A few years after James Beckwourth settled on his War Horse Ranch just west of here in 1852, more ranches and farms were established throughout Sierra Valley, and by the following decade they were supplying significant amounts of beef and dairy products to the mines of Plumas and Sierra counties and the Comstock Lode in Nevada. After the valley bottom was drained, local ranchers began growing hay. Settlements in the north half of the valley included Beckwith, now Beckwourth, Cleveland, now Vinton, and Summit, now Chilcoot. Beginning in the early 1870s, Swiss-Italian immigrants, most from Tocino in southern Switzerland, came first to the gold fields and then in larger numbers to work on local ranches and dairies; by the 1880s some had bought the ranches where they had worked and expanded their holdings into surrounding mountain summer range, and family names such as Dotta, Folchi, Galeppi, Guidici, Laffranchini, Maddalena, Ramelli, Scolari, and Tognazzine became linked with the countryside. Sierra Valley was also crossed by three railroads. The Sierra Valley and Mohawk Railroad, the first to enter Plumas County, was completed west over Beckwourth Pass in 1887 but stopped east of Beckwith because of bankruptcy; reorganized in 1895 as the Sierra Valleys Railway Company, it was extended to Clairville, by 1903 reached Clio in Mohawk Valley, later reached the Davis Sawmill in today’s Graeagle, and ceased operation in 1918. The Boca and Loyalton Railroad, incorporated in 1900, ran north from Boca to Loyalton, reached Beckwith in 1901, and continued west past the future site of Portola. Construction on the Western Pacific Railroad began in 1905 to link Oakland and Salt Lake City, and when it was completed in late 1909, Portola was founded as a railroad town and many new sawmills opened. For a short time between 1910 and about 1914, three independent railroads operated through the area in unusually close proximity. The Western Pacific later acquired the other two lines and had dismantled them by 1920; its line, now operated by Union Pacific, has remained in use for more than 100 years. James Pierson Beckwourth, born enslaved in Frederick County, Virginia, on April 26, 1798, was emancipated at age 26 by his father Jennings Beckwith, changed his name to Beckwourth, and received a basic education and blacksmith training. During his life he worked as a fur trapper, trader, army scout, prospector, and explorer, lived for long periods among Indian people, and was War Chief for the Crow Indians. In 1850, while searching for gold in the northern Sierra Nevada, he found a low-elevation pass on the east side of the range that he believed could form part of a superior emigrant route to California. By 1851 he had blazed a trail from today’s Sparks, Nevada, across Beckwourth Pass to American Valley near today’s Quincy, where it joined an established pack trail to Marysville, and he is said to have led the first wagon train over it. The Beckwourth Emigrant Trail crossed the northern part of Sierra Valley, and in the spring of 1852 he established Sierra Valley’s first trading post, known as the War Horse Ranch or Beckwourth’s Ranch, on the small hill directly west of here. The trail and trading post brought him little wealth, and by 1858 he had left Sierra Valley for the last time. He died in late October 1866, apparently while living with the Crow Indians. The general route of the Beckwourth Emigrant Trail through Sierra Valley was later followed by a stage route and then by today’s Highway 70; by the 1930s the road was paved and advertised as an all-weather route.