Lovelock, Nevada
Nevada
In 1849 this patch of Nevada marsh held two hundred and fifty covered wagons at any given moment.
Emigrants heading for California called this stretch the Big Meadows, and one of them wrote it down in 1849. Two hundred and fifty wagons stood here all the time. Trains of them rolled out and others took their places the same day. Cattle and mules by the hundreds stood in grass up to their knees, and the writer said they were all discoursing sweet music with the grinding of their jaws. A few settlers stayed behind to cut the wild rye each fall and sell the hay. Then in 1866 an English settler named George Lovelock came the other way, out of California, and bought a squatter's claim to three hundred and twenty acres. The claim came with the oldest water rights on the Humboldt River. Two years later the Central Pacific Railroad came through, and Lovelock handed over eighty five acres for the site. The depot was called Lovelock's, and that is how it shows on the old maps.
This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
There is some two hundred and fifty wagons here all the time.
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Nearby, on the same roads
- Humboldt River 14.8 mi The first trapper to map this river changed its name four times, and none of them stuck.
- Humboldt Cave 24.4 mi Archaeologists left a wool sweater in a Nevada cave, and pack rats shredded it and carried the pieces down to bedrock.
- El Dorado Canyon (Nevada) 26.9 mi During the Civil War, two mining camps a mile apart in this canyon took opposite sides.
- Fernley, Nevada 56.1 mi A hundred-year-old irrigation canal broke one January morning and put six feet of water in Fernley's houses.