About 40 minutes south of South Lake Tahoe, in the town of Markleeville, there’s a fairly nondescript parking area on the shoulder of state Route 88. It’s easy to miss, as is the actual start of the trail from the parking area. At just a 0.7-mile round trip, it’s easy to cover in 30 minutes, even accounting for the 230 or so feet of elevation gain up steep stone steps. 

It’d be easy to wonder why the short trail even exists in the first place. At the turn-around point is a boulder pile that forms a cave about 5 feet deep — it’s kind of cool, sure, but it’s not the kind of sight you’d plan your weekend around. 

Unless you’re a history nerd, a cross-country skiing nerd or even a U.S. Postal Service nerd (the actual postal service, not the band).

One thing that’s easy to see, peering into the cave, is that it wouldn’t be the most comfortable place to spend the night. But not only did one of Tahoe’s original “California Mountaineers” sleep there without so much as a blanket or lantern, he did it voluntarily, in the middle of winter. And he did it back in the 1860s no less. 

The name of the Sierra Nevada’s first notable skier, pioneer mailman and arguably quirkiest character of the last 200 years, was John Albert “Snowshoe” Thompson, formerly Jon Torsteinson-Rue. Through a series of unusual decisions, he became a legendary figure in the history of the American West. He was known as the Skiing Mailman of the Sierra Nevada and called “the most remarkable mail carrier in the world,” for delivering mail on skis across the treacherous and snow-covered mountains around Lake Tahoe in the 1860s. He’d ski up to 45 miles a day on the type of skinny wooden skis that today you only find on the walls of vintage diners and ski home rentals. But in the 1850s, they were Thompson’s sole tool for traversing California’s and Nevada’s, and what was then Utah’s, roughest, snowiest and most inhospitable landscapes. 

Thompson was a native Norwegian who immigrated to the United States with his family in the 1830s. They settled in the midwest, where Thompson skied during winters on what was then the American frontier. But when his father died and his family faced income struggles, Thompson decided to follow in the footsteps of so many recent immigrants and make his way west during the Gold Rush.

Thompson found work in Placerville, then a burgeoning mining town, as both a miner and farmer. But the Sierra Nevada’s heavy snow made both occupations hopeless in the winter, as it was nearly impossible for wagons, horses or people to move through the snow. The lack of any type of speedy winter transportation also presented a unique challenge for mail delivery and was part of the reason roughly one-sixth of the letters sent to California in the 1850s reportedly never made it to their intended recipients. 

Recognizing this challenge, Thompson responded to an ad in the Sacramento Union seeking a new mail carrier, leaning on his skiing experience to deliver mail across the snowy, mountainous terrain. The idea was likely met with skepticism by the postmasters, as there were few records of anyone successfully crossing the Sierra Nevada in winter — save for one famous 1846 attempt that ended notoriously badly. 

Thompson was hired, and made his first postal run in 1856. He delivered mail across a roughly 90-mile route of the Sierra Nevada, crossing from Placerville, California, to Genoa, Nevada. The route was arduous and treacherous, with steep ascents and descents and unpredictable weather conditions that could change rapidly. However, the biggest issue was the complete lack of roads, or even many mapped routes, between stops.

So Johnson used a tool from his childhood. Today, we’d call them skis, but in the mid-1800s, they were often called snowshoes. He supposedly crafted his own from trees on his Sierra farm, creating a pair 10 feet long and weighing roughly 25 pounds. Papers reported that his delivery bag could weigh between 60 and 80 pounds (or more on occasion), and that Thompson rarely carried more than some meat jerky and crackers for his own use. “Mr. Thompson never carried blankets,” reported the Chicago Weekly Post and Mail in 1876, and slept with “his head resting upon one of Uncle Sam’s mail bags.” While he normally curled up near tree stumps, the rocky cave near state Route 88 and now named in his honor was one of his favorite spots. “He had a cavern in the shape of an oven, in which he was in the habit of housing as often as he could make it convenient to do so,” wrote the paper. 

Equally unverifiable is Thompson’s role in an 1860 confrontation with a group of Paiutes, who were believed to be responsible for the killing of a few European settlers in the area. Thompson volunteered for the local militia, pursuing the tribe before engaging in combat several miles east of Carson City. While papers of the time predictably placed blame primarily on the tribe members, it’s unclear whether the Paiute members had anything to do with the settlers’ deaths. Regardless, a battle ensued, and only about 30 of the 105 men in Thompson’s band — including Thompson — survived. It became known as the “First Battle of Pyramid Lake” and led lawmakers to believe a state smaller than the territory would be easier to defend. Nevada became a state in 1864.

Despite the grueling nature of his work, Thompson remained dedicated to his mail route for nearly 20 years. He delivered until his death from pneumonia in 1876, though the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 rendered his job mostly unnecessary. Unfortunately, he was likely somewhat destitute upon his death, as Thompson was never paid by the government. 

The man who, as described by contemporary newspapers, “made marches that no Roman soldier would ever have undertaken,” was “the beau ideal of strong manhood” and “was as much superior as the St. Bernard is to the ordinary dog” never actually signed a contract with the US government. He was a subcontractor for a postal service contractor, and though he made a trip to DC to petition Congress for his overdue payments, the effort never came to fruition. Thompson was said to be owed around $6,000 — roughly $172,000 — at the time of his death.

Thompson was posthumously inducted into the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in 1970 and is permanently memorialized in several places around Lake Tahoe. That includes a bronze statue at Mormon Station State Park in Genoa, as well as a larger-than-life statue at Palisades Tahoe, in the form of a six-foot-tall Norwegian with a mailbag, forever skiing the perfect downhill line in his beloved Sierra Nevada.