Death Valley '49ers - The Parties Split-Up

The Parties Split-Up

The map showed a shortcut across the desert to a place called Walker Pass. Everyone agreed that this would cut off 500 miles from their journey so most of the 120 wagons decided to follow this map while the other wagons continued along the Old Spanish Trail with Captain Hunt. The point where these wagons left the Old Spanish Trail is near the present day town of Enterprise, Utah where a monument (Jefferson Hunt Monument) has been constructed to commemorate this historic event. Almost as soon as these people began their journey, they found themselves confronted with the precipitous obstacle of Beaver Dam Wash, a gaping canyon on the present day Utah-Nevada state line (Beaver Dam State Park, Nevada).

Most of the people became discouraged and turned back to join Jefferson Hunt, but about 20 wagons decided to continue on. It was a tedious chore getting the wagons across the canyon and took several days. In the meantime, the young man who had the map of the shortcut got impatient and, under the cloak of darkness, left the group. Despite the fact that the group didn't have a map, they decided to continue on thinking that all they had to do was go west and they would eventually find the pass.

After crossing Beaver Dam Wash the group passed through the area of present day Panaca, Nevada and crossed over "Bennetts Pass" to Del Mar Valley. Here they started having difficulty finding water but eventually found their way to Crystal Springs in the Pahranagat Valley. They continued over Hancock Summit into Tikaboo Valley and then on to Groom Lake in central Nevada. They had now been slowly making their way across the desert for almost a month since they had left the Old Spanish Trail . At Groom Lake they got into a dispute on which way to go. One group wanted to follow a well traveled Indian trail to the south in hopes of finding a good water source. The other group wanted to stay with the original plan of traveling west.

The two groups eventually split and went their separate ways, but they both were to have two things in common. They were both saved from dying of thirst by a snow storm and they both ended up meeting again in a place called Ash Meadows near Amargosa Valley in the Amargosa Desert located east of Death Valley. From here they continued on, following the Amargosa River bed through present day Death Valley Junction, California, and then along the same route followed by current California State Route 190 past the Funeral Mountains.