Originating from Ohio and Indiana, the Clark Skidmore party of 1852, with 75 people and 13 mule wagons, became the first wagon train to cross the Sierra-Nevada by the Walker River-Sonora route. They spent 35 days blazing 60 miles of trail over what was called the roughest Sierra crossing, filling ravines with tons of rock and digging a trench to drain Fremont Lake so they could pass around a cliff. Twice, when nearly starving, men went to Sonora-Columbia for food and road-building supplies. Many deserted, and on Sept. 10, 1852, the 15 remnants rolled into Columbia, cheered over the last mile by 300 citizens and a brass band. The route ran by way of Leavitt Meadow, Fremont Lake, Emigrant Meadow Lake, Brown Bear Pass, Summit Creek, Relief Valley, Whitesides Meadow, Burst Rock, Bell Meadow, MiWuk Ridge, north Twain Harte, Phoenix Lake, Sonora, and Columbia. In early summer 1853, Geo. W. Patrick, Sonora's second mayor, met a wagon train carrying his wife and daughters at the Carson River and persuaded the group to take the Sonora route, but when the travel became difficult he was nearly lynched. The route was described as strewn with wreckage of prairie schooners, oxen yoke, and bleached animal bones. One of Patrick's daughters died from the ordeal, and the grave of B.S. Hubbs remains one-quarter mile above Saucer Meadow. That summer about 600 wagons, 2,100 emigrants, and 19,000 head of cattle used this route, including the Duckwall, Trahern, Kerrick, Browder, Crow, and Stubblefield parties.