The Overland Journey From Utah To California

The wagon trail between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles is one of the most important and least-known elements of nineteenth-century Western migration. Known as the Southern Route, it included the western half of the Old Spanish Trail and was favored because it could be used for travel and freighting year-round. It was, however, arguably the most difficult route that pioneers traveled with any consistency in the entire history of the country, following not rivers but leading from one—sometimes dubious—desert watering place to the next and offering few havens for the sick, weary, or unfortunate.

Historian Edward Leo Lyman has provided the first history of the complete Southern Route and of the people who developed and used it. Based on extensive research in primary sources—including many early travelers' accounts—and on Lyman's own investigation of the route and its branches, the book discusses the exploration and development of the Old Spanish Trail, its horse thieves and traders, including Jed Smith and Kit Carson, along with government explorer John C. Frémont. Developing the old pack mule trail as a wagon road between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, miners heading for the California gold fields first used the route extensively. Mormon missionaries and the colonizers of San Bernardino and other communities also traveled that way, as did a wide array of mail carriers, soldiers and world travelers. Later, a steady stream of Anglo-American emigrants seeking new homes or fortunes in California shared the road with a surprising number of freight wagon operators. The trail passed through the territories of numerous Native American peoples, and contacts with them—both friendly and hostile—played a significant role in the experiences of travelers and in the fates of Native American cultures in this region. Lyman's discussions of Mormon-Indian relations and of the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre offer fresh and important analyses of these vital aspects of the westward movement.

The Southern Route played a major role in the settlement and development of the Southwest, and it became the foundation for later railroads and highways. It was also a locus where several cultures—Native American, Spanish, Anglo-American, and Mormon—confronted each other, sometimes violently, and one of its oases, the artesian springs at Las Vegas, grew into a major urban center. Lyman's account is replete with the color, adventure, and excitement of the pioneer era, while offering significant new insight into the settlement of the nineteenth-century West. This is essential reading for scholars and for anyone interested in the pioneers and the daunting trails they followed westward.