Oregon-California Trails Association | Forty-Niners – Letters, 1849, Salt Lake City, Utah

Forty-Niners – Letters, 1849, Salt Lake City, Utah

Merrill J. Mattes Collection·

Printed pages

“Letters by Forty Niners” in The Western Humanities Review, edited by Dale Morgan

Written from Great Salt Lake City in 1849

Letters by John B. Hazlip, James E. Squire, Beeson Townsend and others

The collection was begun in 1991 by the late Merrill J. Mattes, a co-founder of the Oregon-California Trails Association. That original nucleus was a result of a generous donation from Merrill and reflected his many years as an award-winning National Park Service historian and also included works of his own authorship. The collection is housed at the national Frontier Trails Museum in Independence, Missouri. Here, you have access to many of the original trail diaries he collected in digital form.