Memorial to Pioneer Odd Fellows

The register says these pioneers inscribed their names. The bronze, cast by people closer to the fact, says they painted them. A party of Odd Fellows stopped here in August 1849 at the top of Devil's Ladder, the worst climb on the Carson route, and put their names and the three links of their order on the granite in paint. The Grand Lodge answered in 1941 with this tablet, permanent where the original marks are not.

What the plaque says

At this point in August 1849, a group of Odd Fellows nearing their goal, the California gold mines, paused in their struggle up these granite walls, to paint on this and adjacent boulders, their names and the three links of the Great Order, they so dearly loved. Pioneers of California, Pioneers of the Brotherhood of Man, We salute you. Your bodies have blended with the dust of the West. Your spirit lives and inspires. Dedicated to their memory, by the Grand Lodge of California. Independent Order Odd Fellows May 1941.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Emerald Bay State Park — 19 mi
  A glacial fjord on Tahoe's west shore with the lake's only island and a Scandinavian house at the water.
• Genoa — 23 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 — 25 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

More markers nearby

• Kit Carson Marker — steps away
• Old Emigrant Road — 2.7 mi
• Kirkwood's — 4.6 mi
• Site of Echo Summit — 8.8 mi