Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

New pioneers relive history

Jerry Freeman leans forward, intently eying an untouched desert valley in the north end of the Nevada Test Site.

To the right, standing over Yucca Flats, is Bald Mountain and the Pint-Sized Range, to the north, the south end of the Belted Range.

"They would have had to come up this canyon that we're looking at now," he says, peering out of the Department of Energy van.

Freeman and his merry-if-somewhat-road-weary band of five are on the trail of an ill-fated, 147-year-old wagon train.

Wearing a battered canvas hat held together with baling wire, a set of duct-taped spectacles and a sprouting beard, the 54-year-old adventurer and amateur archeologist looks much like the so-called "Lost 49ers," whose ghosts he is chasing.

"They were desperate," he says. "They were all seeking water. It was anybody's best guess as to which way to go.

"To me, this group is every bit as significant as the Donner Party," says Freeman, "but nobody knows anything about them."

* In November 1849 a group of impatient prospectors took a right turn off the tried-and-true Spanish Trail looking for a shortcut to the California gold fields.

The leaders of the group of about 100 people figured they could save time by heading west at what is now Enterprise, Utah. They had a map, according to journals kept by several members of the expedition, that showed the way.

"Unfortunately," says Freeman, "the map proved to be a tragic illusion."

Instead of cutting 500 miles and getting to California in three weeks, the Lost 49ers got a brutal seven-week survival ordeal, the loss of most of their stock and possessions, and four deaths.

Their trek took them through 330 miles of arid desolation including Death Valley, which the group had the dubious honor of naming.

Only one pilgrim died in the valley itself, but two more died soon after they scaled the Panamint Range on its west side.

"As they climbed out," Freeman says, "one of them turned around and said, 'Good-bye, Death Valley.' And that's how it got its name."

The Palmdale resident and his group of weathered Californians aren't looking for any such high drama, but in 25 days of retracing the historic route on foot, they've felt plenty of thrills.

They've found two possible camps, and a number of artifacts, including an old wooden wagon wheel, assorted wagon parts and an 18th century metal bowl. There's no way to prove the artifacts were from the Lost 49ers, but there is no recording of anyone else being foolhardy enough to turn right at Enterprise.

And one inscription is close to irrefutable. In a journal, Alexander C. Erkson, one of the original group, wrote: "I climbed on a high rock and enscribed the date, Nov. 10, 1849."

After two days of scrambling up about 20 high rocks around what the group called "Mount Misery" in western Utah, Freeman found the inscription, which his daughter Holly Freeman traced.

"The beauty of this trail is that it remains today almost exactly the way they saw it," he says. "If you walk along the path looking for their route the way we have -- it's awesome."

* The downside of the trail, however, is that it leads straight through the U.S. Air Force's sacrosanct, top-secret, off-limits Area 51.

Freeman sent a flurry of petitions to the Air Force and got his congressman, Buck McKeon, to write as well.

The congressman, Freeman says, got a letter saying the Air Force "will not allow nor will they ever allow anyone access to the area."

That's "a travesty," Freeman says, because Area 51 and other Air Force property contain several sites that were critical to the original expedition. It includes, he says, Papoose Lake, where the wagon train "scattered like quail" in a desperate search for water, and Nye Canyon, where part of the group holed up and an inscription was said to be made.

They won't get to see either.

Freeman says he appreciates the role of the military, but this is ridiculous.

"We are at peace," he says, "and I think it behooves the Air Force to lighten up a little."

Still the New Lost 49ers did get one-day chaperoned access to three areas of interest on the Nevada Test Site, including Tippepah Springs, about 36 miles northwest of Mercury, where Freeman thinks part of the group came for water.

Nosing around the spring, which was apparently excavated by wild horse wranglers in the 1940s, Freeman pictures the parched party and their quest.

"Now we know where to get water," he says, "but these people never knew where the water would be."

The travelers carried only about 50 gallons of water in 10-gallon milk cans and never knew how long it would have to last.

"Some of them died of thirst," he says. "It's a very sad and lonely way to die.

"They talk about their tongues swelling up and getting this crust in their mouths that they can't get rid of."

But in reading about the trek, Freeman and his daughters, Holly, 26, and Jennifer, 24, became enthralled with the journals of Juliet Brier, one of the four women in the company.

Tending three children and a sick husband, the 35-year-old pioneer woman somehow brought her family through the ordeal, even though they had to abandon their wagon and almost all of their worldly possessions somewhere near Tippipah Springs.

When the family was left behind, this woman kept them going, says Jennifer Freeman, who says she's representing "the spirit of Juliet Brier" on the trip.

"She actually had to follow the oxen tracks (of the main company) by starlight on her hands and knees to find the way," says Jennifer. "And she was carrying a kid."

The woman was an inspiration, the Freemans say, and deserves to be recognized by history.

She'll be well-covered in a planned historical documentary about the original trek and its modern-day counterpart, which will end Dec. 24 in Death Valley.

Freeman and his partners hope to show the film on the History Channel or public television.

"Those 27 wagons that decided to leave the Spanish Trail may have made an ill-fated turn," Jerry Freeman says, "but when they did, they etched their names into history.

"They are the stuff from which legends are made."

archive