By the time the emigrants reached Nevada, both they and their animals were near exhaustion. The lack of good grass and scarcity of good water further compounded their suffering. Here are two fairly representative diary entries:

"About ten miles out the dead teams of [18]49 and [18]50 were seen scattered here and there on the road very soon, however, they became more frequent and in a little while filled the entire roadside; mostly oxen with here and there a horse and once in a while a mule. Wagons, wagon irons, ox chains, harness, rifles, and indeed all the paraphernalia of an emigrant’s "outfit" lay scattered along this notorious route, reminding one of the defeat of some great army."

—John Hawkins Clark (1852)

"I had associated with the name "wells" a vision of an oasis—verdure, trees, and cooling water. The whole environment as far as the eye could reach was simply an abomination of desolation...as heaps of hills into which slowly percolated filthy-looking, brackish water. More than half the wells were unavailable as they were filled with the carcasses of cattle which had perished in trying to get water. To add to the natural horrors of the scene, about the wells were scattered the bodies of cattle, horses, and mules which had died here from overwork, hunger, and thirst; broken and abandoned wagons, boxes, bundles of clothing, guns, harness or yokes, anything and everything that the emigrant had outfitted with.

Drawn by J. G. Bruff, Sept. 20, 1849 / Henry E. Huntington Library

"Two of these springs were about four feet apart. In one was a dead ox, swelled up so as to fill the hole closely, his hind legs and tail only above ground. Not far from this was another spring similarly filled. There was scarcely space for the wagons to reach the holes because of the ox carcasses...Here and there around the other springs in an area of one tenth of a mile...eighty-two dead oxen, two dead horses, and one mule. Of course, the [smell] was anything but agreeable."

—Quoted in The World Rushed In