Luther Canyon (Fay Canyon)

This canyon has carried two names and two reputations. It was first called Luther Canyon for Ira Luther, who ran a sawmill here from 1858 to 1865 and served as a delegate to the territorial legislature. After he left, it became Horse Thief Canyon—named for John and Lute Olds, who kept a station on the emigrant trail and rustled horses from the travelers who stopped there. Stolen animals were driven up the canyon to rest in Horse Thief Meadows, then sold to other emigrants down the road. The marker stands south of Genoa.

What the plaque says

Luther Canyon, west of this site, takes its name from Ira M. Luther, who from 1858-1865 had a sawmill there. The house behind the marker was his home. In 1861, he was a delegate to the second Nevada Territorial Legislature. After 1865, the canyon came to be known as Horse Thief Canyon, because of the “business” of John and Lute Olds, owners of the next ranch south. Besides operating a station along the Emigrant Trail for a number of years, they rustled horses from emigrants. The animals were sent up the canyon to drift over the ridge into horse thief meadows. After resting and feeding the horses, they were driven down to Woodfords Canyon to sell to other emigrants. A prospector called Sawtooth was allegedly murdered and buried in the barn south of the Luther house. Sam Brown, a notorious bad man, was shot and killed in front of the Olds barn in 1861 by a man he threatened. “Lucky Bill” Thorington, implicated in a murder in California for which he was hanged by vigilantes in 1858, had a ranch two and a half miles to the south.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Genoa — 9.5 mi
  Nevada's oldest town—a California Trail trading post and Carson Valley ranch country that came eight years before the silver and quietly outlasted it
• Cave Rock / De'ek Wadapush — 14 mi
  One of the most sacred places of the Wašiw—the Standing Gray Rock, a worn volcano the highway was blasted through and climbers bolted for sport, now closed and quiet again after the Washoe's long fight to protect it
• Glenbrook & Spooner Summit — 16 mi
  Lake Tahoe's east shore, where the basin was logged nearly clean to timber the Comstock—the forest that paid for the silver, and the century it has spent growing back
• Stewart Indian School — 17 mi
  The federal boarding school that took Great Basin children from 1890 to 1980 to erase their cultures—its student-built stone campus now a tribally-guided museum telling the story in alumni voices

More markers nearby

• Sheridan — 2.3 mi
• Mottsville — 4.5 mi
• Gardnerville — 5.8 mi
• Dresslerville — 6.0 mi