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 Travels Through Time Posted by:  Volcanoguy
N 40° 43.623 W 116° 00.538
11T E 583690 N 4508930
Two adjacent signs with same title and continued text
Waymark Code: WMTJGA
Location: Nevada, United States
Date Posted: 11/29/2016
Views: 2
Historical sign located near the east end of the BLM’s Carlin Canyon Historical Wayside east of Carlin, Nevada.
Marker Title (required): Travels Through Time
Marker Text (required):
First sign.
Travelers have followed the Humboldt River and passed through Carlin Canyon since humans first came to this area. The first people to walk this route were the Native Americans. They used the canyon during hunting and foraging trips and as a pathway between winter villages once located near the modern towns of Elko and Carlin.
Trappers and Explorers
Beaver tails slapping the Humboldt River once sounded through Carlin Canyon. Then, in the lake 1820s and early 1830s trappers and explorers, like Peter Skene Ogden and John Work, set their traps along the river banks. Within a few years the beaver were gone, but the number of people traveling through this canyon increased with each passing year.
“Mountain men” like Joseph R. Walker blazed the trails that became the main routes for the emigrants and gold seekers who sought to reach California. According to Walker, traversing Carlin Canyon “. . . included several stream crossings, and one passage down the river itself, to get around the canyon’s steep, rocky ridges, many of which shelved out into the river itself”.
Emigrant Trails
During the 1840s the shouts of men and the creaks of harness and wagon became common as the great migration west began. It started in 1841 when the Bidwell-Bartleson party became the first emigrant group to thread its way through Carlin Canyon. Two years later the Walker-Chiles party, traversing the California Trail from Ft. Hall, Idaho, rolled the first wagons into view. Over the next several years, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children bound for California and western Nevada passed this way.
As California grew, the wagon traffic to Sacramento increased. Winter snows often blocked the rough wagon road through the canyon. Other routes were sought for a permanent road west and for a transcontinental railroads, but Carlin Canyon remained part of the major route across northern Nevada.
Second sign
Railroads
The ring of picks, shovels, and sledge hammers echoed through Carlin Canyon in late 1868, as Chinese laborers leveled the road bed and spiked down the Central Pacific Railroad tracks. For the next 35 years, steam engine whistles resounded through the canyon. By 1903, the curving tracks had been rerouted through a tunnel, eliminating the slow crawl along the river.
Automobiles
When the automobile became popular in the 1920s, motorists could drive State Route 1 through Carlin Canyon, following the paths of the emigrants and the railroad. The route became known as the victory Highway in 1924, only to be renamed U.S. Highway 40 a year later. In the 1930s men from the Civilian Conservation Corp built the rock wall to protect the highway. Today, cars and tracks bypass Carlin Canyon in the same manner as the railroads.
County (required): Elko
Marker Type (required): Other (describe below)
Other Marker Type (optional): Fiberglass sign panel in shelter.
Is Marker Damaged? (required): No
Marker Number (If official State Marker from NV SHPO website above, otherwise leave blank): Not Listed
Other Damage Type (optional): Not listed
URL - Website (optional): Not listed
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