Death Valley in '49: An Autobiography of a Pioneer Who Survived the California Desert

A survivor’s true account of death, despair, and heroism in Death Valley in the heat of the California Gold Rush.

At the height of the California gold rush in 1849, a wagon train of men, women, children, and their animals stumbled into a 130-mile-long valley in the Mojave Desert while they were looking for a shortcut to the California coast. What ensued was an ordeal that divided the camp into remnants and struck them with hunger, thirst, and a terrible sense of being lost beyond hope—until ...