Relive the lives of John Rowland and William Workman through this single volume story of two men whose friendship endured for 40 years of adventure, adversity and success on the New Mexico and California frontiers. Complete with illustrations, maps and photos.

Negative photostatic copy of a typed transcription, possibly made between 1901 and 1920, of an account dictated by B.D. Wilson in Dec. 1877 of his life and adventures in New Mexico and California between 1833 and 1877. Although Wilson was born in Nashville, Tenn., he moved to Missouri, and then Santa Fe in 1833, for health reasons. He joined a trapping party to hunt beaver in Gila and Apache country, and the first section of his narrative concerns the years he spent in that area among the Apaches with whom he was great friends. In 1841 Wilson, John Rowland, William Workman, and others leave Santa Fe for California, amidst rumors that Texans were about to invade New Mexico and make it part of Texas. Other early California pioneers in the group included Dr. J.H. Lyman of Northampton, Mass.; Dr. Mead, a physician from the West Indies; Dr. Campbell, an ornithologist; John Behn, a German, Michael White, an Englishman; Loomes; Daniel Sexton; and John Reed. Wilson recounts his experiences in Los Angeles during the Mexican War of 1846, his services to Commodore Robert F. Stockton, Gen. Stephen Kearney, and John C. Fremont, and his participation in the early statehood of California. He served as the first County Clerk of Los Angeles, was elected first mayor of Los Angeles after its incorporation as a city, and in 1852 was appointed by Pres. Fillmore as Indian Agent for the Southern District. Widowed in 1849, Wilson remarried in 1853, and spent the remainder of his years as a horticulturist at Lake Vineyard. The narrative is dated Dec. 6, 1877 in Lake Vineyard.

The story of America’s westward migration is a powerful blend of fact and fable. Over the course of three decades, almost a million eager fortune-hunters, pioneers, and visionaries transformed the face of a continent—and displaced its previous inhabitants. The people who made the long and perilous journey over the Oregon and California trails drove this swift and astonishing change. In this magisterial volume, Will Bagley tells why and how this massive emigration began. While many previous authors have told parts of this story, Bagley has recast it in its entirety for modern readers. Drawing on research he conducted for the National Park Service’s Long Distance Trails Office, he has woven a wealth of primary sources—personal letters and journals, government documents, newspaper reports, and folk accounts—into a compelling narrative that reinterprets the first years of overland migration. Illustrated with photographs and historical maps, So Rugged and Mountainous is the first of a projected four-volume history, Overland West: The Story of the Oregon and California Trails. This sweeping series describes how the “Road across the Plains” transformed the American West and became an enduring part of its legacy. And by showing that overland emigration would not have been possible without the cooperation of Native peoples and tribes, it places American Indians at the center of trail history, not on its margins.