Driving West: May 1849 & May 2017  - Why Bother?

Genes will out.  Maybe that's it.  In any case, I've  decided to re-trace my great, great, great grandfather Pleasant Gray's journey West, from Huntsville Texas via the California and Lassen Trails to the edge of the Feather River in Vina California.  We share itchy feet and an ever-westering impulse.

In late March 1849 Texas frontiersman Pleasant Gray signed his last will & testament. Fifteen years earlier, he'd established an indian trading post just beyond "civilization" in Tejas and named it for his boyhood home in Huntsville Alabama.  By the time his new town was a thriving community, he was restless again. Then, the siren call: gold in California!

Shortly after signing his will, Pleasant, his eldest son Mike Gray, and nine other men gathered at the Huntsville town square.  Gray was named captain of the group, and they high-tailed it north on the old Texas Road (Shawnee Trail) for Westport Kansas.   There they made a sharp left, heading west to California.

Travel was travail in those days.  Pleasant Gray died of cholera at the western edge of Nebraska.  But his son, Mike Gray, and the Texas cadre soldiered on, eventually joining as scouts for a large wagon train from Missouri.  There Mike met his future wife, the daughter of one of the wagon families.

Why blog?  Record the trip.  Compare the two journeys...

For starters, what would Pleasant and Mike Gray think of GPS satellites, Google Maps and our network of paved roads and interstates? In '49, all they had were the wagon ruts of those immediately before them and the sun heading west.  They were mostly untethered in a vast land.  Excitement.  Fear.  Forging into the Unknown.  No doubt, they'd say, as I do, the journey is how you know you're alive.  The Odyssey is all.    

Mike Gray in 1870, age 43, Sheriff of Gilroy, CA.  

He joined the Texas Rangers at 15 and slashed his way through some of the fiercest battles in Mexican American War.
Look at that steady gaze.  He knew fear and walked through it.