One wagon train of over 100 wagons set out from St. Louis for the
gold rush in Sacramento. THe wagon master was a responsible former military
Captain named Benjamin Hunter. Capt Hunters's wagon train crossed paths with
mineral traders heading east on the trail just out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. One
of the traders had a crude map and rough details of a shortcut across the
deserts to Sacramento. After much heated debate and argument thirty-five of the
wagons, believing they could shave nearly six months off their long journey,
elected to leave Capt. Hunter's train.
Several weeks later, those 35 wagons were hopelessly lost in the middle of Death
Valley. Among the wagons were two groups of bachelors from the Kansas territory
known as the Manly Party and the Jayhawkers. With supplies gone, no food and
little water, the wagons with families were unable to move. The manly party and
the jayhawkers decided to unite in search of an Indian water hole mentioned by
the mineral traders. The Manly-Jayhawker party used what little water remained
to make it over the Argus Range. Out of either unshakable belief in the crude
map (that had already led them into one disaster) or just out of sheer
desperation, they traveled for five days, crossing our vally and finally
reaching the water hole - a natural spring that exists to this day.
Indian Wells Lodge Restaurant is located at this historic spring, marked by a
California State Monument that relates the Manly-Jayhawkers' struggle for
survival. You can sample the same water that saved the lost wagon train simply
by lifting your lips to any glass served at the Indian Wells Lodge Restaurant,
the same water that saved the Death Valley party in 1849. |
