“Snowshoe” Thompson: Fact and Legend

"SNOWSHOE" THOMPSON: FACT AND LEGEND BY KENNETH BJORK Tourists who visit the museum at Sutter's Fort in Sacramento , California, are shown a crude pair of skis identified as those once used by "Snowshoe" Thompson to cross the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Thompson, a mail carrier, was a kind of human link between East and West in the days before the coming of the railroad and the building of adequate roads and snow-removal equipment. It is soon apparent to the interested person that Thompson is now one of the popular heroes of the Pacific Southwest - a fact that is re-emphasized by numerous articles, chiefly in the magazines and newspapers of California and Nevada, that have retold his exploits to a generation that is spared the struggle with the forces of nature. Certainly no study of the Norwegian argonauts or of Scandinavian life in California after the gold rush is complete without an account of this remarkable individual. The historian, however, is bedeviled by the questions involved in writing a biography of an almost legendary figure . For even if by legends one means only the unverifiable anecdotes that have grown up around a historical personality , whose major contributions otherwise can be determined with relative ease, the problem is still a sizable one. Thompson was in every sense a flesh-and-blood character whose role in the migration story is clearly definable; nevertheless, it has already become impossible, in studying his career, to separate fact from fancy, history from legend. The historian, when confronted with this dilemma, bases his account, in so far as possible, on sources contemporary or nearly contemporary with the events described, and makes use of such legends as clearly spring from the major and verifiable aspects of the life of his leading character. No other procedure 68 SNOWSHOETHOMPSON 63 would seem either possible or advisable in the case of Snowshoe Thompson. I Mr. John A. Thompson, who resides on Putah Creek, in Yolo county, left Carson Valley on Tuesday morning last, and reached this city at noon yesterday. Mr. Thompson is engaged in conveying an express to and from "the Valley ." . . . [He] was three days and a half in coming through . . . and used on the snow the Norwegian skates, which are manufactured of wood, and some seven feet in length. He furthermore states that he found the snow about five feet deep between Slippery Ford and the summit, a distance of eight miles, and on the average elsewhere in the mountains, three feet deep. Mr. Bishop, who carried over the Salt Lake mail in December, consumed eight days in crossing, and before getting through, was badly frozen. Mr. Thompson left Placerville [or Hangtown ] for Carson Valley on January 3d, and leaves again on his transmontane trip this day.1 Thus reads an item on page two of the January 19, 1856, issue of the Sacramento (California) Union. The following month the same paper noted that the "adventurous and hardy mountain expressman" had again arrived in Sacramento from Carson Valley, "bringing us a fortnight's later intelligence." He was expected to leave for Carson Valley on Wednesday (the paper appeared on Monday) and "any letters or papers to be forwarded by him should be left at the St. Charles Hotel, on I street, and in Placerville at the Placer Hotel." In the late autumn of 1856, readers of the Union were informed that "communications with Carson Valley will be kept open by Mr. Thompson, who will run an express all winter." 2 Behind these almost casual announcements lay a story so unusual that one is surprised to discover that a year passed before the full significance of Thompson's work was apparent. In February, 1857, Hutching9 s California Magazine 1 AU citations of California and Nevada newspapers in this study are from microfilm copies in the California State Library, Sacramento. The town later commonly known as Placerville was called Hangtown by the forty-niners. Both names were used by early California newspapers. 9 February 4, November 17, 1856. 04 KENNETH BJ ORK informed its readers that the "recent rapid settlement of that great belt of fertile valleys lying along the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada range...