Will Bagley Quoting Richard Stillson:

> I want to add my congratulations to Wendell Huffman for his work on
> Lassen's trip in 1847-48. It is useful to have documented that Lassen
> did know of the gold rush when he journeyed back to his ranch in 1848. I
> would also like to advance the thread on Lassen by one year, to the
> Lassen cutoff. I used the Lassen cutoff as a case study in my research
> about how the participants of the gold rush in 1849 and 1850-I call them
> goldrushers-obtained, assessed, and acted upon information.

Richard,

You've raised excellent questions, almost all of which are difficult to answer. I haven't ever seen anyone identify WHO it was that supposedly promoted Lassen's route, and I suspect the sources may have persuaded Unruh it was so. But I did learn from material Wendell Huffman sent last night that Myers left Brunswick in 1848 with Lassen, bound for California: he did not, apparently, actually make the trip, but it does appear that Lassen's name first enters to discussions at "Lawson's Meadows" not long after Myers shows up.

So, you asked for it: here's my whole take on what we know. Note especially the quote that "Myers, McGee, Adams and other mountaineers have taken the new road. Myers intends (so he says) to take a road or make a cutoff that will take him to the gold diggings in ten days." And the quote from a Wash. City Co. member on the Platte that they were thinking about taking such a route--an extrapolation, perhaps, that came from reading too much John C. Fremont.

I'd appreciate any comments and corrections on the description of the route from this most knowledgable list.

Will Bagley

From the forthcoming "With Golden Visions Bright Before Them: The Oregon California Trails and the Creation of the Mining West, 1849 to 1852."

A NEW AND SHORTER ROUTE: LASSEN'S HORN

After the advance guard of the emigration marched down the Humboldt in June and July 1849, the majority of gold seekers and their exhausted teams passed through the devastated river valley in August, while the rearguard followed in September and even October. These parties regarded the final, arduous challenges of the classic California Trail-the Forty-mile Desert and the Sierra Nevada, whose grim reputations were well known-with growing dread. As the Humboldt Valley grew ever more desolate and their supplies ever shorter, the emigrants were eager to find any possible better way to the land of gold. The "Oregon Road" promised "a new and shorter route to Feather River where we will cross the Sierra Nevada," wrote Joseph Middleton. "By doing so they will avoid the tremendous mountains, so difficult to pass, on the route by Salmon River, and Mary River sink."1

In truth there was nothing new about the road across the northern mountains, which the Southern Road Expedition had originally blazed in 1846. The possibility of outflanking the Sierra Nevada by using a northern pass had long intrigued western explorers. Frémont's second expedition had crossed the mountains of Oregon and traversed the Black Rock Desert from north to south in 1843, but the maps he drew of northern California's rivers and passes were woefully inaccurate. That fall Joseph Chiles led a party that included John Myers, Milton McGee, Pierson B. Reading, and Samuel J. Hensley west from the Snake river and down the Sacramento, but they battled Indians and nearly starved to death in the "high and rugged" mountains before arriving at Sutter's Fort in November.2 "Starvation and fatigue were our constant companions and as a last resource to sustain sinking nature we were forced to eat our horses and mules," Reading reported the next spring. "Mountain after mountain rose to our view, seeming to offer barriers sufficient to discourage the stoutest heart." Reading also complained about the "hostile tribes of Indians dogging us at every step": these problems indicated that crossing the northern mountains would not be an easy way to reach California's interior.3

Two years after the South Road Expedition opened a difficult wagon trace across the Black Rock Desert to the Willamette River in 1846, Peter Lassen led a dozen or so wagons northwest to Goose Lake before turning south to blaze a trail to his ranch on the upper Sacramento River. As a way to get to the gold mines, the route had many problems, the worst being that it was about a hundred miles fifty longer than the main trail.

Early in 1849, John Jacob Myers, a veteran of Frémont's California Battalion who had accompanied Chiles in 1843, wrote to Brig. Gen. Roger Jones from Jackson County, Missouri, offering his services as a guide to any army expeditions heading for California. "It is a well known fact that whare the Waggon Road crosses the California Mountain it is both Difficult and Dangerous," Myers noted. He had spent five years in the country trapping beaver and had "examined every stream South of the San Joaquin to the head of the Sacramento" and had "crossed the Mountain in Several places and whare the waggon road now cross it and from what I have seen the Head of the Sacramento is by far the best Rout through the Mountain and can be passed at any Season." Myers had seen Truckee Pass when he returned to the States with Commodore Stockton in 1847, and though he had not actually crossed the pass Applegate and Lassen had used, he suggested "leaving Marys River about one hundred miles above its sink whare the Suthern road to Oregon now leaves it." Myers was confident that "with very little work a good waggon road can be maid Down the Sacramento" with "but one small mountain to cross not exceeding ten miles over it which can be passed any time during the Winter." He boldly speculated that "if this Route is examined it will be found as I have stated and in a few years will be the only Rout traveled by land from that Country."4 Jones apparently did not act on Myers's offer, and subsequent events would reveal that Myers's knowledge of the country was not as reliable as he claimed.

Interestingly, at least one gold seeker speculated about crossing the northern mountains while still on the Platte River. "We shall go ... to Fort Hall and then probably go nearly in the direction of the mud lake and strike somewhere near the head of the Sacramento River and go down the valley after looking around the mountains for a spell," Charles Reed, a member of Bruff's Washington City company, wrote at Fort Kearny. "I cannot tell how long exactly it will take us to go but we shall make as short a trip as possible and not infirm our mules, for we depend on them to carry us through."5

By the time companies like Reed's reached the bottoms now known as Lassen's Meadows, reports about the desperate state of the trails to the south were well known. After crossing fifteen waterless miles at night, B. R. Biddle's train reached the meadow not long after dawn on 11 August. "Near this point, is the fork of the Oregon road which was explored by Mr. Applegate, who conducted his emigration successfully along it to Oregon," he wrote, predating Applegate's debatable "success" by a year. "As I am writing this I hear little else discussed around me but the merits and demerits of this new route." Many argued to take the new trace "on account of their being more water and grass along it that on the usual route to Sutter's Fort, and not increasing the distance to that point." Biddle believed "this cut-off, as it is called," would lead "almost due west to the headwaters of the Feather River, in the vicinity of the Gold Region" or to the headwaters of the Sacramento. "It will not require more than seven or eight days to accomplish this journey." Biddle was remarkably well informed and had even heard of Lassen's trek the previous fall. He reported that Lassen had given McGee and Myers, "two mountain traders, a description of the road, which induced them to take it, this morning, with eleven teams. Others are following them during the day." Biddle's party recruited at the meadows for two days and then voted 14 to 6 to take the new trail. "We have discouraging news about the grass on the old route," he wrote; "and our mules, if they are to take us through, must have grass."6

"Came to another rout called Applegates rout to oragon," Abram Minges noted on Monday, 13 August 1849. "We take this route of account of Scarsity of feed on the old ro[a]d," he observed, even though his party was apparently aware that it was about two hundred miles longer than the old trail.7 "There is a good deal of exciting debate in camp today as to the propriety of leaving this river and road at this point and taking a reported new route," Alexander Ramsey wrote on Sunday, "but we have no reliable source of information and it will be a hazardous adventure if we try it." The next day, after "spies" the company had sent out reported back that they had found a good road with water at fifteen miles, "three out of the five companies decided to risk the new route," and before they were out of sight the others decided to join them.8 Amos P. Josselyn headed west from the Great Meadows on the same day as Minges and Ramsay, noting that "there was 8 wagons started in yesterday led by Magee."9

Even the first Forty-niners on the trail complained that "sterility and volcanic desolation everywhere prevailed" and "nearly everything we eat or drink has salt in it, and nearly everything is hot." B. R. Biddle, who thought there were only fourteen teams ahead of his train, estimated the desert section of the trail was seventy-five miles across, but Alonzo Delano calculated it was one hundred and five miles.10 "When we were going down the Humboldt River, a report began to be accredited among the emigrants that there was a new road that led to Feather River, or the Sacramento, or the somewhere, that it was an hundred miles nearer to the mines, a better route, no difficulty in crossing the mountains (Sierra Nevada), and plenty of grass and water all the way," wrote Delano, who was not far behind the first parties to take the trail. "Various reports were circulated about the road, and we did not know what to believe. In fact nobody knew certain whether there was a road leading to California that way, though there was one to Oregon. In much doubt we finally came to the turning-off point and our company determined to take it anyhow." Delano believed there was grass and water at short intervals "and after thirty-five miles there was good forage all the way."We took it-there was no grass for sixty-five miles and but one spring, a mile off the road, where water could be had for the cattle; in short, we were on the desert and drove the whole distance without feeding our cattle, and no water except at the commencement." Already Delano counted fifty dead oxen scattered along the thirty miles of desert leading to Black Rock Springs.11

Still guiding the Hudspeth train, John J. Myers did not leave Lassen's Meadows until about a week after the leading parties. Many of those behind his party had followed Myers over the Hudspeth Cutoff and were willing to gamble with taking his other "new route" once again. "Some speculation exists as to the practicability of a new shute-to avoid the desert across the sink," wrote T. J. Van Dorn while camped in the meadows near today's Winnemucca after hearing reports that six hundred dead cattle lined the road to the south. "We learn today that Jack Myers, in charge of Headspeth's train, decide by a vote today whether they take the new route. Myers has been over it twice with packs, but it has never been travelled with wagons."12 One of the first to travel the "new" route, George Murrell, reported, "Instead of continuing on the old route I left it 80 miles above the sink of Humboldt river & followed Myeres an old mountaineer who said he was going to make a cutoff & get a better road."13

"We passed Myers company and camped at the forks of the road, that is the South Oregon Road. There was what we term a Post Office, that is a board set up with papers of information nailed on it," H. C. St. Clair noted on 19 August. "Myers, McGee, Adams and other mountaineers have taken the new road. Myers intends (so he says) to take a road or make a cutoff that will take him to the gold diggings in ten days. But there is no grass for 60 miles and but little water."14 A man who had scouted ahead advised Israel Hale to take "the route discovered by Mr. Childs"-a confused reference to Joseph B. Chile's 1843 trip from Fort Hall to Sutter's Fort-with the assurance "that by doing so we would cross the mountain at a lower gap and would find better grass than we would by the sink route and furthermore we could get to the Sacramento in nine days travel." Hale had also heard "that Myers and Hudspeth, two old mountaineers," had taken it.15

Upon reaching Lassen's Meadows, Pardon Dexter Tiffany "came to where the new road branches off to the right & found here a general Post office that is a great many letters & notices the trains who had passed struck in split sticks written on slips of paper, cards, & boards." Many of the messages informed friends and loved ones which way those ahead of them had gone. "I advised the leader not to go but he urged us," Tiffany wrote after his companions voted to take the "new road," and to accommodate his them he agreed to go along.16

Over the next month, the promised cutoff developed a wishful mythology all its own as thousands of weary sojourners pinned their hopes on the new shortcut. One of the more interesting tales credited a Cherokee with finding the shortcut. At a "very extensive meadow between the two stream or branches" near the mouth of the Little Humboldt at today's Winnemucca, Tiffany "learned that a Cherokee had come through from California to guide a train of Cherokees & had given the distance on an entirely new route which shortened the road very much [and] avoided the desert at the sink of Mary's River & went through a pass in the mountains without any steep hills to go over, with fine grass & water all the way."17 Israel Lord heard the same story, and several diarists mentioned "the guide book of the Cherokees": Goldsborough Bruff copied several versions of what he thought were Cherokee waybills into his journals, but they were, in fact, based on Jesse Applegate's description of the southern road to Oregon. While it is possible a Cherokee brought a version of Appelgate's guide to Lassen's Meadows in 1849, as historians Georgia Willis Read and Ruth Gainesconcluded, the origin of the "'Cherokee Cutoff' seems lost in mystery."18

Not everyone was easily fooled by the purported shortcut that Edwin Booth said was "more fitly called of late 'The Greenhorns' Route.'" All his company were for taking the route, believing the "Cherokee Trail" was only 160 miles from the gold mines. "I showed them by Frémont's map that the distance, even in an air line, was much greater and the story therefore was entitled to little credit." When his comrades reached the barrel post-office that marked the start of the road, "without saying anything or taking a vote, one old fellow took up his whip and drove on, another followed and another. So we all kept on the old route, and well we did so."19

Such common sense was not common among the increasingly desperate gold seekers. Strangely, some of the very best (and presumably most intelligent) chroniclers of 1849 had a remarkable preference for "the Greenhorn Cutoff," "the Cherokee route," or the "the Oregon road," as various gold seekers called the trace. (This phenomenon might also reflect the fact that slower-traveling trains gave these resilient writers time to create such extraordinary documents.) These diarists included J. Goldsborough Bruff, Joseph Middleton, Oliver Goldsmith, Alonzo Delano, Israel Lord, E. D. Pierce, Pardon Dexter Tiffany, and William Swain. Then again, this phenomenon might simply reflect how heavily the trail was used. Kimball Webster estimated, "Probably nearly one-half of the immigrants came by this route," but the number was actually closer to one-third.20

THE WRONG ROAD: APPLEGATE'S SOUTHERN ROAD TO OREGON

As the earliest accounts indicate, the first parties to head west on Lassen's trail had surprisingly accurate information, although Biddle's estimate of how long it would take to reach the gold fields was wildly optimistic, a misconception that reflected the general lack of geographic knowledge about northern California and the desperate hopes of most gold seekers. In truth, no one on the trail in 1849 understood the hundreds of miles of challenging terrain Lassen's trail crossed. Northwest of today's Imlay, Nevada, at the head of Rye Patch Reservoir, the trail headed directly west over a sage plain for about twelve miles to small seeps at Willow and Antelope springs. It then climbed Imlay Summit and the Antelope Mountains, ran through Rosebud Canyon, crossed another nineteen miles to Kamma Pass, and descended Painted Canyon to Rabbithole Spring. (At Rabbithole, Alexander Ramsay complained "the water was at a spring upon the side of a mountain to our left and very difficult to get at."21) Neither had sufficient water for the thousands of men, women, and children and the tens of thousands of animals that surged through in 1849: "We have not seen fifty spears of grass since we took this road," Israel Hale wrote at Rabbithole in mid-August, and soon there was no grass at any point for seventy miles on the long, hard road across the desert.22

Beyond Rabbithole Spring, the trail struck the playa of the Black Rock Desert and took an alarming swing to the northwest. At its far side the Forty-niners at last found water and grass at the Great Boiling Spring below the towering Black Rock. Middleton described the funnel-like spring as "a deep circular pit like what I would suppose the shape of the mouth of a small volcano," about twenty-five in diameter. "I can see about 10 feet down but no further; the water looks green, and constantly sends up bubbles that are incessantly rising over an oval surface of 2 by 3 feet." To the west, the spring formed a shallow pond almost a hundred feet long and almost as wide that drained into "a broad meadow to the west." Middleton camped two miles west of the great spring and "counted the steam rising from 10 hot springs and wells close bye. He noted that very drinkable cold water could be had by "1 or 2 yards digging" and he took the opportunity to shave and wash three shirts: the well water did "a famous job of washing."23

"Where we started from this morning there was a lot of dead oxen, broken wagons, wheels & lots of iron fixtures scatter'd in every direction," wrote Charles Glass Gray after his second day on the cutoff. "I counted 160 oxen, dead & dying & wandering about scarce able to stand up-being left here to die!"24

"The road was lined with the dead bodies of wornout and starved animals, and their debilitated masters, in many cases, were left to struggle on foot, combatting hunger, thirst and fatigue, in a desperate exertion to get through," wrote Alonzo Delano.25 Carnage among the livestock was horrific even on the initial dry passage, and later parties encountered even more horrific conditions on. Middleton counted 221 dead oxen and fifteen dead horses and mules while crossing the Black Rock Desert on 24 September. "The day was very warm & dusty & the men almost exhausted with fatigue & sickened by the constant smell of carcasses on the road," wrote John Bates.26 About one hundred yards from Rabbit Hole Springs, Alvin Coffey recalled finding an ox that was down and not able to get back up. "The ox commenced bawling pitifully. Some of the boys had gone to bed. I said, 'Let us go out and kill the ox for it is too bad to hear him bawl.' The wolves were eating him alive." No one would help him, but Coffey put the animal out of its misery.27 "Most of the oxen I saw were shot in the head for as they had given out unable to travel," Pardon Dexter Tiffany observed. "Their owners in kindness had ended their sufferings quickly rather than leave them to the slower & severer pangs of hunger."28

"While some of us tried to sleep," wrote one unknown diarist, who had counted fifty dead animals to the mile, "the moans of the cattle some of whome were actually dying with hunger and thirst were truly distressing."29 Dust, heat, hunger, and the holocaust of their cattle made the dry journada an ordeal. "We have discovered that we are on the wrong road," Joseph Middleton wrote after traveling about thirty-six miles west from the Humboldt, and he still had to cross some fifty miles of desert before he would reach grass. His party loaded their provisions and worldly goods onto a cart and decided to "abandon all the rest and go ahead." In two and one-half miles he passed forty-one dead oxen.30 "The route through here was strewn with the wrecks of waggons, and the carcasses of cattle; the stench arising from them was horrible," Thomas E. Cook wrote. After losing twenty head of his own cattle and abandoning three wagons, Cook at last reached water and grass at Black Rock Spring, "an immense boiling spring some eight rods in length and four in breadth, the water strongly impregnated with sulpher, salts, and alkalie." Here his company "ascertained that we were on Lawson's route, and some 300 miles further from the diggings than we would have been on the old route; but we had gone too far to turn back; our only alternative was to go ahead."31 "This has been the saddest day of my journey," Pardon Dexter Tiffany wrote on the road to Black Rock Spring. "There has been a great loss of life in teams on this days march than any we have yet made. I counted on this days drive 367 dead oxen, includeing 3 or 4 mules & horses."32 In late September, extreme heat compounded the suffering; Middleton recorded that "half an hour before sunset thermometer in the sun 105°." At Black Rock, "a volcanic crater, rough and reefy, towering high in the air ... the heat was 109° in the sun in the afternoon."33

Beyond the spring, thousands of Forty-niners found themselves heading northwest over a hundred miles of the barren Black Rock Desert on a trail that took them away from Sacramento. Remarkably, in the midst of this ordeal Middleton paused to ponder the rewards of his adventure. "My greatest pleasure in travelling through the country is derived from the knowledge that it has seldom been traversed, or at least never been described by any hackneyed tourist, that everything I see or look upon has been seen by me before it has become common by the vulgar gaze or description of others."34

West of Black Rock, a string of thermal features, including Double Hot Springs, led north past Black Rock Canyon and Pahute Peak to Salt Valley, also known as Mud Lake or Mud Meadows, where emigrants found an abundance of water and grass. "Forty miles more of desert brought us to Mud Lake," David Leeper recalled. The lake was an extensive cluster of hot and cold springs "whose waters here came to the surface and radiated in rivulets in such manner as to form a sort of morass containing several hundred acres."35 "We are now at what is cald mud Lake," complained Philip Badman, "but still there is no lake at this place."36 The "lake," Leeper explained, was "simply an extensive group of springs whose waters here came to the surface and radiated in rivulets in such manner as to form a sort of morass containing several hundred acres."37 There were actually a series of mud flats extending over some forty-five miles from Mud Lake to Salt Valley.38

After sliding into Fry Canyon down a slope so steep "it would seem as if it would be difficult to prevent the hind wheels from turning a somersault over the fore ones," wagons entered "the jaws of a rent hill of black-red rock, which seems to have opened as if to swallow one up," whose rocks Middleton thought looked "very much like enormous knots in mahogany wood."39 High Rock Canyon, David Leeper recalled, "cuts through a range of lava that is some twenty miles in width and as bare of vegetation as if it had cooled but the day before. The fissure or gorge that afforded us passage is about the width of a common road, and is inclosed by high walls that are carved in irregular outline, as if by the action of an ancient ice-river."40 The colorful canyon was a "narrow, rocky pass through the mountains, just wide enough for a smooth, level road, with intervals of space occasionally, to afford grass and water. On On each side were walls of perpendicular rock, four or five hundred feet high, or mountains so steep that the ascent was either impossible, or extremely difficult," wrote Alonzo Delano. "Without this singular avenue, a passage across the mountains in this vicinity would have been impossible, and it seemed as if Providence, foreseeing the wants of his creatures, had in mercy opened this strange path, by which they could extricate themselves from destruction and death."41 The canyon ran through the Calico Mountains to Painted Point, where the trail turned west up Long Valley and over Forty-nine Pass to Surprise Valley, just across today's California border. "We have traveled through the wildest region the imagination can depict," B. R. Biddle wrote in High Rock Canyon. "Solitude claims this region as its dominion."42

Beyond High Rock Canyon, Joseph Middleton described an immense dry lakebed "as smooth & level as a lake full of water." He called it the Mud Pond and stepped it off "at its middle and found it to measure 1157 yards wide, and perhaps 3 times as long as wide."43 From Surprise Valley, emigrants saw "proudly glittering afar, the snowy peaks of the Nevada," their first view of what was actually the Warner Mountains, a massif sometimes considered part of the southern Casacades.44 Wagons now ascended to Fandango Pass, which climbed some sixteen-hundred feet to an elevation of 6,100 feet in a little over two miles, with the steepest ascent in the last mile. "The ascent was easy generally, but occasionally there were benches which were to be overcome," wrote Delano. "Still the passage was far from difficult-indeed not as bad as many hills which we had already climbed."45

Here Forty-niners at last left the Great Basin, but not everyone agreed that the climb to the pass was not tough. "We are at the foot of the highest ridge which is half a mile long & steeper than the roof of a house," Pardon Dexter Tiffany wrote as he approached Fandango Pass, noting that the large pine trees reminded him of his home in Maine. "Walked to the top of the ridge leading horses and had a fine view of the region beyond. It took 11 yoke of oxen to pull up an almost empty wagon."46

As he approached the Warner Mountains with the forefront of the migration, B. R. Biddle found the "the atmosphere is so filled with smoke that we can see little that surrounds us."47 Natural fires may have been the cause, but they may have been manmade: "The immigrants have set the grass on fire and have destroyed a quantity of it," Samuel Stover wrote on Pit River, while Alonzo Delano thought the Indians had set the grass on fire.48 Jonas Hittle made a compelling case that emigrants were responsible for the damage. "There has Been a great Quantity of Grass Burnt it is Said By a train from Indiana" known as the Wild Hoosiers, who were reputed to be "a very hartless Set of Beasts who try to distress the Emigrants Behind Them," Hittle wrote. "They are a disgrace to their State." He found the Hoosiers had burned the grass on the Pitt River divide: "they have tried to Burn all the Gras that would Burn," he charged.49 Like their compatriots on the Truckee route, some of these travelers set fire to trees as the weather grew cold. "Large fires are burning all through the forest," Pardon Tiffany wrote on a fork of Feather River.50 Bringing up the rearguard of the emigration, a Wolverine Ranger persuasively attributed the fires to his fellow Forty-niners. "Evidences of a large emigration though here are seen in the blackened trees which have been set on fire, many of which we see burning every day, as well as in the condition of the road and the camping grounds."51

Due to "the weak state of our mules & the immense hight we had to attain," the Washington City Association set out before sunrise to cross the pass. John Bates was with the first men who struggled to the top. His train double-teamed over the pass but still had to rest twenty or thirty times before the first wagon hoisted a flag on the summit - and when the weakest team caught up almost four hours later, members "gave a general Hurrah!" From the summit, the men could look down on Goose Lake and the difficult terrain that lay ahead

They then descended "into a beautiful valley where we camped on the bourder of a splendid pine timbered region." The beautiful and "splendid pine timbered" valley where they camped "was quite a relief to eyes wearied by looking for months on nothing but barron hills & dull & monotinous plains of volcanic rock & ashes," Bates wrote.52 William Swain simply noted, "We bid a long and hearty goodbye to this team-killing, back-breaking, leg-soring mountain."53

A large body of lore explains how Fandango Pass got its name, including the legend that a wagon train danced all night to keep warm after crossing the pass or, more outrageously, that a wagon train "stopped to celebrate with what was a common dance called the 'Fandango.' Indians swept down during the dancing wiping the wagon train out."54 Years later, Oliver Goldsmith recalled hearing a story about his former comrades in the Wolverine Rangers: "After camping one night the weather grew so terribly cold that the men had to dance to keep warm, and named their wild camping place 'Fandango Valley."55 But Swain noted that the evening after the Rangers crossed the pass, they "joined with the Smith girls and had a tall time in the way of a fandango, which lasted till ten o'clock."56 And James Pratt of the Wolverines explained that while many emigrants and their families stopped for a few days in the valley, government relief trains "got up these dancing parties which gave a lasting name to the valley."57

1 Middleton, 20 September 1849, Diary, Beinecke Library, 125-26.

2 Reading, "Journal," 16 September, 1 October, 10 November 1843, 176, 181, 195.

3 Reading to Dear Brother, 7 February 1844, in Bekeart, "Pierson B. Reading: A Biography," 143.

4 Myers to Jones, "Myers' Letter," 13 February 1849, in Bruff, Gold Rush, 1201-02.

5 Reed to Dear Sister Abby, St. Joseph, 13 May 1849, Newberry Library.

6 Biddle, "Journey to California," 11, 13 August 1849. The Illinois Daily Journal, 15 December 1849, read Biddle's reference as "Clareson," probably a misreading of " Clawson."

7 Minges, Journal, 13 August 1849, Rieck Typescript, Bentley Historical Library, 20.

8 Ramsay, "Alexander Ramsay's Gold Rush Diary," 12, 13 August 1849, 458-59.

9 Josselyn, The Overland Journal, 13 August 1849, 42. Dale L. Morgan, in Pritchard, The Overland Diary, 27, dated Milton Magee's departure to 11 August.

10 Biddle, "Journey to California," 14-16 August 1849, Illinois Daily Journal, 15 December 1849.

11 Delano, Alonzo Delano's California Correspondence, 17.

12 Van Dorn, Diary, 14, 15 August 1849, Beinecke Library, 35. As noted, Myers had not actually used the Lassen/Applegate route

13 Murrell to Dear Father, 17 September 1849, Huntington Library.

14 St. Clair, Journal of a Tour to California, 19 August 1849, Typescript, Beinecke Library, ??

15 Hale, "Diary of a Trip to California," 21 August 1849, 113. Hale's journal included a copy of a waybill by Jesse Applegate he said had come from the New York Herald.

16 Tiffany, Diary, 12 September 1849, Missouri Historical Society, Threlkeld Typescript, 118.

17 Tiffany, Diary, 10, 14 September 1849, Missouri Historical Society, Threlkeld Typescript, 117-19.

18 Lord, "At the Extremity of Civilization," 9 September 1849, 108; and Bruff, Gold Rush, 621-24, 1209-11.

19 Booth to My dear Wife, 18 August, 1850, in Booth, Edmund Booth, Forty-niner.

20 Webster, The Gold Seekers of '49, 17 September 1849, 95.

21 Ramsay, "Alexander Ramsay's Gold Rush Diary," 13 August 1849, 459.

22 Hale, "Diary of a Trip to California," 22 August 1849, 114.

23 Middleton, 25, 26 September 1849, Beinecke Library, Rieck Typescript, 256-58.

24 Gray, Off at Sunrise: The Overland Journal, 22 August 1849, 84.

25 Delano, Life on the Plains, 21 August 1849, 192/193.

26 Bates, Diary, Washington D.C. to Sacramento, 20 September 1849, Mattes Library.

27 Coffey, Recollection of 1849, California Society of Pioneers.

28 Tiffany, Diary, 14 September 1849, Missouri Historical Society, Threlkeld Typescript, 120.

29 Anonymous, Overland Diary, 18 September 1849, Mason Diaries, Beinecke Library.

30 Middleton, Diary, 24 September 1849, Typescript, Beinecke Library, 131-32, 134.

31 Cook to Dear Mother, Stout's Rancho, 11 February 1850, in Mathews, The Mathews Family in America, 326.

32 Tiffany, Diary, 14 September 1849, Missouri Historical Society, Threlkeld Typescript, 119.

33 Middleton, Diary, 25, 27 September 1849, Typescript, Beinecke Library, 135.

34 Middleton, Diary, 27 September 1849, Typescript, Beinecke Library, 138.

35 Leeper, The Argonauts of 'Forty-nine, 63-64.

36 Badman, Diary, 29 August 1849, Beinecke Library, 44.

37 Leeper, The Argonauts of 'Forty-nine, 64.

38 See the mileage tables in Middleton, Diary, 30 September 1849, Typescript, Beinecke Library, 136.

39 Middleton, Diary, 1, 2 October, Typescript, Beinecke Library, 143, 145. Don Buck notes that "emigrants opened an alternate trail that bypassed Fry Canyon three-quarters of a mile to the north." See Howell, The 1849 California Trail Diaries, 113n170.

40 Leeper, The Argonauts of 'Forty-nine, 63-64.

41 Delano, Life on the Plains, 21