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Egan Canyon Station Nevada

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Egan Canyon Station Nevada

Egan Canyon Station Nevada Overview

Egan Canyon Station was a stop on the Pony Express located in White Pine County, Nevada.

Learn more about the Pony Express: The Route, The Riders, The Ruins Left Behind.

Year Established/Founded

Spring 1860

Egan Canyon Station Nevada History

The various land features and the town were named after Major Howard E. Egan.

Historic Resource Study Pony Express National Historic Trail

Sources generally agree on the identity of this station site, known as Egan Canyon or Egan’s Station, which also appeared on the 1861 mail contract.

Sometime later, workers rebuilt the station, which served as an Overland Mail Company stop until 1869. In 1979, the station’s stone foundations existed in a dense tangle of rabbit brush. 

Timeline

  • Spring of 1860 – Major Howard E. Egan and others established the station in Egan Canyon
  • July 15 or 16, 1860 – Approximately eighty Indians arrived at the station, took station keeper Mike Holten and a Pony Express rider named Wilson as prisoners, and helped themselves to station food supplies. Rider William Dennis, en route from Ruby Valley Station to Egan Station, saw the Indians and slipped away before they discovered him. He found Lieutenant Weed and sixty soldiers, whom he had passed shortly before reaching Egan, and returned with them to the station. The soldiers killed about seventeen or eighteen Indians and freed the two captives.
  • October 1860 – Indians returned to the station, killed the men there, and burned the buildings, according to Burton, “in revenge for the death of seventeen of their men by Lieutenant Weed’s party.”
  • October 5, 1860 – When Richard Burton arrived he found part of the chimney, a few pieces of burned wood, and evidence of partially buried bodies
  • October 26, 1861 – The operations cease after the first transcontinental telegraph was established on October 24, 1861

Elevation

6,349′

Location

Egan Canyon Station Nevada

GPS Coordinates

39° 51′ 38.76″ N, 114° 56′ 10.10″ W

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Photos and Videos

None at this time.

References Used

Click here to view our list of History of the Southwest – Books and Online Resources to learn more about our amazing area!

Egan Canyon Station Nevada