Antelope Springs at Majuba Traditional Cache
Antelope Springs at Majuba
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This was a campsite on the Applegate-Lassen Trail after separating from the California Trail down at the Great Bend of the Humboldt River. High clearance recommended.
Antelope Springs consists of a group of 3 springs below Majuba Mountain that helped support an emigrant route established by Jesse and Lindsay Applegate in 1846 to access the Oregon Trail. In 1848 Peter Lassen opened a cutoff off this trail into California and through his trading post thus creating the Applegate-Lassen Trail. Lassen claimed this route to be a shortcut to the California gold fields. A fascinating BLM study of “Emigrant Trails in the Black Rock Desert” is on the internet (visit link) where it is written “Following his advice, nearly half of the 1849 gold seekers (15,000 t o20,000 people) traveled the Applegate-Lassen Trail t o California (Hunt
1975:2).” In 1860 a party led by F W Landers developed Big Antelope Springs with excavations and masonry. Several graves are in the area which has resulted in the term Majuba Mountain Cemetery. One vandalized stone marker remains of Susan Coon, who perished after childbirth in 1860, possibly unnecessarily as she was hurriedly wrapped in a cold, wet blanket in an effort to control bleeding then rapidly died of pneumonia.
(visit link)
is in regard to Asa Fairfield's Pioneer History of Lassen County. James Bailey and William Cook were killed and mutilated here in 1862 then buried where they were found by 2 men from the Humboldt mines.
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