McAuley's Road

The sign's source was seventeen. Eliza Ann McAuley left Mount Pleasant, Iowa, on April 7, 1852, with her older brother Thomas and her sister Margaret, bound for California, and kept the diary that records Tom's ramble and the road. Some accounts now credit the cutoff to her as much as to him. She married and became Eliza Ann McAuley Egbert, and her diary was published in the Covered Wagon Women series. A separate marker a few steps away is devoted to the cutoff itself.

What the plaque says

McAuley's Road Coming west with Ezra Meeker in 1852, Thomas McAuley decided to build a road to let emigrants bypass Big Hill. Worst of all Oregon Trail descents, Big Hill needed replacement. Eliza McAuley reported that her brother Tom "fished awhile, then took a ramble ... and discovered a pass by which the mountain can be avoided by doing a little road building." With an emigrant crew, he opened a wagon toll road that followed current Highway 30. After 1852 no one maintained the new route and it fell into disuse. 456 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 5.7 mi
  The Bear River crosses this marsh twice: once in a canal into Bear Lake, and once in another canal on its way back out.
• National Oregon/California Trail Center — 6.8 mi
  Emigrants came down off Big Hill and camped in the clover here. Brigham Young renamed the town; the trail center brings the camp back in costume.
• Minnetonka Cave — 18 mi
  Found by a grouse hunter, named first for a porcupine and then in a language from the far side of the Rockies. Five kinds of bats winter inside.
• Bear Lake — 20 mi
  The Caribbean of the Rockies — a turquoise lake straddling the Utah-Idaho border

More markers nearby

• Big Hill — steps away
• Smith's Trading Post — 1.6 mi
• Bank Robbers — 6.8 mi
• Paris Tabernacle — 8.6 mi