Siskiyou Trail: The Hudson's Bay Company route to California (The American trail series)

The Hudson's Bay Fur Company Route to California was the fur trappers' and traders' road in the 1820s, '30s, and '40s from Fort Vancouver (now in Washington) to San Francisco and beyond. Until publication of this book, there had been little documentation of the trail. Such giants of the route as Jedediah Smith and Peter Skene Ogden have come down in history. But the leaders on the trail were indifferent reporters and their followers -- an ethnic crazy quilt of Englishmen, Scots, Irish, French-Canadians, Mexicans, black Americans, Iroquois, Abenaki, half-breeds, and kanakas from Hawaii -- were lucky if they could write their names. Nevertheless, the explorations, the discoveries, the incredible hardships, the adventures, the occasional humor which lit up the treks like sun after a heavy rain -- all interweave to make this a towering tale, its truth attested by the primary sources which Richard Dillon has researched.