The Forty-Niner Trail

One forty-niner got no farther than the next county east. George Winslow, a machinist born in 1823, married in 1845 and father of two sons, joined the Boston and Newton Joint Stock Association when word of the gold reached Newton, Massachusetts. Cholera killed him on June 8, 1849, at twenty-five, and he was buried beside the trail a few miles north of present Fairbury. Rev. George S. Goldsmith looked into the grave in 1891, and in 1912 a granite monument was dedicated there with Winslow's inscribed headstone set into it. The grave is on private land open to visitors.

What the plaque says

The Forty-Niner Trail During the nineteenth century the United States underwent a dramatic westward expansion, but perhaps no single event stimulated this mass migration more than the 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in California. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were struck with "the fever." The vast majority of gold seekers journeyed overland from the Missouri River feeder towns of Independence, St. Joseph, and Council Bluffs. Through Nebraska, most travelers followed the established Oregon Trail, also known as the California or "Forty-Niner" Trail. The Forty-Niner Trail entered Thayer County near present-day Alexandria and followed the Big Sandy Valley, where water, wood, and grass were available. After crossing the Big Sandy near Belvidere, the trail proceeded southwesterly to the Little Blue River, thence again to the northwest. After the establishment of Thompson's Station a few miles south of Belvidere the trail followed the Eighteen Mile Ridge across Thayer County. The route was later used by the Pony Express, freighters, overland stage companies and the railroads. The call to adventure, possible riches, or a new home encouraged these hardy pioneers to make the journey along the Forty-Niner Trail. Thayer County Historical Society Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pawnee Indian Museum State Historic Site — 29 mi
  A Kitkahahki Pawnee village of the late 1700s above the Republican, where a museum shelters a lodge the women built and a family bundle carried out of Massacre Canyon and given back to this place.

More markers nearby

• Thayer County — 6.2 mi
• The Hebron CCC and POW Camps — 6.4 mi
• Bruning Army Air Field — 7.4 mi
• Friedensau — 10 mi