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Snowshoe Thompson

Laura Nelson Baker

0/5 ( ratings)

John "Snowshoe" Thompson, the legendary skiing mailman of the Sierra Nevada.
Born Jon Tostensen Rue in the Telemark district of Norway on 30 April 1827, "John" was 10 years old when his father died and the family immigrated to the American Midwest in 1837. In 1851, the 24-year-old farm boy was bit by gold fever and he ran off to California. He worked as a miner for the Coon Hollow and Kelsey Diggings in the Sierra foothills and then later moved to Putah Creek, near Placerville, about 30 miles east of Sacramento. Thompson took up farming in summer and cutting commercial firewood in the winter. About this time he Americanized his name to John Albert Thompson after the family name of his stepfather Arthur Thompson.
In 1855 Thompson saw an ad published in the Sacramento Union: People Lost to the World: Uncle Sam Needs Carrier. The Placerville postmaster needed someone to carry the overland mail 90 miles east, up and over the Sierra range to the Carson Valley, in the dead of winter. There weren't any takers until Thompson, whose father had made him "snow-shoes" to ski to school as a child in Norway, decided to answer the call to duty.

Language: English

Pages: 215

Format: Hardcover

Release: June 01, 1957

ISBN 13: 9780684209586

Snowshoe Thompson

Laura Nelson Baker

0/5 ( ratings)

John "Snowshoe" Thompson, the legendary skiing mailman of the Sierra Nevada.
Born Jon Tostensen Rue in the Telemark district of Norway on 30 April 1827, "John" was 10 years old when his father died and the family immigrated to the American Midwest in 1837. In 1851, the 24-year-old farm boy was bit by gold fever and he ran off to California. He worked as a miner for the Coon Hollow and Kelsey Diggings in the Sierra foothills and then later moved to Putah Creek, near Placerville, about 30 miles east of Sacramento. Thompson took up farming in summer and cutting commercial firewood in the winter. About this time he Americanized his name to John Albert Thompson after the family name of his stepfather Arthur Thompson.
In 1855 Thompson saw an ad published in the Sacramento Union: People Lost to the World: Uncle Sam Needs Carrier. The Placerville postmaster needed someone to carry the overland mail 90 miles east, up and over the Sierra range to the Carson Valley, in the dead of winter. There weren't any takers until Thompson, whose father had made him "snow-shoes" to ski to school as a child in Norway, decided to answer the call to duty.

Language: English

Pages: 215

Format: Hardcover

Release: June 01, 1957

ISBN 13: 9780684209586

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