The Gold Discovery Journal of Azariah Smith

Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1990. First edition. Hardcover. Very good/good +. 159pp. Octavo [23.5 cm] Black cloth over boards. In a dust jacket with a 5 1/2" closed tear in the rear panel. Here, published for the first time, is the complete journal of Azariah Smith. Unaware of the momentous nature of the events he chronicles, Smith tells of marching west from Fort Leavenworth to the Pacific, one of the longest infantry marches in recorded history. As an employee of James Marshall at Sutter's Mill, he was an eyewitness to the gold discovery on January 24, 1848. And he was a member of the company that opened the Mormon-Carson Pass Emigrant Trail over the Sierra Nevada, to become the major route of the gold rush.