Peter Lassen - California Trail

California Trail

Lassen is famous (or infamous) for establishing the Lassen Cutoff of the California Trail, which left the main trail near the modern-day Rye Patch Reservoir and crossed a desolate section of what is now northwestern Nevada, including the Black Rock Desert. The Lassen Cutoff continued to Goose Lake in northeastern California, and then followed the Pit River into California's Central Valley. Portions of this trail were particularly arduous, and many of its early travelers greatly regretted choosing it. The Applegate Trail also traveled from Rye Patch Reservoir to Goose Lake. (The Applegate Trail was intended as a safer alternative to the main route of the Oregon Trail, and it continued into Oregon's Willamette Valley.)

John D. Unruh, Jr., writes of Lassen's first attempt at using his cutoff, rescued from disaster by a group of well-supplied emigrants from Oregon who helped him reach his ranch:

Here the wily Dane orchestrated a meeting wherein the emigrants supposedly endorsed him as a guide and warmly praised his cutoffs. This deceptive endorsement was rushed eastward to be printed in newspapers and influence credulous forty-niners hell-bent for the gold fields. Planning carefully, Lassen also dispatched agents to divert forty-niners onto the cutoff and to set up trail advertisements (including a signboard at the Lassen Meadows, where the Applegate Trail branched off from the Humboldt River) with the reassuring message that the diggings were a mere 110 miles ahead... emigration trustingly followed their lead, many foolishly discarding surplus provisions on the assumption that only 110 miles remained. The suffering of those choosing the Lassen Cutoff was severe, for it proved to be some 200 miles longer than either the Carson or Truckee routes.