Adventure 051, Site 109 – Snowshoe Thompson

Capture California, the Game-2012

Adventure: 051, Site 109 – Snowshoe Thompson

No numbered marker, but has plaque and mural

Team: Thing One, Thing Two

Date:  September 27, 2012

Location:

Latitude: 38° 43.673′ N

Longitude: 120° 48.197′ W

Address: SW corner of Main and Sacramento, Placerville

 Description:

After wandering around Placerville and having a really good lunch at Bricks—we had dinner there a few months ago after backpacking. We saw that there was a plaque right by where we already had been-the Pony Express marker. This person sounded really interesting, so off we went and easily found Thompson's marker. Today's adventurers have nothing over Thompson. Read a short biography of him to find out why. Then to think he did his work of delivering the US Mail and was not paid for it. Amazing Man.

From the HMDB Site:
In 1851, a 24-year-old Norwegian man named John Thompson* headed for fortune in California. He prospected around Placerville at Coon Hollow and Kelsey's Diggings, then tried ranching in the Sacramento Valley. In 1856, he read about the mail delivery struggle over the Sierra Nevada mountains. He made snowshoes, but not like the flat, heavy ones used by Indians and trappers of the West and Canada. They resembled skis, but were heavier and clumsier. The first skis he made were 10 feet long and weighed 25 pounds. (Subsequent skis were recorded at 9 feet long, then seven.) Folks in Placerville laughed when they first saw him and his long skis, but they soon came to admire and encourage him when they realized he might get the mail through. He started his twenty-year career delivering the mail over the mountains in 1856. He became a necessity and a fixed institution in the mountains, providing the only land communication between the Atlantic states and California.
Thompson's first trip from Placerville to Carson Valley was made in January of 1856. It was a 90-mile trip in which he often glided over snow drifts 30 to 50 feet deep. The mail packs he carried were 60 to 80 pounds, and sometimes over 100 pounds. It took three days uphill to get to Carson Valley, and two days to return to Placerville, 45 miles a day through complete wilderness. He carried little food, used snow for water, dressed lightly, and carried no blanket, due to his mail load. When he had to sleep, or when the night prevented his traveling, he tried to find a stump of a dead pine to make camp. He set the stump on fire, collected spruce and fir boughs to sleep on, rested his head on the mail pouch and put his feet at the fire. There he slept, with 10 to 30 feet of snow beneath him.
In his travels he helped many a stranded traveler in the wilderness. He made his home in Diamond Valley on the eastern side of the Sierras. "Snowshoe" Thompson died at 49 years old on May 15, 1876, and was buried at Genoa. His only son Arthur, who died June 22, 1878 at 11 years 4 months old, was buried by his side.
*It is thought that his Norwegian name was Tostensen and the proper English translation Thomson, instead of Thompson






References:

• Wikipedia
  
• Historical Marker Database (HMDB.org)
  
• Waymarking
  
• Friends of Snowshoe Thompson
  
• Stories of Snowshoe Thompson
  

Overall Landmark References:

• Historical Marker Database (HMDB)
  
• WayMarking (WAY)