Into the Jaws of Hell: Jefferson Hunt: Death Valley ’49ers Wagon Train and His Adventures in California 1846-1857, by Thomas Sutak

From July 1846 to May 1848, Jefferson Hunt traveled over 5,000 miles in the American West, and trekked on all or parts of five major Western trails – the Santa Fe, the Gila River, El Camino Real, the Humboldt River Trail, and pioneered the Salt Lake City to Los Angeles Trail – many of which the author traveled while writing Into the Jaws of Hell, chronicling Hunt’s journey. Hunt a farmer when the Mormons left Nauvoo, Illinois, signed up to become a captain in the Mormon Battalion, a division of Stephen Watts Kearney’s Army of the West that forged a key trail from Santa Fe to Southern California. He and his family settled in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. He then led a wagon train of Gold Rush travelers West and in a few years Hunt became the father of San Bernardino County, both helping to found the community, and then enacting key legislation in the California Assembly.