Old Mormon Station

The principal emigrant trail to California’s gold fields in the 1850’s passed about 50 yards east of here. In June, 1850, Hampton S. Beatie and Abner Blackburn, two mormons from Salt Lake City, established Nevada’s first trading post a few yards from this marker. It was soon a roofless 20-by-60 foot log structure soon known as “Mormon Station.” Beatie and Blackburn obtained provisions from Placerville, CA and traded them to emigrants in need who had just crossed the forty mile desert east of Fallon, NV. And who were about to take on the Sierra Nevada’s. In 1851, Col. John Reese, a Salt Lake City businessman led a wagon train of provisions into Carson Valley and established a larger “Mormon Station” in what is now Genoa. The present site subsequently became identified as the location of “Old Mormon Station.”

Dedicated October 31, 6008 (2003)

By Snowshoe Thompson Chapter No. 1827

Ancient & Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus

In conjunction with the Carson Valley Historical Society