Abner Blackburn

Abner Blackburn

Abner was a member of the sick detachment of the Mormon Battalion who wintered in Pueblo, Colorado. He and 12 others caught up with Brigham Young and the vanguard group around Fort Laramie, Wyoming, then continued into the Salt Lake Valley approximately the same time as the Brigham Young Company. Abner stayed in the valley for two to three weeks, after which, he traveled with Sam Brannon back to California. This was the first of many treks across the Sierra for him. When he returned to Utah after obtaining the battalion’s back pay, he continued to Missouri where he joined his family to help them move to the valley. The family wintered in Salt Lake that year, 1847–48. By that time he heard about the battalion’s gold discovery in California. He and several other battalion members planned their return to gold country the following spring.

In 1849 he joined a company who intended to take the new road carved out by the Mormon Battalion members who had previously wintered in California. When Abner’s group stopped near the Carson River for a couple of days to let their animals rest, he asked why no one had discovered gold on the eastern side of the Sierras. They responded by saying no one ever looked. Being curious, Abner took a bread pan and a butcher knife to a nearby ravine to dig around. Sure enough, he found a small quantity of gold. Abner remembered the location being in the vicinity of present-day Dayton, Nevada, a few miles south of what later became Virginia City. He “calculated to return some time in the future”(Will Bagley, Frontiersman,141). The company continued over the Sierras into California gold country. Abner worked several locations along the American River with great success, rescuing thousands of dollars of “the needful.”

After Abner’s stint in the gold fields he went back to Utah in 1849 for the winter.

Following his routine, he traveled east again in the spring of 1850. He and several others went back to the Nevada location where he had found gold the previous year, but the gold had been mined by others. His memoirs establish the first gold found in the area.

Abner was an adventurer. He, his brother, and four other men established a trading post in the Carson Valley. The post was later dubbed “Mormon Station.” He states in his memoirs, “There was no better place” in Carson Valley for this site had “cold watter [sic] comeing [sic] out of the mountain and pine trees were plenty on the edge of the valley. There was [sic] oceans of good feed for stock.” (Bagley, “Nevada Town’s 150-Year Party Salt Lake Tribune, June 17, 2001; B1).

“My place was about 50 yards from the place where [Reese later] built his trading post. We put up a log cabin. It was not standing when I went bak. Timber was very plentiful. I left there in September and we sold out to someone named Moore. I think Reese bought this man out. We did no fencing or planting. We went to make a station for the purpose of supplying provisions to the emigrants who came along. We built a corral there to keep the stock in. The cabin was a double-logged one story house about 20 by 60 feet containing two rooms. We put no roof on nor a floor as it did not rain that season—at that time we did not know but what we would winter there when we would have to put a roof on. I don’t recollect the object of our putting up the log house only we had nothing to do so we put a house up. We had no trouble with Indians. My house was the first one built in the valley and I think in Nevada.” (Bagley, Frontiersman, 263)

 Business was good that year. He said, “Trade flowed in onto us” (Bagley, Frontiersman). Hundreds of hungry 49ers bought and traded goods before the final push through the mountains to California. At the end of the season the partners divided their proceeds and went their separate ways.

Abner traversed this area many times leaving in his wake a colorful stamp on Truckee Meadows history. He would have made a greater impact if he and his friends had gone a little farther up the hill toward Virginia City where they would have found the rich veins of the Comstock. The last time he wintered with the saints in Utah was the year 1850. He then took permanent leave of the saints in Utah to live in California.

In 1897, Abner was invited to return to Salt Lake to participate in a commemoration celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the pioneers’ arrival in 1847. He wrote asking for financial assistance, saying, “California is not a land of gold and we are nearly all poor.” (Bagley, Frontiersman, 220). Abner had foolishly spent his gold money, letting it slip through his fingers. He did obtain funds to attend the Jubilee celebration of the battalion held in Salt Lake City. He proudly marched down Main Street, and posed for an historical picture of the remaining battalion veterans.