California - Nevada Chapter OCTA Trail Photos/ Routes

Trail Photos

Wherever your jump-off is, you will undoubtedly pass some of the following familiar sites before reaching the actual California routes.

	Pioneer Woman, National Frontier Trails Center, Independence, MO.
	Courthouse and Jail Rocks
	Chimney Rock It looked "like a big hay stack with an awful big stick stuck in the top of it." --Geo. McCowen, 1854
	Independence Rock People had varying expectations of this rock. One diarist was "never so disappointed in all my life " with Independence Rock and thought it "wholly unworthy of a name by the side of the Majestic craggy mountains by which it is surrounded" He chose to leave his name at Devil's Gate instead: Noah D. Comstock, 1853.
	Cave at Independence Rock Name, D. Holaday, July 6th, 1852, Inside Cave at Independence Rock
	Devil's Gate "Down this tremendous chasm in the Sweet Water finds its roaring course, pitching, chaffing, and foaming over and among the rocks, seeking its way into the plain below, while the terrific appearance of the rocks above, on each side, seems to threaten instant destruction to all who may have the temerity to venture in." --Hugh Alexander Skinner, 1849.
	Martin's Cove
	Plume Rock "Saw a high bluff with a rock like a castle on top. Looked very natural." --George Bonniwell, 1850.
	Parting of the Ways "Some were in favor of taking one road some wanted to take the Other, Friends who have travelled together from the States parting here, And I actualy seen men shedding tears at parting with Friends and Relatives," --Albert Paschal, 1850
	Pilot Peak/Donner Spring on the Hastings Cutoff.

Forty-Mile Desert

If the emigrants continued straight they crossed the 40-Mile Desert.

"Sink - sink of everything that is human and humanizing...We have absolutely used up a good sized river! Have run it in the ground! It is gone!....Whole atmosphere glows like an oven."
Niles Searls wrote this in 1849


Whether the emigrants took the right fork or the left, they had to cross the 40-Mile Desert. The right hand turn took them on the Truckee Route and the left turn took them on the Carson Route.
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