Oregon-California Trails Association | Forty-Niners

Forty-Niners – Letters, 1849

Merrill J. Mattes Collection·

printed pages

“Letters By Forty-Niners Written From Great Salt Lake City in 1849.” Edited by Dale L. Morgan. The Western Humanities Review.

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.