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Meet the 10 of Wands

Updated: Sep 15, 2020

Overburdened. Congratulations, your success means it’s all on you. Are your obligations reasonable? You’ve worked hard to achieve your goal, but you've taken on too much, or you need to stop micromanaging. Grow some boundaries.

Born in Norway in 1827, John “Snowshoe” Thompson emigrated to the US at the age of 10. Drawn to CA by the gold fields, he settled on a cattle farm in the Sacramento Valley. In 1855, he responded to a newspaper ad for a mail carrier to reach eastern Sierra communities. His first mail run, in January 1856, was a 90-mile loop from Placerville to Genoa, NV, which he completed in 3 days. He did this twice a month for the next 20 years. His mailbag included letters, medicines, and newspapers and sometimes weighed 100 lbs. He survived blizzards, bears, and wolves, and once rescued a lost traveler. When the railroad crossed the mountains, he was no longer needed. He was never paid by the USPS for his services. He settled on a ranch in Alpine County and died in 1876.

He may have been the first person to use skis in CA and is credited as the “father of California skiing”. He’s regarded as a hero in Norway and in Northern Sierra communities, including Genoa, NV, where they erected a statue of him.





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