Sublime

August 1876, and Walker died two months later. He was seventy-seven years old. The cause of death, says Bil Gilbert, was nothing more or less than ‘having lived long enough’. How to distil that life into six lines, containing

Walker soon became disgusted by Frémont’s self-promoting histrionics and rank cowardice in the field – a combination he found particularly loathsome. They

Most of this trail, like so many others first ‘discovered’ by Joe Walker (or, more accurately, pieced together from existing Indian trails), is now a state highway.

I was expecting a wealth of amateur historians, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the fur trade and fresh insights to borrow, but the first twenty people I talked to had never heard of Joe Walker. Reading history books, it turned out, was not a popular

“Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues?” To which Reuther replied, “Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?”

Walker rode on to California, hung up his saddle at his nephew’s ranch in Contra Costa County, and settled down to a calm, pleasant, dignified retirement, with no recorded bouts of nostalgia or restlessness.