Historic road corridors from the Truckee Meadows northwestward into the Honey Lake area formed a tangled network of valley routes, emigrant trail cutoff segments, toll roads, county roads, and informal bypasses around obstacles such as mud holes. Much of this earlier system was later destroyed or isolated by construction of the paved precursor to U.S. 395 and by more recent freeway building along the same corridor. The route reflects Nevada's continuing transportation history, including road improvement and economic and demographic change. In 1856, settlers known as the Honey Lakers proposed the territory of Nataqua along the eastern Sierra from Susanville to Carson Valley. After the 1859 silver strikes in the Comstock, freight wagons and stagecoaches regularly traveled the rough road from the Honey Lake area to Virginia City, creating a strong economic tie that reinforced the settlers' identification with eastern Sierra communities rather than California. That attachment helped lead to their resistance in the 1863 Sagebrush War against annexation to Plumas County, California. Earlier, in 1851, James Pierson Beckwourth, a trapper and trader and the son of Sir Jennings Beckwith and a slave, located and built a wagon road linking the California Emigrant Trail in the Truckee Meadows to Marysville, California, by way of Sierra Valley. He hoped to profit from opening the road but was never reimbursed as promised by the mayor of Marysville. The route served briefly as an alternative Sierra pass before becoming mainly a local road after 1855. Along this corridor, roadside stations and ranches served travelers in the 1850s, including Peavine Ranch, an overnight stop on the road from the Truckee River to ranches near Honey Lake that offered meals, drink, and beds. Fielding Lemmon bought it in 1862, and although it was first promoted in real estate and mining schemes shown on an 1867 map, it instead became a successful livestock operation. Other ranches also stood along the road, but for nearly a century regional growth focused on downtown Reno and Sparks; over time, most ranches and stage stops gave way to small isolated communities, then larder communities, and eventually suburbs. Before state and federally built highways, the stage and toll road between Honey Lake and Virginia City was maintained unevenly by private owners such as Myron C. Lake. In 1861, Lake traded Honey Lake Valley property for Charles W. Fuller's log toll bridge over the Truckee River and then sought a franchise to improve and build a toll road from a point three miles south of the bridge to the California-Nevada border, excluding Reno's town streets. This early road, about 20 miles long, was often in deplorable condition and sometimes impassable. In the twentieth century, one of Nevada's first federally funded highways, the macadam Three Flags Highway, was built from Reno to the Nevada-California border after the Nevada Highway Commission was organized in 1917, federal funds were mandated in 1921, and construction began in April 1922; parts still survive. The Three Flags Highway later gave way to U.S. 395, an extension of Virginia Street in Reno, and a four-lane system was proposed in the 1970s. The modern highway generally follows the same transportation corridor and still passes through the Peavine Ranch property.