Last updated: April 11, 2025
Place
Jim Beckwourth Cabin Museum
NPS Photo
Quick Facts
Location:
1820 Rocky Point Rd., Beckwourth, CA
Significance:
Mountain man Jim Beckwourth, builder and resident of the cabin, first created the trail and personally led the first wagon train across the trail to the town of Marysville, Ca, in 1851. His trail was one of the easier trails into California, and was the fastest route to the newest popular mining camps.
Designation:
Certified Site, National Historic California Landmark No. 336
Jim Beckwourth, the African-American mountain man, scion of British nobility, great medicine and warrior chief in the Crow Indian Nation, US Army scout and courier, and discoverer of Beckwourth Pass and trail, settled here on his road for 7 years. He created several things we still have: Beckwourth Pass and Trail, located by Trails West markers, this cabin, and a national best seller biography, The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, 1856.
In 1850, Jim Beckwourth discovered a low pass, soon named Beckwourth Pass, into California. The following year he developed a wagon road that forked off the California Emigrant Trail at current Reno, NV. His road led west across the pass and “then” Butte County to an existing road leading south to Marysville, CA. Beckwourth guided the first wagon train across his road in the fall of 1851 all the way to Marysville, creating the wagon tracks later emigrants would follow.
The Beckwourth Trail led past active gold diggings. One 1852 wagon train encamped west of American Valley discovered gold in the vicinity of their wagons, and within days the town of the Elizabethtown began. The trail was very popular for 3 or 4 more years, but traffic gradually diminished with the opening of the Nobles Trail to the north. Also contributing to loss of Beckwourth Trail traffic was the establishment of the Panama-Pacific Railroad across the Isthmus of Panama, which made reaching California by ship faster and less hazardous than overland travel.
Beckwourth built three successive trading posts and hotels in one location on his trail in the northwest corner of Sierra Valley, where he provided supplies and hospitality to the passing emigration, often on credit. The first two trading posts were described in trail journals as board-on-frame construction and both succumbed to fire. Jim Beckwourth dictated his famous autobiography in the second cabin during the winter of 1854-55. His third cabin, built following the second fire and after the tide of road users had subsided, is this log cabin. Being suddenly homeless, he most likely hired men to build it out of green logs. He likely lived in it about a year before deciding his new home could survive his absence while he visited friends and family back in Missouri. He uprooted and headed east in Nov. 1858, fully intending to return and selling neither cabin nor ranch. But greater prosperity awaited him in Denver and he never returned.
Site Information
Location (1820 Rocky Point Rd., Beckwourth, Plumas Co., CA)
People can visit the Beckwourth Cabin Museum on Rocky Point Rd., east of Portola and west of Beckwourth, year-round. When the museum is closed, visitors can read interpretive signs about Jim and his cabin. The inside is only open during summer weekends from noon to 4. Inside is a large collection of books written about Jim, some rare maps of the Emigrant Trails, a reproduction of a 31-star US flag, and emigrant artifacts collected on California Trail and the Beckwourth Trail. Some books about Beckwourth are available for purchase.