“John A. Thompson was the father of all the race of snow-shoers in the Sierra Nevada Mountains; and in those mountains he was the pioneer of the pack train, the stagecoach, and the locomotive.”
—Dan de Quille, Overland Monthly, 1886
To get the mail through, “Snowshoe” Thompson weathered huge snowdrifts on 25-pound skis. Thompson first transported mail in 1856 on the 90-mile Old Emigrant Road between Placerville, California, and Carson Valley, Nevada. Later, he carried mail on the Big Tree Route between Genoa, Nevada, and Murphy’s Camp, California. He took the job after seeing an ad in the Sacramento Union, “People Lost to the World; Uncle Sam Needs a Mail Carrier.”
