By Andrew Wallace
Few features of the Far West went unknown to fur trappers of the early 19th century, and most of their knowledge had passed onto maps by the time Prescott was founded in 1864. Yet Arizona’s central mountain area was one of the last corners of the Far West to be explored. If we except a few 18th century Spaniards (who published virtually no information), the mountain man Joe Walker gets most credit for pointing the way to settlement of this area.
Joseph Rutherford Walker was born in Virginia in 1798 but was reared in Tennessee and finally Missouri where, by 1819, he, his parents, and five siblings had settled at Ft. Osage on the Missouri River. From there the Rocky Mountains beckoned with promise of valuable furs, particularly beaver pelts, and in 1820 Walker and brother Joel joined older men who were bound for the Southwest.
We know few details of Walker’s early time in New Mexico but certainly he took pelts from Mexican streams and was imprisoned a short time before authorities kicked him out. After several seasons of furtive trapping by Walker with other beaver men from Taos, he rejoined his extended family by now in Independence, Missouri.
As soon as Mexico became independent of Spain in 1821 Yankee traders carried goods to New Mexico in exchange for wool blankets, buffalo robes, aguardiente, mules, and silver. Soon the traders had beaten trails toward Santa Fe and Ciudad Chihuahua. Upper New Mexico, isolated from the more populous region of Chihuahua, welcomed and soon enriched traders from the U.S. In 1825 the federal government ordered George Sibley to mark the trail to Santa Fe and Walker joined Sibley’s party as guide and hunter.
Mountain man and trapper Joseph Rutherford Walker, circa. 1860s (Photo Courtesy of Author).
After returning to Independence in 1827 Walker was elected sheriff of Jackson County. After two terms as sheriff, he started trading horses at army posts in the Indian Territory. At Ft. Gibson he met army captain Benjamin L. E. Bonneville who had a two-year leave of absence supposedly to trap beaver in the Rocky Mountains. Walker accepted Bonneville’s offer to take practical charge of all the work in the field. In May 1832 Captain Walker, Captain Bonneville, and more than 100 men started up the Platte River headed for South Pass, the mountain gateway on the road to Oregon.
But that fall the inexperienced trappers took few beaver and wintered in a miserable camp on the Salmon River. Walker himself took 40 men and wintered at the junction of the Blackfoot and Snake rivers. At the rendezvous on Horse Creek (a tributary of the Green River in Wyoming) in 1833 all of Bonneville’s expedition could market scarcely 20 packs of furs, most taken by Walker’s men. Other parties at the rendezvous brought nearly 150 packs to sell.
During his time at Horse Creek, Walker, with Bonneville’s approval, recruited 40 of the most experienced mountain men for a separate expedition to California. They traveled west to Nevada, scouted down the Humboldt River to its sink in the desert, and crossed the Sierras to Monterey, California. Walker, though he gained permission to winter over, was told to leave the Mexican province in the spring. He scouted the San Joaquin Valley south to the Kern River and through the Owens Valley back to the Humboldt, rejoining Bonneville in July 1834. On this trip Walker discovered the Yosemite Valley, saw the giant Sequoia trees, and had his only real battle with Indians.
The beaver trade was declining rapidly in 1837 when Walker left the annual fur trade rendezvous on the Green River of Wyoming to spend the winter in Zuni country of northwest New Mexico. Walker appeared next year at the rendezvous on the Wind River with a large horse and mule herd for barter.
The 1839 rendezvous took place in northwest Colorado. Walker left the rendezvous with 15 trappers for southern California via western Utah. They were the first white men to descend the Virgin River canyon to the Colorado. Their route took them through today’s Lake Mead and across the Mojave Desert and on to the Pueblo of Los Angeles.
Next week will conclude the story of Joe Walker, including his role in the founding of Prescott.
(Days Past is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners, International (www.prescottcorral.org). The public is encouraged to submit articles for Days Past consideration. Please contact SHM Library & Archives Reference Desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14 or via email at archivesrequest@sharlothallmuseum.org for information.)