The California Trail: An Epic with Many Heroes

by George R. Stewart

In 1841 and 1842 small groups of emigrants tried to discover a route to California passable by wagons. Without reliable maps or guides, they pushed ahead, retreated, detoured, split up, and regrouped, reaching their destination only at great cost of property and life. But they had found a trail, or cleared one, and by their mistakes had shown others how to take wagon trains across half a continent. By 1844 a great migration was in progress. Each successive party learned from those who went before where to cross rivers and mountains, when to rest, when to forge ahead, and how to find food and water. Increased experience was translated into better wagon designs, improved understanding of climate and terrain, and better-supplied and -organized caravans. George R. Stewart's California Trail describes the trail's year-by-year changes as weather conditions, new exploration, and the changing character of emigrants affected it. Successes and disasters (like the Donner party's fate) are presented in nearly personal detail. More than a history of the trail, this book tells how to travel it, what it felt like, what was feared and hoped for.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Westerns

339 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

George Rippey Stewart was an American toponymist, a novelist, and a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for his only science fiction novel Earth Abides (1949), a post-apocalyptic novel, for which he won the first International Fantasy Award in 1951. It was dramatized on radio's Escape and inspired Stephen King's The Stand .

His 1941 novel Storm , featuring as its protagonist a Pacific storm called Maria, prompted the National Weather Service to use personal names to designate storms and inspired Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe to write the song "They Call the Wind Maria" for their 1951 musical "Paint Your Wagon." Storm was dramatized as "A Storm Called Maria" on a 1959 episode of ABC's Disneyland. Two other novels, Ordeal by Hunger (1936) and Fire (1948) also evoked environmental catastrophes.

Stewart was a founding member of the American Name Society in 1956-57, and he once served as an expert witness in a murder trial as a specialist in family names. His best-known academic work is Names on the Land A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States (1945; reprinted, New York Review Books, 2008). He wrote three other books on place-names, A Concise Dictionary of American Place-Names (1970), Names on the Globe (1975), and American Given Names (1979). His scholarly works on the poetic meter of ballads (published under the name George R. Stewart, Jr.), beginning with his 1922 Ph.D. dissertation at Columbia, remain important in their field.

His 1959 book Pickett's Charge is a detailed history of the final attack at Gettysburg.

Reviews

[Mark Buchignani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Organized like a textbook, The California Trail walks the reader through the first ten years of the emigration, starting in 1841. Organized, but not written, like one. This is Stewart at his height, discussing events of his favorite time period, in his most accomplished form – non-fiction. The style is confident, informative, clean, clear, engaging, and leverages his experience as a novelist to bring to life the adventurers of the era, and the leaders and the charlatans.

The tale itself builds to two separate peaks: the horror of the Donner Party in 1846, and the rush to riches of the forty-niners in 1849 and beyond. Along the way, the reader observes trails hacked out of wilderness and trampled into roads, and shortcuts established and popularized or discarded. We see hardships in the deserts, difficulties in the Sierra Nevada, troubles with Indians, food shortages, overladen wagons, bad decisions – and good ones. And we hear of existing California residents coming to the rescue when late starts or early winters result in threatened lives. It is a well-rounded narrative, built on solid research and interspersed with excerpts from records penned by the travelers themselves.

And as the story moves quickly through the 1850’s to its close, we sense, we understand, the greater saga – the historic spectacle itself, the numerous men and women who pulled up their roots, relocating because it was in their blood, or for a fresh start, or for a chance at golden wealth, or just to head as far west as continentally possible. And we realize that even for its quality, this volume skims only the surface of the migration, one of some 165,000 people, hauled by or driving over a million animals. It truly was an Epic with Many Heroes.

[Spiros · Rating 4 out of 5]

What made thousands of possibly rational, well-adjusted citizens congregate into wagon trains, assemble at jumping-off points in Missouri and Iowa, and trundle off across the prairie into the great unknown? Stewart comes up with a few theories (economic downturns, wanderlust), but sensibly focuses more on the "how" than the "why", and it's an absolutely fascinating account.

[John P · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find Stewart to be intelligent and thought-provoking. He apparently is a research freak as well based on this and other of his works (Names on the Land comes to mind immediately).

The reviewed book is a linear history text covering the several years before and after the California gold rush of 1849, although it is not about the gold rush per se. It is during these years that Easterners, sometimes by trial and error, sometimes by sheer luck, found a way to reach the mysterious and alluring land called California.

One learns the details of the long and arduous trek from the Great Plains across the continental divide, across river and deserts, and, last, through or around the rugged and forbidding mountains forming the last and most challenging obstacle to be overcome on the emigrants' quest.

The particular edition I have read (paperback ISBN 0-8023-9143-4) I cannot recommend. Stewart's hand-drawn maps, while interesting and somewhat useful, are too small and of poor resolution such that the legends are not legible. Also, throughout the body of the work there are numerous cases where a letter is simply missing from a word. There seems to be no pattern to the omissions and one can certainly figure out the missing letter from context, but how and why can this happen?

Stewart's text also is sometimes confusing - not enough to be called a serious flaw but enough to be frustrating.

All in all, the book can be recommended to anyone interested in the history of the opening of pathways to California and the conditions that the travelers endured in the process.

[Mikee · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great adventure story. In the beginning (1841) it wasn't even sure that wagons could get to California directly, let alone what the best route was. Over time, alternatives wer explored, some adopted and others abandoned, and trails became roads. The story is told from 1841 to the late 1850s, and the narrative is frequently broken to express epochs in terms of the big picture. The Donners are there, and the Gold Rush, but the real story is the trail itself. Amazingly intriguing.

[Rose Gowen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good. I am the slowest, most distracted reader in the world, so I tended to forget, between times picking up the book, who the epic heroes were & which bit of trail or cut-off was which-- but still, it really gave a sense of what traveling over land to California in the 1840's was like. Stewart was obviously passionate about his subject, so the writing is very lively.

[Suzanne Solis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing account of who the emigrante were and why they began such a journey. Entrepreneurs and risk takers, and adventurers. There story told through the diaries many of them kept. Very interesting read. Even more interesting is the author and his accomplishments and books, am now reading a third book by this author.

[Toni Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting bit of history. Easy to read.

[Andrew Hamelink · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned of this book from Unruh’s “The Plains Across”, of which received praise by him in a chapter that otherwise is critical of many other books relating to the emigrations of the Oregon and California trails in the mid-19th century. I can testify to the liking of this book myself as it goes into great detail concerning each of the years in a separate chapter for the 1840s, and a shorter, more sparse chapter of the 1850s.

There are some suspected inaccuracies or missing key details, but these are incredibly minor and have no impact on the quality of the book whatsoever: a lack of the mention of marauders posing as Indians and highwaymen, although mostly uncommon, except in the last chapter (and possible other brief mentions that I may have forgotten about). There also is a mention that thievery amongst emigrants was almost nonexistent (paraphrased), but I can recall from other sources that it was actually surprisingly more common than one might think, especially at jumping-off points. This, despite the emigration experience on the whole notoriously known as being a humanitarian one.

Also included are plenty of first-hand quotes, diary entries, and other experiences and stories that are incredibly interesting. Stewart excels in allowing for these sources to tell the story themselves with an abundance of them being included. More books ought to do this. In the final chapter, Stewart describes much of what still remains of the trails and other neat details, but the descriptions are brief. I wish that this was talked about in greater detail, perhaps in it’s own chapter, especially considering that it is mentioned that trail hunting is a great hobby of his which he has endeavored to partake in on multiple occasions.

Despite many of the books I have read being rated so highly, I am also quite particular in choosing them. So, in my opinion, these 5 stars remain a very much deserved rating.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

If after reading about The Donner Party you are left wanting more information, this is the perfect book.
Basically a prequel and a sequel to most things Donner Party.

Stewart tells us about the men and women who fashioned the earliest trails and then he tells us what became of the trails following the '46 tragedy.

I never thought that that I would be interested in the Westward advance, but these stories are incredibly interesting. You have to be somewhat humbled by the courage and bravery of those who chose to move west with nothing else but a hope and a dream.

[Roy Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good documentary, well researched

[Matthew Main · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a cool history. I hadn't read much on the westward migration before. I can only imagine what it was like.

[Sherrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting book, a bit boring but good for historical purposes.