The Henness Pass route over the Sierra Nevada, about halfway between Donner Pass (on the south) and Yuba Pass (on the north), had become a popular route into California by the 1850s. It avoided Donner Pass, which had acquired a sinister reputation due to the fate of the Donner party in the 1840s. A road was constructed along the route in the 1850s, and by the 1860s, with the discovery of silver in the Comstock Lode in Nevada, much traffic was now traveling back eastward, carrying supplies into Nevada. The…
