OVERLAND JOURNAL

An Overland Trip from The Atlantic to the Pacific. ?New York: 1864. 19th-century red morocco gilt with the stationer's ticket of Browne & Co., 150 Pearl Street, New York, marbled endpapers, blue-patterned edges. 8 5/8 x 7 inches (22 x 18 cm); manuscript, 41 pp. text on ruled paper on rectos only of 41 completed ff. (bound with many additional unwritten leaves). Light wear.

Though anonymous, this is a good account of an overland trip from New York to the Pacific Coast, conducted from May 7 through September 30, 1863. It includes first-hand accounts of many cities along the expanding frontier. The party initially traveled by railroad, but by late May had reached the Great Plains, and from then on they were dependent on less reliable modes of transportation. A buffalo hunt near Fort Kearney is described in detail, as is the party's arrival in Colorado Territory, where they found that "the first thing to do was put ourselves in a presentable condition, which considering the amount of dirt that we had accumulated during our long stage ride, was quite a formidable undertaking."

Both Colorado mines and the Rocky Mountains are given typical tourist accounts. By the end of June, the travelers were in Salt Lake City, and the famed regularity of Brigham Young's city development plan received much notice: "There are no lanes, nor alleys, nor crooked streets anywhere to be seen. On each side of every street there is a ditch or gutter, with a clean gravel bed in which night and day there flows a stream of pure water from the river Jordan."

A week after and 150 miles further west, the author reports on an Indian skirmish that took the lives of four soldiers. The description of Virginia City, Nevada is one of the most detailed and amusing parts of the journal. The author describes it as "the most like a bee-hive of any place I ever saw. There are some 10,000 or 12,000 people here now, and the population is said to be increasing at the rate of 50 or 75 per day... Gambling is carried on as openly as any other business. Sundays, the stores are open and for the most part matters go on about as on other days, except that mining operations are suspended."

The journal continues with lively reports on Carson City, Lake Tahoe, and the Sacramento, with the party finally reaching San Francisco on July 15. Most of the rest of the journal is given over to descriptions of a leisurely tour through California, and includes an account of traveling through the goldfields. The author returned to New York on board the steamer Constitution on September 26. Though our travelers experienced few privations, all early accounts of the westward journey are significant, and an unpublished account such as this is uncommon.