California Hill

Irene Dakin Paden, born in Santa Cruz in 1888, listed her occupation as housewife. In 1932, while her husband William worked on his doctoral thesis, she began following the California and Oregon trails on the family's annual summer trip, and kept at it until 1940. The fieldwork became The Wake of the Prairie Schooner in 1943, her first book, which she also illustrated. Prairie Schooner Detours followed in 1949, and in 1955 she won a Guggenheim Fellowship for studies of the exploration and settlement of Oregon and California. She died in Oakland in 1974.

What the plaque says

California Hill The large hill to the north, which became known as "California Hill," was climbed by thousands of covered wagon emigrants heading west between 1841 and 1860. Many were bound for Oregon. California became the destination of a majority of travelers after gold was discovered there in 1848. The most important crossing of the South Platte River during this period was south and a little east of here. After fording the river and ascending California Hill, the emigrants traveled northwesterly to the North Platte River via Ash Hollow. The terrain restricted the route wagons could take up the hill, causing deep ruts still visible about two-thirds of a mile north-northwest of this marker. Before 1867 as many as half a million emigrants passed through what became Keith County. The natural migration corridor from Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie became known as "The Great Platte River Road." California Hill was donated to the Oregon- California Trails Association by Malcolm E. Smith, Jr., in memory of trail historian Irene D. Paden, and by the association to the Nebraska State Historical Society. Brule Community Nebraska State Historical Society Keith County Visitors Committee

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ash Hollow State Historical Park — 16 mi
  The emigrants' spring below Windlass Hill, six miles from the Blue Water Creek camp where Harney's soldiers killed eighty-six Lakota in 1855, and where their belongings came home in 2025.
• Julesburg — 17 mi
  The town that moved four times: a trading post, a stage stop burned in 1865, the wickedest end-of-track town on the Union Pacific, and finally Denver Junction renamed.
• Lake McConaughy and Kingsley Dam — 18 mi
  Nebraska's largest reservoir, 22 miles of North Platte water and white sand beaches behind a 1941 hydraulic-fill dam, built so farms far downstream could water their crops.

More markers nearby

• Phelps Hotel — 5.3 mi
• Waterman Sod House — 5.4 mi
• Sam Bass and the Big Springs Robbery — 5.4 mi
• Colorado's Northeast Corner — 7.2 mi