The Beckwourth Path

                                              

James Pierson Beckwourth was born in 1798 in Frederick County, Virginia to an African American slave mother and English father, Sir Jennings Beckwith. Although his father raised him as his own son, according to the law, Jim Beckwourth was still legally considered a slave. His father appeared in open court on three separate occasions (in 1824, 1825, and 1826) and "acknowledged the execution of a Deed of Emancipation from him to James, a mulatto boy."  -- James Pierson Beckwourth Biography

In 1850, the mountain man James Beckwourth looked east from the high crest of the Northern Sierra, which he had climbed from the mining camps of Downieville, where he had been working as a professional hunter.  He saw that the further rim of the great valley to the east was low in its northern corner, and that the valley drained to the west, piercing the range in the great trench to the north of his view.  To north, east, and south of the pass that Beckwourth saw was country known to him and to many others who for many years had lived in and passed through the forests, meadows and mountains of the upper watersheds of the great river systems of what we call California, and the basins and ranges of the high desert that across the land  between the mountains of the west.

Beckwourth had for several years worked the difficult emigrant trails that brought new communities of people into the land.  Memories of the Donner disaster were fresh, and Beckwourth knew the value of an easier overland route into California.  Beckwourth knew the ways from the mountains north and south of Downieville to the confluence of the Feather and Yuba rivers, where the settlement of Marysville was served by boat through Sacramento to the San Francisco Bay.  A good route through the Sierras to Marysville would be of great value to the merchants of Marysville.  Fortunes were made by well-placed vendors supplying the floods of gold-seekers arriving from the East.

Beckwourth next set out from Downieville to find this route.  

From the Truckee Meadows, now Reno, where the wagon trains rested before attempting the Central Sierra passes, Beckwourth rode north, to the long valley whose creek feeds the salt Honey Lake southeast of Mount Lassen.  His path led gently up the low hills to the west of that valley, then climbed more steeply up a last draw, then the sky widened as the slope lessened into the wide saddle of Beckwourth Pass.

"Hallelujah" travelers exclaim as the long hours of sagebrush hills end with the first sight of the  meadow and marshland of the great mountain valley, bordered by forests, rimmed by mountains, the sunlight glittering on the many streams that gather and rise here to emerge at the bottom of the valley as the Middle Fork of California's Feather River.

Beckwourth rode down into the valley, across its north side,  into the mountains, and down through forests of fir, pine, cedar, oaks and madrone, reaching Marysville firm in his knowledge of a fine new route into California.

Beckwourth passed through a land rich with life.  Many people lived there, often cooperating, sometimes competing, caring for the forests, meadows, water and air in which they and many other creatures lived, as they had for the many lives of people since the ice had retreated.  Beckwourth had lived and traveled the paths the people of the land for much of his life, and traveled comfortably among the people of this land, sharing with others as they shared with him.  Beckwourth's path followed the paths of the people of the land.

In Marysville Beckwourth described the paths he had followed from the Truckee Meadows, and asked a fee to open the road that would enrich the merchants of the town.  The merchants gave Beckwourth an extra horse and a store of supplies, and promised a rich reward when he returned with a train of emigrants, to prove his path.

Thus equipped, Beckwourth found, perhaps in the Truckee Meadows, perhaps to the east, a wagon train prepared to follow him on his new route.  Through his Pass, across the Sierra Valley, down through the Feather River forestlands they went, emerging finally into the...

Smoking ruins of Marysville, which suffered the common fate of the flimsy towns of California's Gold Rush.  No merchants paid Beckwourth the promised fee.  Instead, some of the members of Beckwourth's train led other, cheaper, guides back through the mountains, who led other trains through Beckwourth's Pass and Beckwourth's Sierra Valley.  Traffic grew steadily, until the route was replaced by the shorter Henness Pass road to the South.

Beckwourth lived for some time after in his trading post near where Big Grizzly Creek joins the Feather.  His story of the non-payment of the merchants of Marysville, and his many other tales of his life in the prairies, mountains, and deserts west of the Mississippi, were written down and published by a reporter.  In years past Marysville has engaged an actor to play the great explorer, the innovator of the Northern Sierra, in a Beckwourth Frontier Days Parade, in amends as well as celebration of his life and contributions to our community.

Beckwourth left California, returned to the prairies, to live his last years and die among his people, whom the books call Crow.

The Beckwourth path was used was  the origin of the road networks that we use today. Highway 70 is its successor; it is a Beckwourth Path.  It starts at Hallelujah Junction, where it meets Highway US-395.  The Reno - Susanville-North artery follow much of the distance of Long Valley Creek, on the right bank from the state line at Bordertown.  It crosses to the left bank above the entry into the basin of Honey Lake.  Highway 70 crosses the often-dry bed of Long Valley Creek, and climbs to  Beckwourth Pass, the lowest crossing from the Great Basin into the Sacramento-San Joaquin watershed.  It descends to Chilcoot, where  the Feather River Railroad (now part of the Union Pacific network) emerges from a tunnel. When the Western Pacific company completed its route through the valley that Beckwourth used, it was a critical element of the rail infrastructure between and among Chicago and the great cities of the Pacific Coast, an infrastructure system that is critical for the future of all of the people in the times of the Climate Crisis. 

Highway 70, the  Beckwourth Path, crosses Sierra Valley.  This was once a lake, that the books name after Beckwourth.  The settlement of Beckwourth is near where he built his cabin, at the edge of meadow and forest , near where Big Grizzly Creek joins the Middle Fork of the Feather at the outlet of the primeval Lake Beckwourth.  There is a museum.  

The Beckwourth Solution, a prototype element of the Northern Sierra Project as a forests communities health contribution to the response to the climate-change crisis, honors and  extends Beckwourth's Path to serve the forests communities of the present and future.