system is to get people there using the easiest possible route.

While this book can serve as a guide to these historical sites, it should not be the only source of information. The resource section of this book contains other sources for maps and trail guides.

Always remember to use caution when traveling off the pavement in rural Nevada. Follow common sense suggestions such as telling someone where you are going and when you will return. Carry water and means to extract your vehicle should it become stuck.

Emigrant Trails West is a primary guide to the trail markers placed by Trails West, Inc. over the last 30 years. Some of these rail markers are clearly visible but the guide is helpful in finding all the markers. Each marker has a site-specific quotation from an emigrant diary, or explanation of the site’s significance. Emigrant Trails West can be purchased at the Northeastern Nevada Museum in Elko and from the Oregon-California Trails Association online store.

tmp_6f656aa4a2eda404542d3359aee89235_2PAinZ_html_212d37ac.jpgtmp_6f656aa4a2eda404542d3359aee89235_2PAinZ_html_m7595a2ae.jpg

Typical rail marker placed by Trails West, Inc. The horizontal rails have site specific emigrant comments from diaries of the 1840s-1860s.

tmp_6f656aa4a2eda404542d3359aee89235_2PAinZ_html_2afc8722.jpg

Carsonite marker

History Traveler Series

Mountains, Grass and Water: Explore the Hastings Cutoff and Overland Trail through Ruby Valley, Nevada, C&L Publishing, 2003.

Entering the Great Basin: Explore the California Trail through Wells, Nevada, C&L Publishing, 2003.

Canyon, Cutoffs and Hot Springs: Explore the California Trail near Elko, Nevada, Gray Jay Press, 2004.

Explore the California Trail through Battle Mountain, Nevada, Gray Jay Press, 2006.

Contents

The Elko Mystique

Halleck and Fort Halleck Tour

Overland Pass and Huntington Valley Tour

Ryndon / Elko Hot Hole Tour

South Fork Canyon / Hunter and Greenhorn Cutoff Tour

Carlin Canyon and Hot Springs Tour

The Overland Migrations

Elko Area in Journals, Diaries, and Books

References

Resources

About the Authors

###

Elko Mystique

tmp_6f656aa4a2eda404542d3359aee89235_2PAinZ_html_575f6d4b.jpg

Vital Stats

If you like never-ending open spaces, this is the place. Elko County has more terrain than several states. It is the fourth largest county in the contiguous United States. The population in the 2000 census was about 45,000. About half its citizens live in the Elko area and nearby Spring Creek.

The wide open spaces are punctuated by mountains. The gorgeous Ruby, East Humboldts, Independence and Jarbidge Mountains rank among the most impressive ranges in America.

Elko is a mile-high city. The official elevation is 5,060 feet at the airport, but much of the city residential area is more than a mile above sea level.

Elko is the most populous city of interior Nevada and the middle Great Basin. It was the first such Nevada city to reach and sustain a population of more than 15,000. It is the largest concentration of people over the 700-mile span between Boise and Las Vegas, and the 530-mile course between Salt Lake City and Reno.

The mines in the Carlin area excavate disseminated, microscopic particles of gold and convert it into gold bars. Nevada, nicknamed the Silver State, is the leading gold producing state and one of the major producers on earth. Its mines extract about 4,000,000 troy ounces of gold annually. Between l965, when the first gold bar was poured at the Carlin Mine and today, mines of the Carlin Trend have produced more than 50 million troy ounces of gold. As a cube, that would be about 14 feet on each side.

The Carlin Trend has about 20 active mines. In 2003, they yielded 37% of the gold mined in Nevada. The Silver State continues to be the nation’s leader in silver production.

Elko has short, warm-to-hot summers, and long, cold winters. Low relative humidity is the norm, usually measuring less than 20% on summer days. The day-night temperature range can be more than 50 degrees.

Elko averages about 40 inches of snow annually, but upper Lamoille Canyon, just 25 miles south, may receive 200 inches or more.

On January 21, 1931, the temperature dropped to –43, the lowest ever recorded at Elko. Near Jackpot, San Jacinto, which was the company commissary for several ranches of cattle baron John Sparks, holds the state record, -56 degrees.

The Ruby Mountains have numerous alpine lakes. The basins have a surprising array of lakes and reservoirs containing trout and bass---Wildhorse, Wilson, and Sheep Creek north of Elko, and South Fork Reservoir and Ruby Marshes to the south.

tmp_6f656aa4a2eda404542d3359aee89235_2PAinZ_html_38c81c64.jpg

Western Pacific Locomotive near Site of Original Tracks

Historical Facts and Curiosities

Working their way eastward, tracklayers of the Central Pacific Railroad---mostly indentured Chinese coolies---reached the place to be named Elko about December 28, 1868. The Central Pacific proceeded east to meet the westward moving tracklayers of the Union Pacific at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869, thus opening the transcontinental railroad. Elko, a tent town during its first year, got a post office on January 15, 1869. The short name Elko was among other o ending Central Pacific towns and sidings--- Reno, Otego, Cluro, Toano, Peko, and Osino. The names were easily used by telegraph operators and Chinese speakers.

Using the railroad town grid system, officials of the Central Pacific began surveying lots for Elko on December 29, 1868. The grid---with streets named for numbers, bisected by streets named for trees---remains a feature of central Elko. Many homes and garages near the original railroad corridor around Commercial and Railroad Street were built with railroad ties. The Central Pacific Railroad used the timber supply from Verdi for its own structures. Elko’s site was significant for the C.P.R.R. because it was the northern terminus of the Elko-White Pine and Hill-Beachey Toll Roads. By 1872, Elko was the busiest town on the Central Pacific line although it began to decline sharply in the mid-1870s. The railroad received and shipped great volumes of freight at Elko where stagelines connected with mining towns to the north and south. While the mining activity was fleeting, Elko’s stability was tied to the livestock empire. It was the main distribution center for a vast swath of ranches in the sagebrush-grasslands.

Robert Lewis Stevenson, riding west on a Central Pacific emigrant train in 1872, dined at the Depot Hotel. He was followed by the famed American essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who commented that Nevada reminded him of Asia and the Bible. Queen Kapaloni of Hawaii declined an invitation to tour Elko in the 1870s.

Nevada, seeking to beat an extended deadline for using the patrimony of the Morrill Act, established the Preparatory Department of the University of Nevada at Elko in 1874. No high school existed at the time, and the University, with a principal who was the sole instructor, rarely enrolled more than 35 students. The University moved to