Sublime

Geographical curiosity and his abiding love for wilderness travel seem to have been the main reasons for these journeys, but he usually managed to find some practical, economic rationale: a railroad survey, a party of miners that wanted to be guided to some remote mountain range, a potential livestock market that called for investigation. In 1858

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

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.

We have another sketch by Adolph Wislizenus, a German traveller who encountered Walker, the veteran furman Andrew Drips and their Indian wives in the Wind River Mountains. The two squaws, quite passable as to their features, appeared in highest state. Their red blankets, with the silk kerchiefs on their heads, and their gaudy embroideries, gave

The question seemed to decide or confirm something for Joe Walker. He replied sharply that he was going back to live with the Indians because ‘white people are too damn mean’.* He left soon afterwards, riding west, and

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.