There are many alders here, which bear mute though powerful testimony, in the shape of their gnarled and bent over ground-groveling trunks, of the heavy winters' snows.
These meadows clearly were once glacial lakes, now filled up, and Miller's Creek was the instrument of their destruction.

Crossing the last of the meadows we came to Burton's Pass, so called from H.D.
Burton, another Placerville pioneer who used to cut hay here, pack it on mules to McKinney's, and then ship it across to Lakeside, where he sold it for $80 to $100 a ton.

We then passed McKinney's old cabin, the place he built and occupied in 1863, before he went to live at the Lake.

Only a few fragments now remain, time and storms having nearly completed the work of destruction.
Nearby was a beautiful lily pond, soon to be a meadow, and just beyond this we stood on the actual divide between the Great Basin and the Pacific.

We were at the head of Phipps Creek, named on the map General Creek, from General Phipps.