During the spring of 1844, eleven covered wagons headed westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa. Some fifty men, women and children with their dogs and cats and a herd of almost 100 cattle made up the caravan that potted slowly toward California.

The brave little group of pioneers had as their leader Elisha Stevens. Another member of their party was seventeen-year-old Mose Schallenberger, who kept a journal of the trip. From the notes Mose made more than one hundred years ago, Mr. Stewart has drawn first-hand information about the story of that remarkable journey and of the Stevens party—the first ever to get wagons across the Sierra Nevada. Today, whether you go to California by air, rail or highway, you will follow the faint lines of their wheel tracks along the Humboldt and across the mountains.

From the dust jacket