Volcano Road - 1852
Before 1852, any wagons traveling the Carson Trail and wanting to reach Amador County had to come the long way through El Dorado (near Placerville) first. However, in 1852, Stockton merchants and Volcano entrepreneurs jointly constructed a new “cutoff.” Volcano was a booming town with gold mines, sawmills, and other enterprises, that lies in a volcano-like crater.
The wave of migrants was “stolen’ from the Placerville-Carson route, for at the junction of Volcano and Placerville routes about 3-4 miles west of Tragedy Spring, “runners” were praising the Volcano route. Soon this new emigrant road was used by hundreds, if not thousands, of overland packers on foot and emigrants with wagons, to the Volcano route.
Instead of the longer route through El Dorado it diverted the emigrants into Amador County (then part of Calaveras county), along a ridge and deposited them directly into Volcano. It was the first town they had encountered since Mormon Station, or Genoa, in what would become Nevada in 1884.