California Trail - Sweetwater River - Crossing The Sierra Nevada - Nobles Road

Nobles Road

In 1851, William Nobles surveyed a shorter variation of the Applegate-Lassen trail. It was developed to make it easier to get to Shasta, California (which paid him $2,000) in the Central Valley and was first used in 1852. The route, called Noble's Road, left the main trail near Lasson's meadow (now Rye Patch Reservoir) in Nevada, bypassed most of the large Applegate-Lassen loop north almost to Goose Lake (Oregon-California) on the Oregon-California border. This reasonably easy wagon route followed the Applegate-Lassen Trail to the Boiling Spring at Black Rock in Black Rock Desert and then went almost due west from there going on to Shasta, California in the Central Valley via Smoke Creek Desert to present day Honey Lake and present day Susanville, California before passing North of Mt. Lassen and on to Shasta (near present day Redding). The route today can be approximated by taking Nevada State Route 49 (Jungo Rd.) from Winnemucca, Nevada to Gerlach, Nevada and from there to Susanville, California via Smoke Creek Road. From there, California State Route 44 through Lassen Volcanic National Park to Redding, California approximates the rest of the trail. It depended upon springs for water, as there were no dependable creeks along most of the route. East of Mt. Lassen, it used part of Lassen's road in reverse over a distance of about 20 miles (32 km). In that section of trail, a traveler going to Shasta City might travel north passing another traveler going south to Sutter's Fort California.

In 1857, Congress appropriated $300,000 for building a wagon road to California and to established the Fort Kearny, South Pass and Honey Lake Wagon Road. Exactly why the road was to terminate at Honey Lake near Susanville is a legislative mystery, since very few went that way in 1857 or later. The road was built in response to pressure from California Congressmen who wanted a good road to California, preferably one that bypassed Forty Mile Desert. The first part of the route was surveyed by Frederick W. Lander working under William Magraw. In 1858, Lander guided several hundred workers who built the Landers Cutoff passing the Green River well north of the established ferries, over Thompson Pass into Star Valley Wyoming and from there up Stump Creek and on to Fort Hall in Idaho. In 1860, Landers was instructed to find a new route north of the Humboldt. To help the emigrants leaving the main trail at Lassen's meadow and going to Honey Lake, Lander had two large reservoir tanks built at Rabbit Hole and Antelope Springs. These reservoirs helped Nobles Road keep its status as an emigrant trail, but only the few emigrants interested in going to Northern California used it.