Pioneer Memorial Park

Pioneer Memorial Park honors the people who crossed this country the hard way. Winnemucca grew up at a crossing of the Humboldt River—first the emigrant ford the French called Frenchman's Ford, then a bridge town that took the name of the Paiute chief Winnemucca, then a Central Pacific Railroad shipping point and the seat of Humboldt County. The memorial gathers the memory of the emigrants, settlers, and railroad builders who passed through or stayed to build the town on the river's bank. It stands in the city that trail, river, and rails made the commercial heart of northern Nevada.

What the plaque says

This spot was part of the Pioneer Cemetery where rests Frank Baud and other of the pioneers who founded Winnemucca, earlier known as French Ford. Baud arrived in 1863 and is one of the men credited with naming the town Winnemucca after the famous Paiute Chieftain. Baud came with Louis Lay from California to work on the Humboldt Canal, a project headed by Dr. A Gintz and Joseph Ginaca who devised the plan to link Golconda and Mill City by means of a 90-mile canal and provide water for the mills in the area. It was never completed. Baud later became a merchant, helped build the Winnemucca Hotel with Louis and Theophile Lay, was the first postmaster, and gave the town a schoolhouse before his death in 1868.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Winnemucca — 0.5 mi
  The crossing town at the western end of the Humboldt — Basque tables, a 1900 bank robbery the town still pins on Butch Cassidy, and the spot where I-80 meets US-95.

More markers nearby

• The Humboldt Canal — 0.8 mi
• Humboldt River — 9.2 mi
• Button Point — 9.2 mi
• Golconda — 13 mi