DAVID SALMONSON (PG

HIDDEN HILLS NAMESAKES Joseph Rutherford Walker

THE WORD ON THE STREETS

WALKER ROAD

“I was with him [Walker] two years of his last explorations of our mountain country under the most desperate hardships and still I could never see any change in him. Always cool, rm, and digni ed. I never heard him tell any wonderful story. He was too reticent about his certainly bleak and wild experiences and he was never given to saying foolish things under any circumstance. Brave, truthful, he was as kindly as a child, yet occasionally he was ever austere. I was but a boy and he kept me out of dangerous places without letting me know it or even know how it was done.. . . my greatest concern is the fear that his character will never be known as well as it ought to be. His services have been great and unostentatious, unremunerated and but little understood. Modesty was his greatest fault.” (Daniel Conner on Joseph Walker)

Joseph Rutherford Walker’s travels helped connect the fur trade and Western expansion as smoothly Ashley Ridge Road joins into Walker Road. Like Jedidiah Smith, Tennessee native Joseph Walker was a born explorer who pursued fur trapping and scouting as a way of nancing his wanderlust. Born on the thirteenth of December 1798 in Tennessee, he was the fourth child in a family of seven children. His adventurous career began when he and his older brother Joel joined Colonel John Brown’s mounted ri emen to serve under Andrew Jackson. Joseph and Joel were present when their kinsman Sam Houston climbed the Red Sticks’ log forti cations during the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. e Red Sticks were a warrior sect of the Creek Indian Nation who seven months prior to the Battle of Horseshoe Bend had killed and mutilated over four hundred settlers at Fort Mims, Alabama.

JOSEPH R. WALKER

1798 - 1876

Like Jedidiah Smith, Tennessee native Joseph Walker was a born explorer who Joseph Walker was a born explorer who pursued fur trapping and scouting as a way of nancing his wanderlust. a way of nancing his wanderlust.

In 1819, the Walker family left Tennessee to settle near Fort Osage, Missouri. Joseph left Missouri to rst venture west in 1820 as part of an illegal trapping expedition into Spanish-controlled New Mexico territory. He was arrested by Spanish authorities, but released when he promised to help the Spanish against the Pawnees. After cooperating with the Spanish, Walker returned to the Fort Osage area.

Walker, his brother, and Stephen Cooper returned to Santa Fe in 1821 with the rst wagon train. Four years later President James Monroe signed a bill providing thirty thousand dollars to survey a wagon road from Independence to Santa Fe, and Walker was hired as a guide and hunter. In June 1827, while living in Independence, Missouri, he was appointed sheri of Jackson County, found near the mouth of the Kansas River. At the time, Independence was as far as anyone could travel up the Missouri River and soon became known as the trail town that was the major starting point for the Santa Fe, Oregon Trail, and California Trails.

After two terms as sheri , Walker retired and started trading horses at military posts as far south as Arkansas and Oklahoma. At Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, Walker met Benjamin Bonneville after he applied for a two year leave of absence from the military to trap beaver in the Rocky Mountains. In 1832, Bonneville left Fort Osage, Missouri with 110 men, including Lieutenant Joseph Walker as his eld commander, assorted mules, horses, oxen, and twenty wagons. Bonneville’s goal was to explore the topography of the West and nd the best means of making land available to American citizens. ey built a fur trading post named Fort Bonneville in present day Wyoming Territory.

While working for Bonneville, the expedition advanced its way from Wyoming to California on a trail that would prove essential to overland emigration. e Walker party explored the Great Salt Lake to try to nd an overland route to California, and spent close to a month crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He was successful, blazing a trail along the Humboldt River that would be named Walker Pass

Walker 1833 – 1834 California Journey Photos courtesy thefurtrapper.com

Walker and Wife - Alfred Jacob Mille

in his honor even though it was a di cult journey where 24 horses starved to death and 17 of the dead horses were eaten after leaving Mono Lake.

Walker arrived in Northern California near San Francisco and proceeded to explore Monterey, Humboldt, San Joaquin Valley, Death Valley, Owens Valley, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Much speculation has surrounded Bonneville’s motivation for sending Walker with some historians speculating that Bonneville was attempting to lay the groundwork for an eventual invasion of California, then part of Mexico, by the United States Army.

Bonneville began to lead the party back to Independence, Missouri in 1835. He stayed in the mountains with fty-eight men to continue to trap and trade with various Indian tribes. In 1836, he married a Shoshone Indian woman which helped him build a strong bond with the Shoshone Indians. During the late 1830’s and early 1840’s, Walker made a number of return trips to California where he established a good business buying and trading horses. Most of the furs he obtained for his horses were marketed through Abel Stearns in Los Angeles.

In 1845, Walker, with his wife and retainers, joined John Frémont’s third government expedition at the White River in eastern Utah bound for California and Oregon. Despite having omas Fitzpatrick and Kit Carson as his guides, Frémont hired Walker to guide them to Utah Lake. Walker agreed to be Frémont’s chief guide, leading them down the Humboldt River to Walker Lake to the Great Salt Lake. e party divided, with Walker taking the main body to the current location of Lake Isabella while Frémont and a small group crossed the Sierra Nevada in the vicinity of the Truckee River, eventually reaching Sutter’s Fort, California. e two parties missed their planned rendezvous along the Kings River in the San Joaquin Valley but were reunited in February 1846.

Joseph Walker continued work as a trapper, scout, wagon train guide and ranch owner, exploring the blank spots on the map at every opportunity. In 1853, he testi ed before the California Senate Committee on Public Lands as to the best route for a railroad to the east and proposed a route over the southern end of the Sierras. At the age of 62, he set o on a two-year gold hunting expedition with 34 men across New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, and as a result, the village of Walker, Arizona was named for him. Walker returned to California during the gold boom, trading the drudgery of daily mining since he was able to make more money providing supplies.

By the time his failing eyesight forced him to retire in 1867, Captain Joseph Walker had spent ve decades on the frontier and served as a guide for hundreds. Even though he was one of the most capable historical gures ever to be called a trapper, he is not as well-known as his lesser successful contemporaries Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, and Hugh Glass. Walker returned to Manzanita Ranch in Contra Costa County, California where he died on October 27, 1876. He is buried in the Alhambra Cemetery in Martinez, California in a peaceful, oak-studded cemetery that overlooks the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers with the words “Camped at Yosemite” inscribed on his tombstone as a reminder of the giant sequoia trees he never wanted to forget after encountering the wonders of the Yosemite Valley. HH