Seldom mentioned in histories of the California Gold Rush is the fact that thousands of ‘49ers came overland on the Southern Emigrant Trail, which crossed the Colorado River at Yuma and left the desert by way of the Warner Ranch. From the diaries of one of those travelers – Judge Benjamin Hayes – comes a curious historical possibility. Camped on the Warner Ranch (seemingly along Agua Caliente Creek) Judge Hayes notes in his diary for January 23, 1850: “Today our hunters came on a valley some three or four miles up the stream we are on in which the grass was already a foot high. Perhaps a thousand acres in the whole cove made by the hills along the course of the valley. There appeared to have been an American camp [there] this fall.” Did ‘49ers camp at Lost Valley? The mileage is quite wrong. But it is hard to imagine where else the men would have found anything like a thousand acres of valley except in Lost Valley – or perhaps Chihuahua Valley (though it is not much closer, and there’s no obvious canyon leading there). And on the other side of the mountain were the villages that are now part of the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation. It is a mystery that will probably never be solved – but what an interesting possibility.

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