Central Overland Route

For a decade after 1859, until the first Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, it served a vital role in the transport of emigrants, mail, freight, and passengers between California, Nevada, and Utah.

This trail led straight through the high mountain ranges that most earlier explorers had worked so hard to avoid.

Redden and Egan had discovered a series of mountain passes/springs that aligned to allow an almost straight path across the middle of Utah and Nevada.

Gold and Silver mined in California and Nevada were often part of the cargo going east as the Civil War consumed vast sums of money.

In 1860, William Russell's Pony Express used this route across Utah and Nevada for part of their fast 10-day mail delivery from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California.

In July 1859 Horace Greeley made the trip, at a time when Chorpenning was using only the eastern segment (they reconnected with the Humboldt River trail near present-day Beowawe).

[1] In October 1860 the English explorer Richard Burton traveled the entire route at a time when the Pony Express was operating.

In the summer of 1861 Samuel Clemens (who only later used the pen name Mark Twain) traveled the route with his brother Orion on their way to Nevada's new territorial capital in Carson City, but provided only sparse descriptions of the road in his 1872 book Roughing It.