Captain Jefferson Hunt Summary

This story starts with a lost mine, a traditional premise for a desert tale.
In 1849, a large party led by Captain Jefferson Hunt was traveling to California by wagon train. With winter approaching, and afraid of being trapped like the Donners on the wrong side of the Sierra Nevada, some of the settlers were convinced to leave the known trail and take a shortcut through unexplored territory. Further disagreements over the route led to additional fragmentation of the group. Of these fragments, the Bennett-Arcan Party is best known to history for their stranding, subsequent rescue, and for giving Death Valley its name. Another party, the Jayhawkers, lost several men to thirst and exhaustion in the same area. A third group, who called themselves the “Bugstompers” is less known but are the most important to our story. Led by one Jim Martin, they were soon forced to abandon their wagons and proceed on foot. Crossing the Panamint Mountains on the west side of the valley, Martin’s party found a rich silver vein. Martin pocketed a
Three young men on the run after robbing a Wells Fargo stage of $12,000 were hiding out in a lonely canyon in the western Panamints. With nothing much to do their talk turned to easy money, and the men decided to search the canyon for the Lost Gunsight lode. Logic would dictate that this was a waste of time and effort. Jim Martin had never passed this way. Concerned with his very survival, he would not have crossed the mountains here, in their highest and most rugged section. Nor, wherever he crossed, would he have doubled back into this rugged canyon. But the three robbers were not much burdened by logic, nor, in this instance, were they hampered by its lack. Luck they did have, and they located some very promising silver claims in the upper part of what was eventually named Surprise