Nobles Trail - 1852
Pierson B. Reading was an 1843 emigrant who worked for John Sutter and obtained a large Mexican land grant on the Sacramento River south of present-day Redding. He accompanied Sutter to the mill site on the American River shortly after the gold discovery of January 24, 1848.
Upon returning to his rancho, he found the Klamath Mountains to the west resembled the Sierra at the American River discovery site. Prospects on Clear Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River, proved him correct. The community of Reading’s Springs soon grew up in the Clear Creek watershed. It was renamed Shasta City in 1850.
William Nobles arrived in California in 1850. In 1852 he convinced the leaders of Shasta City that he had discovered a shorter and easier cutoff from the Lassen Trail in the Black Rock Desert directly to their city. For this he was paid $2,000. The Nobles Trail became the major route to Shasta City and other Northern California locations until the railroad was completed.
Looking at Lassen Peak from the Nobles Trail .
