Strawberry Valley House-Overland Pony Express Route in California

The most human detail on the whole route is cast here. On April 4, 1860, division superintendent Bolivar Roberts waited at this stop with a string of mules, because the snow on Echo Summit above was too deep for a horse and Warren Upson was coming up behind. The mules were there to get him through. Strawberry was a resort and a stage stop first, built by Swift and Watson in 1856 for the Comstock traffic, and the Express was bolted onto a business that already worked.

What the plaque says

Strawberry Valley House This popular resort and stopping place for stages and teams of the Comstock, established by Swift and Watson in 1856, became a remount station of the Central Overland Pony Express on April 4, 1860. Here on that date division superintendent Bolivar Roberts waited with a string of mules to help pony rider Warren Upson through the snowstorm on Echo Summit. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 707 Plaque placed by the California State Park Commission in cooperation with the Highway 50 Association, and the Central Overland Pony Express Trail Association, April 3, 1960.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Emerald Bay State Park — 12 mi
  A glacial fjord on Tahoe's west shore with the lake's only island and a Scandinavian house at the water.
• Cave Rock / De'ek Wadapush — 21 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
• Genoa — 22 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
• Glenbrook & Spooner Summit — 23 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

More markers nearby

• Site of Echo Summit — 6.3 mi
• Yank's Station-Overland Pony Express Route in California — 8.4 mi
• Webster's (Sugar Loaf House)-Overland Pony Express Route in California — 9.0 mi
• Friday's Station-Overland Pony Express Route in California — 16 mi