To get the mail through, “Snowshoe” Thompson weathered huge snowdrifts on 25-pound skis.
Top-left: John "Snowshoe" Thompson portrait. Courtesy of the El Dorado County Historical Museum Top-right: Contractor on skis. Courtesy of USPS Above: Tips of John "Snowshoe" Thompson's skis, late 1800s. Courtesy of the El Dorado County Historical Museum
Left: Thompson's skis, late 1800s Right: Thompson's skis
“John A. Thompson was the father of all the race of snow-shoers in the Sierra Nevada Mountains; and in those mountains he was the pioneer of the pack train, the stagecoach, and the locomotive.”
—Dan de Quille, Overland Monthly, 1886
Thompson first transported mail in 1856 on the 90-mile Old Emigrant Road between Placerville, California, and Carson Valley, Nevada. Later, he carried mail on the Big Tree Route between Genoa, Nevada, and Murphy’s Camp, California. He took the job after seeing an ad in the Sacramento Union, “People Lost to the World; Uncle Sam Needs a Mail Carrier.”
