The Old Emigrant Trail
It was near this site at Tragedy Spring in 1848, that three scouts of the Mormon Battalion were murdered by unknown people. The scouts were the first people to open a wagon road over the southern route from California to Utah in 1848. Their comrades carved their names and the tale of their death in a tree at this location. That part of the tree is now preserved in Fort Sutter in Sacramento.
Official text from the OHP website:
Here the Old Emigrant Road began a long loop around the Silver Lake basin, reaching an elevation of 9,640 feet at one place. This difficult portion of the road was used by thousands of vehicles from 1848 to 1863, when it was superseded by a route approximating the present highway.
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