Ghost Trails to California

Ghost Trails to California: With Selected Excerpts from Emigrant Journals
by Thomas H. Hunt [917.8 qHun]

What drew me to this book is Thomas Hunt's eloquent prose. Hunt allowed his imagination free rein as he backpacked along remnants of the California trail. He wrote "there are alpine valleys where one can conjure images of travel-battered wagons drawn up beside the gurgling, crystalline waters of snowmelt streams, while beyond them the bony oxen fairly groaned with pleasure and contentment in swales of knee-deep mountain grass." Hunt and Adams became interested in the California Trail because as they hiked and backpacked in the Sierras they came across vestiges of it -- a rusted barrel hoop here and a shard that had been a pioneer's crock over there. They used emigrant journals, maps and guides in order to follow the adventurers' routes as closely as possible. They spent six years and traveled about twenty thousand miles to follow all nine segments of the California Trail. They used their own breath-taking photos and excerpts from emigrants' journals to illustrate each branch of the trail. One traveler, Isaac Wistar, wrote in his journal about the trials of moving their wagons over the mountains. Wistar wrote "The whole day had been employed in the hardest labor, dragging the wagons over rocky ledges, and hoisting and lowering them over 'jump-offs' by 'Spanish Windlasses' and other mechanical means. At dark we found ourselves at the top of, and looking down into, a deep rocky gorge with impassible precipices on either hand." I marveled at the undertaking of these people. They packed up their belongings and, with only scant information, headed west to make better lives for themselves in California, the Promised Land. -- recommended by Donna G. - Virtual Services Department

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