California Gold Rush
In December 1848, at age 29, Manly traversed California's Death Valley (today the centerpiece of Death Valley National Park) as a member of a group of emigrant pioneers traveling overland from Salt Lake City, Utah to the California gold rush (the Death Valley '49ers). These pioneers became lost in the Great Basin Desert, and entered Death Valley, having followed an inaccurate map for the previous three weeks. Their supplies of food were almost exhausted, and the oxen needed to pull their wagons were dying of starvation. Manly, with his associate John Rogers, trekked 250 miles on foot across the Mojave Desert to Rancho San Francisco near Los Angeles, California, to scout an evacuation route for the families trapped in Death Valley, and procure food and horses if a settlement could be located. A brief recounting of this story can be read in the article on John Haney Rogers; for the full account, see Chapter 10 of Manly's autobiography "Death Valley in '49", which is available for free download from the Gutenberg Project.
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