Books: Gold & Death

DEATH VALLEY PROSPECTORS—Dane Coolidge—Dutton ($2.50).

The first white men to see Death Valley searched for gold while fleeing for their lives, thereby setting a pattern that prospectors into that dismal region have followed ever since. On Christmas Day, 1849, a party of emigrants in 27 wagons known as the Sand-Walking Company, lost while trying to find a short cut from Salt Lake City to San Bernardino, Calif., entered the Valley by way of Furnace Creek and never got out. Ahead of the Sand-Walkers there was a band of young men, traveling in 20 wagons,...

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