The Playa has been an historical barrier. You survived!

[some seeing eye]

From Friends of Black Rock High Rock on MarksPlace.

Crossing the Black Rock Desert, 1849

When emigrants traveled the Applegate-Lassen Trail westward the Black Rock Desert was one of the most daunting stretches. Days without reliable water, cracked playa underfoot, mirages shimmering in the distance. This was the reality they described in their journals.

Joseph Goldsborough Bruff, an emigrant in 1849, left us this vivid account:

“Edge of Black Rock Desert — Sept. 12. A plain apparently more elevated, ahead of us, is very level and smooth, and in the sun, looks like a vast field of ice; however, the appearance has no cooling effect on my feelings. … When we reached the white plain, I found that it was not elevated above the other, but was cover’d with a smooth white encrustation, probably alkaline. — This smooth white plain narrow, but appears to extend to the S. a considerable distance; and in the wet season is a vast mud lake, now baked by the sun. A very beautiful Mirage in the S.S.W. on this plain, at base of some mountains.”

— Joseph G. Bruff, 1849