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The 49er Pioneers:
Not design, but an accident of fate, led to the discovery of Death Valley. Late in 1849 a party of gold-seekers, bound for California mines, stumbled into the Valley. Three died in their frantic efforts to escape and the rest barely made it through alive.
Many years later, William Lewis Manly, a heroic participant in this hazardous adventure, told the story in his moving book, Death Valley in '49. Manly's own words are used in this exhibit.
These emigrants had come from all parts of the east in ox-drawn wagons loaded with wives and children, mining equipment, and household goods. By the time they reached Salt Lake City, it was already late fall and knowledge of the Donner Party's snowbound fate in the Sierras three years earlier filled them with dread. At Brigham Young's advice they joined a party headed for California by a southern route. The expedition was led by Jefferson Hunt.
Somewhere in what is now southern Utah, about a hundred wagons separated from the Hunt party to follow Orson Smith to a reported short cut to the gold mines. All but two dozen wagons returned to follow Hunt after a few days. The remainder struck out blindly into unknown and desolate country. They soon formed several small independent groups which travelled loosely together: the Jayhawkers, some three dozen men from Illinois; the Bugsmashers, about a dozen men from Mississippi and Georgia; and the families of Asabel Bennett, John Arcane, Harry Wade and Rev. James W. Brier, and a few other solitary men. In all more than eighty men, women, and eleven children braved Death Valley in the fall of 1849.
Hardships were severe almost from the begining [sic]. Water was agonizingly scarce. The desolate countryside provided little grass for the animals to eat. Rugged terrain made the journey slow and difficult, and the wagons that could not be dragged through the mountain passes, were abandoned with their cargo. The starving oxen were slaughtered for food, and their flesh smoked for preservation by burning the useless wagons. The families were in constant fear of Indians.
On Christmas day, the exhausted men and women struggled into this valley. They had been on the road for many months, but they were still hundreds of miles from the gold fields. They were sick and desperate. With sinking hearts, they looked across the glistening alkali flats toward the seemingly impassable barrier of the Panamint Mountains. Many of them felt that they could go no farther.
It was William Lewis Manly who saved the Bennett-Arcane party from probably death in the desert. With one companion, an ox-driver named John Rogers, the 29-year-old Manly left the emigrants in a cheerless camp on the Valley floor, somewhere in the neighborhood of what is now the Tule Springs-Eagle Borax Works area, to seek outside aid. Although the Jayhawkers and other groups ultimately abandoned their wagons, and finally managed to reach California settlements on foot, the Bennetts and Arcanes were temporarily immobilized by sick young children and exhausted women. Their lives depended upon Manly.
He did not fail them. With Rogers, he crossed the Panamint and Argus Ranges and walked across the wastes of the Mojave Desert to a ranch at San Francisquito, near Los Angeles. There without pausing to rest, the two gathered up supplies for the stricken families. Less honorable men might have abandoned the emigrants and thus saved themselves the arduous journey back and forth across the desert: Manly and Rogers, however, started off at once, with one small white mule, and three horses which died along the way.
Still at their camp, the Bennetts and Arcanes had managed to survive the long wait; with renewed hope they were able to follow Manly again on the long and difficult journey to Los Angeles.
These pioneers had accidentally enlarged the American frontier by discovering a valley which was to be known for its many extremes. But not until long afterwards were any of them aware of this. At the time of their rescue, their discovery seemed of minor importance. Uppermost in their minds was the remarkable fact that they were alive to say "goodbye to Death Valley." |