In the early fifties a party of emigrants on…
source date: 1891
availability: public-domain

In the early fifties a party of emigrants on their way to the gold fields of California by the southern route, via Gila river, crossed the Colo- rado by ferry left by Graham in 1848 and “struck out on the desert for the land of promise.” The trail was well defined by aban- doned wagons and the bones of horses, mules and human beings. Struggling through the yielding sand, the thermometer at 120 deg., wheels falling apart, animals dying from heat and thirst, they on the second night out, halted some ten miles from “Cooke’s Well,” with water in their kegs exhausted.