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John Haney Rogers, born 1822 in Tennessee, died December 27, 1906 Merced, California, was a pioneer of the California Gold Rush, and was one of the first known group of European-Americans to travel through Death Valley, California, in December 1849.
Little is known of Rogers's life, other than what is recounted in the autobiography of William L. Manly, "Death Valley in 1849", and there are no known photographs or portraits of him.
Rogers is notable primarily for the incident recounted here. In the autumn of 1849, several groups of emigrant gold-seekers were assembled in Salt Lake City, Utah, preparing to head for Southern California via the Old Spanish Trail. Although this route would have brought the emigrants to California about 200 miles south of the gold fields, they knew it was too close to winter to attempt a crossing of the central Sierra Nevada over Donner Pass. At this point, a map was presented to the group by a Captain Smith, who had been hired to guide a different group of emigrants, showing a purported "short cut" to California that crossed south-central Nevada along the foot of an east–west mountain range, along which water and grass for the animals would be available, then into California at a latitude much closer to the gold fields. The groups argued over this proposed short cut, and eventually split up, with some sticking to the original route, and others adopting the short cut. The "short cut" group included families with children (generally referred to as the Bennett-Arcane party in Manly's book), and several unmarried men, including William Lewis Manly and his friend John H. Rogers.
Unfortunately for these emigrants, the east–west mountain range shown on the map turned out to be a figment of the map-maker's imagination, and for three weeks the team's westward travel was through barren sagebrush desert with hardly any drinkable water and even less forage for the oxen and horses. At the end of November, they had arrived at the base of a mountain range and started to climb, believing this to be the Sierra Nevada, with the California Central Valley just a few more day's travel on the other side. This impression was horribly wrong: the mountains they were climbing were the Amargosa Range, and on a direct westward course, they had four more ranges to cross to reach California. The route they were following began to descend along a dry arroyo that is today known as Furnace Creek Wash, which deposited the teams in the bottom of Death Valley, with the Panamint Range blocking any further progress westward. They were now completely lost, and both people and animals were on the brink of starvation. The group crossed the valley, heading south along the foot of the Panamints in search of a pass. They camped at a spring, now called Bennett's Well, and determined that their only possibility of survival was to send a small party on foot to scout an escape route and perhaps bring help if a settlement could be found. Two young men volunteered to make this attempt, William Lewis Manly and John Rogers, and they were provided with enough provisions for about two weeks, and all of the money in the camp - about $30 - with which to buy supplies and animals if such could be found.
Manly and Rogers started southwest, and after two weeks of walking through the Mojave Desert, with little more than a few pounds of dried meat and a makeshift canteen made of gunpowder cans, they stumbled into a settlement, Rancho San Fernando, 30 miles or so northeast of Los Angeles near Tejon Pass. Here they were able to procure a pair of horses and a mule, and additional provisions, then they began the 250 mile trek back to Death Valley, arriving back at the Bennett's camp after almost a month's round trip journey, and with only the mule still alive, the two horses having died of exhaustion and privation along the return route. This heroic trek, nearly 500 miles through a completely unknown desert wilderness, resulted in the preservation of the lives of all but one of the members of the Bennett-Arcane Party (a Captain Culverwell had died a day or two before Manly and Rogers' return)
Manly and Rogers led the Bennett-Arcane party safely back to Los Angeles, after which they parted ways. Rogers spent some time at gold mining, then moved to Gilroy, California in Santa Clara County, where he was the town's first constable in 1852. Later, he settled in Merced, California, where he owned a farm and lived the remainder of his life. Near the end of his life, Rogers was suffering from Mercury poisoning, a common affliction resulting from the use of mercury to extract gold from low-grade ore, and parts of his feet had been amputated, presumably from mercury-induced gangrene.
Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley. The park occupies an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts, protecting the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and its diverse environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons and mountains. Death Valley is the largest national park in the contiguous United States, as well as the hottest, driest and lowest of all the national parks in the United States. It contains Badwater Basin, the second-lowest point in the Western Hemisphere and lowest in North America at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. More than 93% of the park is a designated wilderness area. The park is home to many species of plants and animals that have adapted to this harsh desert environment including creosote bush, Joshua tree, bighorn sheep, coyote, and the endangered Death Valley pupfish, a survivor from much wetter times. UNESCO included Death Valley as the principal feature of its Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve in 1984.
Death Valley is a desert valley in Eastern California, in the northern Mojave Desert, bordering the Great Basin Desert. During summer, it is one of the hottest places on Earth, along with deserts in the Middle East and the Sahara.
The Oregon Trail was a 2,170-mile (3,490 km) east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what is now the state of Kansas and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the current states of Idaho and Oregon.
Inyo County is a county in the eastern central part of the U.S. state of California, located between the Sierra Nevada mountains and the state of Nevada. In the 2020 census, the population was 19,016. The county seat is Independence. Inyo County is on the east side of the Sierra Nevada and southeast of Yosemite National Park in Central California. It contains the Owens River Valley; it is flanked to the west by the Sierra Nevada and to the east by the White Mountains and the Inyo Mountains. With an area of 10,192 square miles (26,397 km2), Inyo County is the second-largest county by area in California, after San Bernardino County. Almost one-half of that area is within Death Valley National Park. However, with a population density of 1.8 people per square mile, it also has the second-lowest population density in California, after Alpine County.
Stovepipe Wells is a way-station in the northern part of Death Valley, in unincorporated Inyo County, California.
The Amargosa River is an intermittent waterway, 185 miles (298 km) long, in southern Nevada and eastern California in the United States. It drains a high desert region, the Amargosa Valley in the Amargosa Desert northwest of Las Vegas, into the Mojave Desert, and finally into Death Valley where it disappears into the ground aquifer. Except for a small portion of its route in the Amargosa Canyon in California and a small portion at Beatty, Nevada, the river flows above ground only after a rare rainstorm washes the region. A 26-mile (42 km) stretch of the river between Shoshone and Dumont Dunes is protected as a National Wild and Scenic River. At the south end of Tecopa Valley the Amargosa River Natural Area protects the habitat.
The California Trail was an emigrant trail of about 1,600 mi (2,600 km) across the western half of the North American continent from Missouri River towns to what is now the state of California. After it was established, the first half of the California Trail followed the same corridor of networked river valley trails as the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, namely the valleys of the Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater rivers to Wyoming. The trail has several splits and cutoffs for alternative routes around major landforms and to different destinations, with a combined length of over 5,000 mi (8,000 km).
The Amargosa Valley is the valley through which the Amargosa River flows south, in Nye County, southwestern Nevada and Inyo County in the state of California. The south end is alternately called the "Amargosa River Valley'" or the "Tecopa Valley." Its northernmost point is around Beatty, Nevada and southernmost is Tecopa, California, where the Amargosa River enters into the Amargosa Canyon.
The exposed geology of the Death Valley area presents a diverse and complex set of at least 23 formations of sedimentary units, two major gaps in the geologic record called unconformities, and at least one distinct set of related formations geologists call a group. The oldest rocks in the area that now includes Death Valley National Park are extensively metamorphosed by intense heat and pressure and are at least 1700 million years old. These rocks were intruded by a mass of granite 1400 Ma and later uplifted and exposed to nearly 500 million years of erosion.
The Great Salt Lake Desert is a large dry lake in northern Utah, United States, between the Great Salt Lake and the Nevada border. It is a subregion of the larger Great Basin Desert, and noted for white evaporite Lake Bonneville salt deposits including the Bonneville Salt Flats.
Places of interest in the Death Valley area are mostly located within Death Valley National Park in eastern California.
The Hastings Cutoff was an alternative route for westward emigrants to travel to California, as proposed by Lansford Hastings in The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California. The ill-fated Donner Party infamously took the route in 1846.
The Death Valley '49ers were a group of pioneers from the Eastern United States that endured a long and difficult journey during the late 1840s California Gold Rush to prospect in the Sutter's Fort area of the Central Valley and Sierra Nevada in California. Their route from Utah went through the Great Basin Desert in Nevada, and Death Valley and the Mojave Desert in Southern California, in attempting to reach the Gold Country.
The Panamint Valley is a long basin located east of the Argus and Slate ranges, and west of the Panamint Range in the northeastern reach of the Mojave Desert, in eastern California, United States.
Telescope Peak is the highest point within Death Valley National Park, in the U.S. state of California. It is also the highest point of the Panamint Range, and lies in Inyo County. From atop this desert mountain one can see for over one hundred miles in many directions, including west to Mount Whitney, and east to Charleston Peak. The mountain was named for the great distance visible from the summit.
William Lewis Manly was an American pioneer of the mid-19th century. He was first a fur hunter, a guide of westward bound caravans, a seeker of gold, and then a farmer and writer in his later years.
In the American Old West, overland trails were built by pioneers and immigrants throughout the 19th century and especially between 1829 and 1870 as an alternative to sea and railroad transport. These immigrants began to settle much of North America west of the Great Plains as part of the mass overland migrations of the mid-19th century. Settlers emigrating from the eastern United States were spurred by various motives, among them religious persecution and economic incentives, to move to destinations in the far west via routes including the Oregon Trail, California Trail, and Mormon Trail. After the end of the Mexican–American War in 1849, vast new American conquests again enticed mass immigration. Legislation like the Donation Land Claim Act and significant events like the California Gold Rush further lured people to travel overland to the west.
The Stockton–Los Angeles Road, also known as the Millerton Road, Stockton–Mariposa Road, Stockton–Fort Miller Road or the Stockton–Visalia Road, was established about 1853 following the discovery of gold on the Kern River in Old Tulare County. This route between Stockton and Los Angeles followed by the Stockton–Los Angeles Road is described in "Itinerary XXI. From Fort Yuma to Benicia, California", in The Prairie Traveler: A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions by Randolph Barnes Marcy. The Itinerary was derived from the report of Lieutenant R. S. Williamson on his topographical survey party in 1853, that was in search of a railroad route through the interior of California.
The Harry Wade Exit Route was discovered and made by Harry Wade from Illinois in 1849. Harry Wade, his wife and children were in the Bennett-Arcan party caravan emigrating west. At the direction of guide Jefferson Hunt the caravan took a poorly planned turn and descended into Death Valley, California while looking for a shortcut off the Old Spanish Trail. The caravan of a 100 wagons were looking for the shortcut to get to the California Gold Rush sooner. Several in the group died while there, affording the valley its namesake. Harry Wade found a path out of the Valley, the trail he made is today called the Harry Wade Road, a dirt road. After departing Death Valley Wade found the Old Spanish Trail and came to Southern California though the Cajon Pass. Many in the party also suffered but nonetheless made it out of Death Valley. Harry Wade Exit Route was designated a California Historic Landmark (No.622) on October 9, 1957. A marker was placed about 30 miles north of Baker, California, on the Harry Wade Exit Route, to designate where his family escaped. The marker is at the southern end of Death Valley National Park.
Bennett-Arcane Long Camp was a 1849er camp set up in December 1849 in Death Valley as they traveled to the California Gold Rush. They were emigrants crossing the harsh Desert to get to California. The camp was located just west of valley's Badwater Basin in the Death Valley National Park Inyo County, California. Badwater Basin is lowest point in North America and the United States, at a depth of 282 ft (86 m) below sea level. The Bennett-Arcane party became known as the Death Valley '49ers. The Death Valley '49ers were pioneers from the Eastern United States travelling west to prospect in the Sutter's Fort area of the Central Valley and Sierra Nevada in California. The wagon train crossed Utah across the Great Basin Desert in Nevada. They made a wrong turn on got trapped in Death Valley. After exiting they crossed the Mojave Desert into Southern California. Still wanting to go to the California Gold Country. The group used the southern Desert part of the Old Spanish Trail, after hearing about the death of the Donner Party. Some of the party died on the near the camp and the suffering gave the place the name Death Valley. John Haney Rogers was one of the men that departed the valley on foot and came back with help.