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.
Read more about this topic: William L. Manly
Famous quotes containing the words california, gold and/or rush:
“I can’t earn my own living. I could never make anything turn into money. It’s like making fires. A careful assortment of paper, shavings, faggots and kindling nicely tipped with pitch will never light for me. I have never been present when a cigarette butt, extinct, thrown into a damp and isolated spot, started a conflagration in the California woods.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)
“If it were possible to cure evils by lamentation and to raise the dead with tears, then gold would be a less valuable thing than weeping.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)
“As it grew darker, I was startled by the honking of geese flying low over the woods, like weary travellers getting in late from Southern lakes, and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual consolation. Standing at my door, I could hear the rush of their wings; when, driving toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. So I came in, and shut the door, and passed my first spring night in the woods.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)