Historians at odds over location of Donner Party trail through Reno

Sunday, June 11, 2000 | 10:15 a.m.

Leaders of the Reno-based Trails West trail-marking group say three markers placed by a now-defunct group three decades ago are in the wrong place and must be changed for accuracy's sake.

Their plans to remove plaques from the markers in south Reno later this month are prompting stiff opposition by historians who support the earlier work by the Reno-based Nevada Emigrant Trail Marking Committee.

Making it difficult for both sides to pinpoint the exact location is the fact that the wagon ruts have vanished under concrete and asphalt.

"The people who first marked the trail did as much as they could to be sure they were right," retired high school history teacher Fred Horlacher of Reno told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

"To come along 30 years later and say there were dead wrong and you are right is a rush to judgment."

Trail West's decision to remove the plaques is mainly based on the research of Don Wiggins of Reno, who has studied local trails for nearly a decade.

Wiggins said his study of more than 120 pioneer diaries shows the Donner Party and other emigrants took a more northerly route through Reno past the present main Reno Post Office on Vassar Street.

No diarist described a more southerly route as marked by the earlier group, he said. That route had emigrants going by Rattlesnake Mountain and the Reno-Sparks Convention Center in south Reno.

"I may have missed something, but I've found absolutely no evidence that anyone in the 1840s and 1850s ever took that southern route," Wiggins said.

But other historians insist Wiggins is dead wrong, citing a couple of diaries that suggest pioneers took a southerly route through the area.

Joe King, who quit as a Trails West member this month because of the flap, contended the group's methods aren't scientific or subject to true peer review.

He claimed a small clique of researchers provides information to the board, which rubber-stamps the findings.

"There's a lot of reasonable doubt here and it's being ignored," he told the Gazette-Journal. "Those markers should not be changed without an open process."

But Trails West president Richard Brock defended the group's work, saying several experts verify diary findings in the field. Five board members then vote to accept or reject trail-marking proposals.

"It's not a simple process," he said. "We're comfortable with the results. The preponderance of evidence indicates the (three Reno) markers aren't accurate."

Trails West maintains markers on the California Trail and its main branches from southern Idaho's Raft River to California's Sacramento Valley.