“I thought it was preposterous to start on so long a journey with so many women and helpless children, and so many dangers attending the attempt.”

This is how John Udell described the decision of his fellow travelers to leave the old established road and follow a new and completely untested and unproven route that promised to get them to California a few days sooner. But the lure of shorter routes and cutoffs often proved irresistible to emigrants, as it did with Udell’s companions.

Udell and his wife, Emily, were members of a California-bound wagon train from Iowa and Missouri...

The Santa Fe Trail was pioneered by mountain men and explorers working their way southwestward during the early 1800s. By the 1840s it had become a major trade route between the United States and New Mexico. Although it is called the Santa Fe Trail in literature and folklore, it was really a well-traveled road for heavy-duty freight wagons. The route originally began in Franklin, Missouri, but after that town was nearly destroyed by a disastrous flood on the Missouri River, Independence became the eastern terminus, until it, too, suffered the ravages of the capricious Missouri River and had to yield...

The Rose-Baley wagon train reached the Rio Grande on June 19 at a point approximately thirty miles north of Albuquerque. From here to Albuquerque they would follow the river. Water was plentiful, but Udell complained that the grass had been eaten short, making for poor grazing. He also complained that they had to buy wood since there was none along this well-traveled road; civilization has its price! On the evening of June 22, they camped two miles from Albuquerque. Udell noted that “according to my calculations by time and gait,” the wagon train had traveled 826 miles since crossing the...

Anxious to get on with their journey, the members of the Rose-Baley wagon train did not tarry long in Albuquerque. On June 26, the day after hiring the guide, the Baley contingent, which now included the Udells, the Dalys, and the Hollands, began crossing the Rio Grande by ferryboat. They remained in camp on the west side of the river until Rose got all of his company over.

The first accident of the journey occurred on June 29, when Frank Emerdick, one of Rose’s herders, drowned while crossing the river. This was the first death on the trip, and it...

While the wagon train camped at Leroux Springs, Savedra went ahead to search for water. On the evening of July 29, he returned to camp with a gloomy assessment. He reported that there was not a sufficient supply of water for the stock for seventy or eighty miles ahead, and there would not be until the start of the rainy season in October or November. Many in the wagon train thought that their stock could not travel that distance without water, and that perhaps they should remain where they were at Leroux Springs until the start of the rainy season....

The Rose-Baley wagon train was now entering the domain of the Mojave Indians. The Mojaves are members of the Yuman language group. They inhabited an area along the Colorado River stretching from about fifteen miles north of the present Davis Dam southward to a group of three sharp mountain peaks known as the Needles (from which the modern city of Needles takes its name), and eastward from the Colorado River to the crest of the Black Mountains. Their territory lay in three different states: Arizona, Nevada, and California, but the vast majority was in Arizona. These Indians occupied approximately the...

“This day all who were left alive of Mr. Rose’s Party came into camp, bringing melancholy intelligence.” This is how Udell began his journal entry for August 31, 1858. He then gives the details of the battle as related to him by the survivors. He quickly came to the conclusion that his own condition was worse than that of any of the others.

I was in the worst situation of anyone in the company who had a family—my wife being sixty-five-years of age, and so feeble that she was not able to walk, and I had not an ox...

Town citizens and the army did everything in their power to ease the emigrants’ suffering after their arrival back in Albuquerque. Some of this outpouring of good will was no doubt motivated by guilty feelings on the part of the army and the local citizenry for having encouraged these emigrants to travel Beale’s uncompleted wagon road; nevertheless, this aid was a godsend to the weary, starving survivors.

The army issued a soldier’s ration daily to each person, including children, for a period of thirty days. This was no trifling gesture when one remembers the great distance from which most supplies...

When Beale arrived back in Albuquerque on March 3, 1859, he was surprised to learn that several emigrant trains had attempted to travel his proposed wagon road. He never envisioned emigrants using the road until the government established a military post at the Colorado River (Beale’s Crossing) to protect them from the Mojave Indians. He also had planned to do a considerable amount of road work as no roadbed existed over much of the route, and in many places the route was almost impossible to find. While in Washington, D.C., he secured an appropriation to build bridges over the larger...

Having been assured by the army and the citizens of Albuquerque that all the Indians living along Beale’s proposed wagon road were friendly and peaceful, the members of the Rose-Baley wagon train were unable to understand why they had been so treacherously attacked. Lieutenant Colonel Hoffman, in his negotiations with the Mojaves, made no attempt to ascertain from them the motive for their vicious attack. Without an official explanation from the army or other government authorities, it was natural that the emigrants would theorize among themselves why they had been so brutally assaulted, and how they could seek redress.

There...

All the members of the Rose-Baley wagon train who settled in California became useful and productive citizens of their adopted state. Some were elected to political offices while others occupied positions in the business world or in churches, but most followed more mundane vocations such as farming, mining, blacksmithing, teamstering, and the like. All died relatively poor, although L. J. Rose and Gillum Baley accumulated considerable wealth at points in their lives. Most enjoyed good health and a reasonably long life span. One, Elizabeth Burgett Jones lived beyond the century mark. All were true pioneers of the Golden State.

John...