Item Detail
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25662
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1
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0
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English
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Into the Jaws of Hell : Jefferson Hunt the Death Valley '49ers Wagon Train & his Adventures in California 1846-1857
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Danville, CA
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Pine Park Publishing
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539
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From July 1846 to May 1848, Jefferson Hunt traveled over 5,000 miles in the American West, and trekked on all or parts of five major Western Trails¿the Santa Fe, the Gila River, El Camino Real, the Humboldt River Trail, and pioneered the Salt Lake City to Los Angeles Trail¿many of which the author traveled while writing Into the Jaws of Hell: Jefferson Hunt: The Death Valley Wagon Train & His Adventures in California, chronicling Hunt¿s journeys. Hunt was merely a farmer when the Mormons left Nauvoo, Illinois. But in Council Bluffs, Iowa, he signed up to become a Captain in the Mormon Battalion, a brave division of Stephen Watts Kearney¿s Army of the West that forged a key trail from Santa Fe to Southern California. He and his family settled in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Then Hunt led a wagon train of Gold Rush travelers West, from which many split off¿history would later call them the Death Valley ¿49ers. Only a year afterwards, Hunt became the father of San Bernardino County, both helping to found the community, and then enacting key legislation in the California Assembly. Major in the Nauvoo Legion, Mason, Captain of the Mormon Battalion, Frontiersman, Settler, Brigadier General in the California Militia, Los Angeles County Supervisor, Assemblyman, Freighter, Founder of Huntsville, Utah¿these are the titles Jefferson Hunt held during his long, fascinating life. His treks during this period took him through the present states of Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Idaho and Utah. Remarkable in scope, illuminating discoveries of important routes and settlements, Into the Jaws of Hell: Jefferson Hunt: The Death Valley Wagon Train & His Adventures in California presents new insights into this extraordinary individual¿s importance to the American West.