Modern 49ers struggle over historic Nevada trail

Tuesday, Dec. 3, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

For five California history buffs tracking the Lost 49ers, the Thanksgiving weekend brought blistered feet and a snowstorm.

But Monday the Palmdale, Calif., residents had reached Dry Lake Valley in central Nevada and prepared to cross the desert flatlands for about a week.

They left Mount Misery, Utah, Nov. 25 to follow the original wagon trail, wherever it leads. They will have a Department of Energy escort to historic landmarks on the Nevada Test Site, but the Air Force refused access to top-secret Groom Lake, where stealth fighters and spy planes have flown.

Unlike the original band of 49ers, many of whom died, Allan Smith, back-country guide Clay Campbell, archaeologist Jerry Freeman and Freeman's two daughters, Holly and Jennifer, expect to celebrate when they get there.

Their month-long odyssey to follow in the 19th century footsteps of dreamers and doers will end at Death Valley National Park in California on Christmas Day.

The handful of fortune-seekers named the famous desert, the lowest spot in the nation, after surviving four months of hunger, dehydration and exhaustion during the 376-mile trek.

Relying on 49er journals, photographs and research by historians, the "Footsteps of the Lost 49ers Expedition" explorers have already discovered more evidence of the 100 wagons that crossed the Nevada-Utah border in November 1849.

Sponsored by outdoor equipment manufacturers, the explorers have already photographed a possible overnight camping spot, said Dawna Ferris, an archaeologist with the Bureau of Land Management in Caliente.

Last weekend the group found an inscription left on a white rock west of Shoal Creek, Utah. "A.E. Erkson Nov. 10, 1849," it reads. Erkson had split from the main party led by former Mormon Battalion member Capt. Jefferson Hunt on the main route.