Today marks the 225th anniversary of Peter Lassen’s birth. A lot of ink has used chronicle his life, and some on his demise. Lassen met an untimely death on April 25, 1859 in the Black Rock Desert some 125 miles east of Susanville. In November his remains were brought back for burial in the Honey Lake Valley and placed near the majestic Ponderosa pine tree where he camped there in 1855.
Lassen’s funeral was chronicled in the Territorial Enterprise newspaper of Virginia City. The paper noted: “The remains of Peter Lassen, the old pioneer, were buried with Masonic honors, Sunday November 27, on his own ranch at Honey Lake. The attendance upon that occasion, was a very large one for that place.”
From time to time visitors were critical that the residents of the region did not maintain Lassen’s gravesite. In 1889, the Reno Evening Gazette commented: “A reporter visited the grave of old Peter Lassen and says the monument which is very soft rock rock is fast crumbling away and if neglected in a few years there will be no monument left to the mark the grave of the old pioneer. The monument bears date of April 14, 1859. We think that the citizens of Lassen County should in some manner raise sufficient money to purchase and erect a handsome monument in place of the old one.”
From that time forward suggestions were made to do something, not only for better care of the monument, but improvement to the grounds as well. Nothing ever materialized but talk, and no action. In the early 1900s, a proposal was made to move the monument and Lassen’s grave to a more fitting location–Sutter’s Fort, Sacramento. While a controversial hot topic for awhile, it too subsided.
