Review by Ed Quillen
History – November 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine
Trail to Disaster – The Route of John C. Frémont’s Fourth Expedition
by Patricia Joy Richmond
Published in 1990 by University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 0-87081-275-0
JOHN CHARLES FRÉMONT left his name all over Central Colorado: Frémont Pass, Frémont Peak, Frémont County. On his fourth expedition, which left St. Louis on Oct. 3, 1848, he almost left his life here, too. St. Louis merchants financed the trip, hoping the Great Pathmarker could find a railroad route across the continent near the 38th parallel.
Frémont proceeded up the Arkansas to Pueblo. There he hired a guide, Old Bill Williams, who was leery of entering the mountains in November when a brutal winter loomed.
They had to fight through two feet of snow to get up the Hardscrabble into the Wet Mountain Valley. They crossed Mosca Pass and skirted the Great Sand Dunes.
A normal San Luis Valley winter is hard enough, but the 1848 version was worse than usual: early arrival, heavy snow, subzero temperatures, brutal winds. Frémont wanted to go up Saguache Creek to Cochetopa Pass, but acceded to Williams, who proposed a short-cut up Carnero Creek.
They got stranded in heavy snow (sometimes 300 yards was a day’s journey) on Mesa Mountain southwest of Saguache. Men were sent to Taos for succor. Ten men and scores of mules died. There were allegations of cannibalism.
Frémont re-assembled the survivors in Taos on Feb. 12, 1849. Ever since, history buffs have tried to determine who was at fault.
Williams, the guide who took them into rough country when he should have known of smoother routes? Frémont, well-equipped and experienced, but insistent on a winter crossing so that he could restore his political standing after his court-martial? Or the winter, harsher than anyone could have reasonably expected?
Patricia Joy Richmond says it was the weather, abetted by Williams, who may have meant to sabotage the expedition. He took them up a little-used route, where “the chance of anyone accidentally coming across the abandoned baggage would have been slim. Come spring Williams would have been able to retrieve $8,000 to $10,000 worth of gear.”
Although that conclusion can inspire a lively argument (maybe Williams just wanted to get out of the wind as quickly as possible, and perhaps his hard routes were his way of persuading Frémont to be sensible and turn back), it’s a side issue here.
Trail to Disaster is a meticulous reconstruction of Frémont’s routes and campsites above Saguache 146 years ago.
Richmond uses diaries and journals, local lore, and even old paintings to pinpoint the campsites where she found physical evidence — a rock inscription, remains of a primitive sledge, stumps 12 feet high (that’s how deep the snow was) with ax marks that “are short and irregular, indicating that the trees were hacked rather than chopped.”
No armchair historian, Richmond has pursued the route via foot, horseback, four-wheel-drive, and cross-country skis.
Generally her book proceeds chronologically, merging source material with her own observations to provide a definitive, and quite readable, account of Frémont’s fourth expedition.
Her copious notes read as easily as the text, and her directions to the sites are sufficiently detailed for rediscovery by the dedicated, while not so explicit as to turn them into tourist attractions.
Trail to Disaster makes one exceedingly grateful for a warm house on a winter day, and as for Frémont’s fourth expedition, there’s a terrible irony. He had already found a railroad route across the Rockies — on his third expedition in 1846, when, almost unremarked, he made the first recorded crossing of Tennessee Pass.
— Ed Quillen
