Truckee River Route - Little Meadows Traditional Geocache
Truckee River Route - Little Meadows
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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The second cache in my Truckee River Route series, this one is only accessable from eastbound Interstate 80.
As you approach this cache, pull off the highway immediately at the end of the guardrail. You can park in the wide gravel turnout and walk the short distance to the cache, or follow a dirt road right to it. The cache is a small container with log only, maybe room for very small trade items & trackables. The log is printed on water-proof paper that can be written on even if wet, but it can only be written on with a ball-point pen...be sure to bring one along. Be VERY CAREFUL re-entering the highway when you leave.
The California Trail followed the north bank of the Humboldt River through present-day northeastern Nevada, to the Humboldt Sink. At Humboldt Bar, the trail diverged, with the Truckee River Route crossing the western edge of the Forty-Mile Desert to the Truckee River at Wadsworth. It then followed the river to Donner Lake, over Donner Summit, and ultimately ended at Sutter's Fort, near Sacramento, roughly the same route followed by Interstate 80 today. In all, some 250,000 people would use this trail from the late 1840's until the introduction of the railroads in the late 1860's.
Marker T.R.R. 9 ~Little Meadows~
This is a B.L.M. trail marker - my other caches in this series are located at Trails West markers. Consequently, the marker numbering sequence gets out of whack here.
I've been unable to find any historic information on Little Meadows other than a brief reference to the area in an 1862 description of Washoe County, which states:
"10 miles below the big meadows are the little meadows of the Truckee, consisting of a few hundred acres of good land..."
I would speculate that this was the next decent area for emigrants heading west on the trail to camp, following their departure from the Big Bend of the Truckee, near Wadsworth.
Also of historic interest in this area...The small flat area south-southwest of the trail marker, between the marker and existing railroad maintenance road, was the railbed of the Central Pacific (there's an old tire sitting right in the middle of the railbed, just below the marker). If you look to the southwest from the trail marker, you will see a cut made through a small rock outcrop for the railbed. The tracks were moved to their present location during the 1902-1908 Harriman realignment.
The next closest emigrant trail marker is located at GC1946V (Red Bluff).
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