Gold Rush Diary
Being the Journal of Elisha Douglas Perkins on the Overland Trail in the Spring and Summit of 1849
Editor: Thomas D. Clark. 1967 207 pages large format
The subtitle is the description of this book as Mr. Perkins recorded his impressions of the cross country journey he took. There are a lot of emigrant diaries and the entries in most do not give much detail beyond weather, miles traveled, and maybe landmarks seen. The Gold Rush Diary is quite different. Mr. Perkins includes lots of details about the journey and then goes further by including a lot of his thoughts. In addition, the editor, Thomas Clark, provides extensive sidebar notes as a running commentary to Perkins’ journal entries.
Perkins was part of a small group of gold seekers from Ohio who called themselves the Marietta Gold Hunters bound for California, leaving Ohio in May, 1849. They started with wagons but later dispensed with them in favor of just taking necessities on the backs of their mules. About the same time they broke up their group into pairs but apparently stayed generally together.
Perkins diary entries are so full of details that they give the reader a realistic feeling for what it was like to cross the country during the Gold Rush. For example one entry talks about their preparations and discovering that they thought they had taken too much. So they were going to sell some of the excess and ship other things to California by boat “around the cape.” Then Perkins said that most other travelers had the same problem and so threw away what they thought were excesses. Then wagons from town would follow “& come back loaded with Ham, flour, pilot bread, Beans, sheet iron stoves extra axletrees & wheels, medicines Tools of all kinds & personal clothing of all description.” Presumably all those goods harvested from the emigrant trail found their ways onto store shelves again for the next set of emigrants. Perkins also reported that over the first thirty or forty miles there were also “40 or 50 wagons broken down & deserted… Some of them splendid & expensive ones but being entirely overloaded could not stand the terrible roads.” That tells more of the story as does a quote that comes shortly after, “The guide books for Emigrants are all humbugs…”
Then Perkins reports on a story about a pet dog that was scared by the weather and so “found his way into our tent, & unknown to any one ensconsed himself at C.’s head. During the storm same felt a stream running down his face & neck very unlike the rain… it being quite warm. This naturally excited his curiosity somewhat & and he was not long in tracing it to its source, between his rage, & our amusement! With dilated eyes muscles distended he braced himself for a terrible kick at the unfortunate offender.” The story went on a bit and shows there were more dangers in crossing the country than we might imagine.
There’s lots of detail in the diary entries: guide books, sickness on a ship, who was cooking and what, colds and headaches, leaky tent, weather, run away mule, cholera, shooting a mule as punishment to the mule (in the hind end), trouble with Indians, rattlesnakes, dead cattle, alkali, food, even squirrels and hoping to bathe one a week. No details were too small it seems. They took their crackers out of their barrels, for example, and put them in sacks to save weight but admitted “they will probably be ground to find powder before we have progressed far.” Perkins even lists the contents of 300 lbs. of supplies they were leaving behind, selling it all for $5 to a ferry man, “We shall have to do without most of the little comforts & luxuries on which we had been depending…” Without the 300 lbs. they would be able to travel “More expeditiously” but “less comfortably.”
Beyond the reporting of details and incidents of travel Perkins writes about his own thoughts, “I confess to a feeling of lonliness [sic] as I thought on the prospects before us, & all we were separating ourselves from behind.. Henceforth we shall have no society, no sympathy in our troubles, & none of the comforts to which we have been accustomed., but must work across these vast wild wastes along, & go in our own strength.”
At another point Perkins says when they came to a fort and had let out their animals to graze “From the Fort came the sound of the merry drum & fife & the hum of many voices & I felt my spirits quite elated at the appearance of an inhabited & civilized community again. I’m tired already of this life of solitude & and long for new faces & new scenes.”
There’s even editorializing. On seeing a government wagon train carrying “Uncle Sams [sic] preparation for war… must cost him a great amount of treasure… how useless a waste of property all warlike preparations are. There was more money probably in this one expedition than are yearly spent on common schools!”
Besides Perkins’ diary entries the editor writes a whole book in the sidebars on each page. In those he elaborates on Perkins observations, quotes from other emigrants who wrote about being in the same places, and provides information.
For example when Perkins group is about ready to embark Clark quotes from a local newspaper saying that there were “twenty wagon and blacksmith shops actively engaged in manufacturing wagons, besides large droves of mules, herds of cattle, and provisions – everything the traveler needed.” There were 1600 inhabitants in Independence, thirty “drygoods” stores, two large hotels, etc. Those kinds of elaborations give a richer flavor to the story of the overland journey.
Some of the sidebar entries give further flavor by quoting other diarists. One emigrant talked about the swearing, “I do not think there ever was as many men ever together or on any road so shockingly blasphemous as the emigrants on this route to California – they hardly use any expression to horse, mule or ox except ‘G--d’m your soul’ or ‘heart to h’ll,’ or to ‘damnation.’ I think I hear it 50 times a day. Woe for California, if such is the character of the future population – this habit extends through all ages from the boy of 12 to the old men on the border of eternity.”
Then we get to Donner Pass and Perkins, like all good emigrants, took that route. He and his friends crossed the Sierra at Donner Summit in the middle of September. He estimated it was 15 degrees and there was 2” of ice on the water. There was news from people they met that there was not as much gold in California as had been represented. Miners & emigrants, were disappointed and going home. Wolves were howling and they came to the huts of the Donner Party. “a most melancholy and gloomy spot.” Perkins gathered some “relics and curiosities and left, thankful that late as my journey has been prolonged, I was till safe from any such catastrophe as befell those unfortunates.”
“The ascent to the pass from Donner cabins is about 5 miles over rocks & steep bluff & through majestic forests of fine cedar. Fir, arbor vitae &c, & a rich luxuriant undergrowth of laurel & various other evergreens. The journey is wild & magnificent beyond description. I was perfectly in raptures during the whole of the toilsome ascent… The trees exceeded anything I had ever seen & fully realized my expectations of a Cal. Forest. Hundreds of them were six feet in diameter & standing so densely together I could hard get myself & mule through them… Up, up, we toiled wondering every five minutes how ‘the dickens’ ox teams & wagons can get over here, & it is a wonder indeed, until at 3 P.M we arrived at the foot of the terrible “Passage on the backbone”. For half an hour before arriving we could hear the shouts of teamsters urging their cattle up the steep & when we were near enough to see through the forest we could look up nearly over our heads & see wagons & cattle looking like pigmies, & and as if almost suspended in the air. The ‘Pass’ is through a slight depression in the mountains being some 1500 or 2000 feet lower than the tops in its immediate vicinity. As we came up to it the appearance was exactly like marching up to some immense wall built directly across our path so perpendicular is this dividing ridge & the road going up to its very base…
“We began to scramble up sometimes upon ‘all fours’ like our animals & glad enough were we to stop ‘to blow’ several times before reaching the top.
“At last the summit was gained & we attempted 3 cheers for our success which unfortunately failed for want of breath, but sitting down for ½ hour we enjoyed the magnificent prospect on either side of us. Our route back could be traced for miles, & the mountains among which we had been winding our way. Far below us was snow in vast quantities which never melts & on either side were peaks some thousands of feet higher than our position. Before us we could see the mountains of Bear River & Yuba Valleys descending in size towards the coast, & the Yuba Valley some 5 or 6 miles distant with its green grass & camps, lay almost under us. I could have spent hours on this spot so many thousand feet higher than I ever was before or ever expect or be again, but the coldness of the air though it was Sept. & and a bright sun shining compelling us to ‘button up’ to the chin…” and they continued on.
Also illustrating the text, there are a lot of pen and ink drawings and the last part of the book consists of reprints of various emigrants letters which will give the reader an even better feel for what the emigration was like.
Perkins tried his hand at gold hunting but was not successful. He suffered from ill health, became a steamboat captain in California and died in 1852. His diary found its way back to his widow who transcribed it.
Perkins best described his disappointment after arriving in California in his September 26 diary entry, “Never was there such misrepresentation as about this country, both as to the futility, fertility or capability of cultivation, & richness of the mines, & all that a few men might make fortunes. Among the Emigrants you will hear Bryant, Fremont, Robinson & others whose published accounts were the chief inducement to many to leave their comfortable home, cussed up & down, & loaded with all kinds of opprobrious names. They have all massed fortunes of the Emigration they have induced.”