There is an obscure memorial not far off US 95 some fifteen miles north of Fallon, Nevada. Only a well-trained eye can decipher it through the sea of sagebrush, rocks and alkali before it. After traversing the short dirt road leading to it, one will find a large stone monument. There is a plaque identifying it as a tribute to the countless thousands of emigrants who passed through this place of hardship. This portion of the emigrant trail is called the Carson Route, which crosses the forty-mile desert from the Humboldt Sink to the northeast to the next nearest drinkable water at a bend in the Carson River called Ragtown.
This was no easy feat, and though this route saw heavy traffic from the mid 1840’s until the construction of the nearby Union-Pacific Railroad in 1869, many wagon-trains did not make it through intact. It became a horrific scene of abandoned wagons and dead livestock.
Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) came this way by overland stage in 1862 and described the scene in his book, “Roughing it:” “Forty memorable miles of bottomless sand, into which the coach wheels sank from six inches to a foot. We worked our passage across. That is to say, we got out and walked. It was a dreary pull and a long and thirsty one, for we had no water. From one extremity of this desert to the other, the road was white with the bones of Oxen and horses. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could have walked the forty miles and set our feet on a bone at every step! The desert was one prodigious graveyard. And the log chains, wagon tires, and rotting wrecks of vehicles were almost as thick as the bones.”
Indeed, according to the Nevada State Park System and the Churchill County Museum Committee, a survey taken in 1850 noted; 1,061 dead mules, 5,000 dead horses, 3,750 dead cattle and 953 emigrant graves. This number can only begin to stir the imagination as to how many more emigrant men, women and children perished during the next twenty years.
Even before reaching this hardest part of the journey, the trip had already proved arduous and exhausting. After following the Humboldt River for several weeks across the breadth of Nevada at the hottest time of the year, the wagons needed repair and the people weary. The oxen and other livestock pulling the Conestoga’s were worn out from hundreds of miles of hard roads and questionable, often murky, water. They would enter the forty-mile desert at a most challenging time.


The forty-mile desert had to be crossed in August for the wagons and livestock to be prepared for the haul over the mountains into California before October when the first snows might hinder the passes. The fate of the Donner Party was well known to the people thereafter travelling west. It provided a ghastly example of what could happen when untested roads and supposed shortcuts were used.
The wagon trains often moved by night, at a painstaking trek of half a mile per hour, or less. Sometimes a wagon would only total a few miles per day or night as the emaciated oxen weakened. Men, women and children would normally walk alongside in order to lessen the burden on the livestock. If they were lucky, they would carry on like this all the way to Ragtown, arriving with their wagons and belongings and most of the livestock. If they were unlucky, the oxen would collapse and die in the desert and the people would carry what they could on their backs, abandoning all else, in hopes of reaching Ragtown alive. Besides the countless emigrants beneath the sand and sage, there was, as well, an ever-growing cemetery at Ragtown.
The trail they made is still there, in parts marred by ATV tracks. From the monument I went southwest along the trail, in the direction of Ragtown. After a few miles, a curious site on a barren flat caught my eye. It seemed, at first, to be merely a scattering of red and brown rocks. I walked over, and upon closer examination these rust colored stones were no stones at all! Picking them up piece by piece I discovered these were decaying bits of iron. They were parts of wagon wheels and other iron components, not one piece larger than a child’s collar bone.

A mere generation ago there was still plenty to be found. Larger hunks of rusted iron sit in the yards of many older Nevadans. Wooden remains have long been burned or hauled off and much of the iron was taken in the early 1900’s to be melted down for railroad tracks. I imagine there are still some relics beneath the surface of the desert being slowly eaten away.
But the trials and tribulations of the forty-mile desert have not been lost to history. In fact, wagons still cross the desert. There have been several reenactments over the past few years. These recent crossings come complete with support teams, cell phones, bottled water and instead of oxen lugging Conestoga wagons, mules or horses pull much lighter, homemade wagons. Even so, these good people have done an excellent job at raising awareness and bringing the past to life. They are, indeed, a tribute to their overwhelmed forbearers.
Despite reenactments and more tangible aspects from the emigrant’s plight, I tend to think the most treasured remains are the words of the emigrants themselves. Every couple of miles on the 40- mile trail are markers made of chunks of Union Pacific rail. They each contain a few words taken from an emigrant’s diary. One reads; “Wagons, wagon irons, ox chains, harness, rifles and indeed all the paraphernalia of an emigrant’s ‘outfit’ lay scattered along this notorious route. Reminding one of the defeat of some great army.”-John Hawkins Clark. Aug 18, 1852.

Some of the entries mention the curiosity of the landscape around them, while others discuss a state of distress. The words that sum it up best for me are the lines engraved on the old stone monument mentioned at the beginning of this post. The words were written on August 5th, 1850 by E.S. Engalls: “Imagine to yourself a vast plain of sand and clay…the stinted sage, the salt lakes, cheating the thirsty traveler into the belief that water is near. Yes. Water it is, but poison to the living thing that stops to drink. Burning wagons render still more hideous the solemn march; dead horses line the road, and living ones may be constantly seen lapping and rolling the empty water casks (which have been cast away) for a drop of water to quench their burning thirst, or standing with drooping heads, waiting for death to relieve them of their tortures, or lying on the sand half buried, unable to rise, yet still trying. The sand hills are reached, then comes a scene of confusion and dismay. Animal after animal drops down. Wagon after wagon is stopped, the stronger animals are taken out of the harness; the most important effects are taken out of the wagon and placed on their backs and all hurry away, leaving behind wagons, property, and animals, that, too weak to travel, lie and broil in the sun…The owners hurry on with but one abject in view, that of reaching the Carson River before the boiling sun shall reduce them to the same condition…The desert! You must see it and feel it in an August day, when legions have crossed it before you, to realize it in all its horrors. But heaven save you from that experience.”