Discovering Asa Fairfield's Pioneer History of Lassen County and Early Nevada

Pioneer Asa Fairfield

  One of the best things about researching and writing regularly about a place like Nevada is learning about a book or a resource you had not seen before (or perhaps knew about but just had never had an opportunity to read or see).

  Such was the case recently, when I was reading comments on a Facebook group about ghost towns and saw the mention of an early Lassen County pioneer named Asa Merrill Fairfield.

  For some reason, I was not familiar with Fairfield and did not know he had written one of the earliest histories of Lassen County, which included a pioneer history of the state of Nevada.

  Bearing the lengthy title, “Fairfield’s Pioneer History of Lassen County, California; Containing everything that can be learned about it from the beginning of the world to the year of Our Lord 1870 . . . Also much of the pioneer history of the state of Nevada . . . the biographies of Governor Isaac N. Roop and Peter Lassen . . . and many stories of Indian warfare never before published,” the work was published in 1916.

  The author, Asa Fairfield, who was born in Massachusetts in 1854, but moved with his family to Illinois in 1855. Two years later, the family again relocated, this time to Iowa, where they lived for four years.

  In 1865, with his father in ill health, Fairfield’s family moved to Honey Lake, California, located about 90 miles northwest of Reno, where his mother had family. Four years later, the family returned to Iowa, where Fairfield completed his schooling and became a teacher.

  In the fall of 1873, the family moved back to Honey Lake, where Fairfield took a position teaching at the Janesville School. He would continue to teach at various schools in the region until 1899.

  In about 1909, Fairfield began work on a pioneer history of Lassen County. Over the next six years, he interviewed the few remaining pioneer settlers in the county to save their stories.

  The result was a 563-page volume, which Fairfield self-published, that traced the development of the Lassen Trail, one of the branches of the Emigrant Trail, as well as the white settlement of the Honey Lake-Susanville area.

  Later chapters dealt with the creation of the Nevada Territory—Honey Lake was once considered part of Nevada—and the politics surrounding its creation, as well as the troubled relationship between settlers and the native people who originally lived in the region.

  In his book, which is arranged chronologically, Fairfield also described Peter Lassen’s death, the development of Susanville, and the 1860 Battle of Pyramid Lake, during which Major William Ormsby of Carson City was killed.

  The Lassen County Historical Society website describes Fairfield as a “very well-known man in Honey Lake Valley. He was well respected, and by all accounts a proper gentleman of his time. Many people named their children in his honor.”

  Fairfield died in Susanville on September 12, 1926 at the age of 72. He is buried in Lassen County’s Janesville Cemetery, in the valley where he spent most of his life.

  Fortunately, Fairfield’s book is in public domain and can be viewed (and downloaded) on several websites, including Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/fairfieldspionee01fair.

  Additionally, reprints of his book are available on Amazon and other online book sites.