Jon Torsteinson-Rue — America knew him as Snowshoe Thompson — was born in Norway in 1827 and became the entire winter postal system of the central Sierra. From 1856 to 1876 he skied the mail between Placerville and Genoa: roughly ninety miles, three days east, two days back, on ten-foot oak skis weighing about twenty-five pounds, with mailbags of fifty to a hundred pounds on his back. He carried no compass — he navigated by the shape of the terrain, and often traveled at night.
The famous rescue happened in December 1856. Thompson found the prospector James Sisson snowbound in a cabin south of Tahoe — twelve days without fire, his legs frozen. Thompson built a fire, skied about sixteen miles to Genoa, returned with six men, and sledded Sisson out. The amputation that saved Sisson's life required chloroform; Genoa had none. So Thompson skied back over the Sierra and returned with it — something like four hundred miles of skiing in ten days. Sisson lived. A hundred and fifty winters of retelling have surely polished that story; it is rooted in accounts from his own time.
In 1860 Thompson homesteaded 160 acres in Diamond Valley, near Woodfords, and it was his base for the rest of his skiing life. He worked without a government contract the whole time, trusting that Washington would eventually pay the man who carried its mail. In 1874 he traveled to the capital to petition Congress in person. Congress never paid him a dollar.
He died at his Diamond Valley ranch on May 15, 1876, at forty-nine, and is buried in Genoa under a marble headstone carved with crossed skis. The home-site markers near Markleeville went up in 1956, placed by E Clampus Vitus, and in 1990 by the Native Sons; statues of him stand at Genoa (2001) and at Donner Summit. The E Clampus Vitus chapter that keeps local history in this corner of the Sierra is itself named for him.
Thousands of people still cross his passes under their own power every July. The Death Ride runs 103 miles and about 14,000 feet of climbing over Monitor and Ebbetts, on a route that passes the resort's front gate. It started small: in 1978, five cyclists led by Wayne Martin rode the county's passes in a day from a campsite at Grover Hot Springs, and by 1981 it was an organized event. Turtle Rock Park, the start and finish, is four miles up the road from the resort.
Monitor Pass has only carried a highway since 1954, the newest state-highway crossing of the Sierra. Beyond Markleeville the passes still close each winter and the county goes quiet — the same country Thompson crossed in the dark with the mail on his back. The cabins are open year-round.
