Mohave County miner., 1916-09-30

The new cut at the summit has taken away the ground which burnt the feet of the old emigrants, and where there panting oxen and canvas covered prairie schooners stood, with the vale of the mighty Colorado and a panorama of the Mojave desert of California before them. Nearer in the foreground, had the pioneers been gifted with foresight for 50 or SO years, they might have pictured mining camp, several shafts and gal lows frames hoisting the same kind of rock with gold in it that they were going further into California in search of, and a noisy stamp mill with a stretch of white tailings washed down a broad valley toward the mighty river for a distance of several miles. But to the said pioneers it must have been a very rought and forbidding locality, indeed. It is doubtful if on the whole route they found any more difficult place to pass than this, which they must have named among themselves "the breaks of the Colorado river. "The last thought ever entering their minds must have been of a county and state building a boulevard over this very spot.
 The new cut is about 30 feet deep and over 100 in length. For that depth and distance is remover the marks of the emigrant, Bishop and county roads of yesterday. And there the Bishop and emigrant roads parted company even in the day of old. The emigrant road is not easy to discern but it is there and can be found. With the assistance of MT. Miller, the newspaper man found where water had coursed down over a mesa directly in the center of the basin on the west of the summit. It appears to have hit almost the center of the wash where the new winding road crosses, about 250 or 300 yards down. From thence it followed the center closely until almost opposite the spring on the new grade, perhaps a little above there. Here was another emigrant camp. From there may be found all that is left of the emigrant trail where no subsequent repairs and use have kept it visible. It was frightfully steep in places, but up a little point of the hill across the gulch to the north of the new road is a whitish formation and by getting out and walking over there a person can sec where by the rocks having beer thrown aside the roadway has beer
 smooth and passable and it can be followed readily for about 150 yards Flight mesquite bushes have grown uI
 in the center of it but the removal o1
 the rocks is unmistakable. It crosse:
 a high point, goes a few feet north
 west and then turns abruptly down tC the southwest to a lower bench
 Going down toward this bench it il lost again, but it can be seen readil!
 that there was no other way out ana
 that precarious enough. But below
 the bench it crosses another saddle
 back of a point where it is again wis
 ible only by the loose rocks being
 gone.
 From that point down to a connec
 tion with the Bishop road that coursec
 around on the north side of the hil
 and is still visible and almost passabl'
 with a light rig, there was a yer.
 steep descent that was made only b!
 the emigrants by letting their wagons
 down with a snubbing chain. Mark
 of the chain washed out were seer
 many times there 20 years and nor
 ago by Mir. Miller and others.
 This brings the emigrant road dow
 to a spot not far from the Gold Or
 mine. The emigrant and Bishop roa'
 are one from there and for severa
 hundred yards followed the north sid , of the gulch. It is used by the Col,
 Ore for a mine road and in recen years has been graded, but MT. Mile says that as steep as the sidling wa the emigrant wagons came down ol that very dangerous passageway. kept close to the center of the gulch now on one side and now on the other , going a few hundred yards north O the center of Goldroad town.
 . From thence on down it traverse Silver creek wash in a general way l until a mile or two below the spring ? There it took over the mesas to tn l left and came to the Colorado rive t a short distance above Fort Mohav l and away below old Hardyville. Her s the river was forded. There is or wa ' a little island near the shore and tn s emigrants calked their wagon bed 9 and padded and rowed them acros v +ba river like cannes taking a DaI