This adventure has to do with Joseph Reddeford Wa1ker, whose father and my great grandfather were brothers. This leaves me a long way out on the family tree, a lot farther than does the local family tradition. However, I have been close enough to ask questions and do research on this remarkable pathfinder. Captain Joe and my great grandfather had more in common than a family relationship. Their families evolved on common ground, the trans-Allegheny frontier. This one dictated the most grim and bloody conquest of all frontiers between the Allegheny's and the Pacific. Its threshold was the western fringes of Pennsylvania, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia. Its heart was Tennessee and the "dark and bloody ground" of Kentucky.

Theodore Roosevelt spoke as historian of the old Southwest and as one who was, himself, individual and frontier in spirit when he described the shaping of folk-character along Daniel Boone’s "wilderness trail" through Tennessee and Kentucky.

He said, "A single generation, passed under the hard conditions of life in the wilderness, was enough to weld together into one people the representatives of -numerous and widely different races; and the children of the next generation became indistinguishable from one another - . - they became products as native to the soil as were the tough and supple hickories out of which they fashioned the handles of their long, light axes. -

Their iron surroundings made a mold which turned out all alike in the same shape. They resembled one another and they differed from the rest of the world in mode of life."

In addition to Joe Walker, from this mold emerged such mountain men as Kit Carson, Joe Meek, the Sublettes, the Bents, Jim Bridger, Bill Williams, William Ashley, Andrew Henry and William Wolfskill, just to name a few. Theirs was a timely entry because the stage had been set for further conquests beyond the wide Missouri.

As early as 1821 Joe Walker had joined with William Becknell to launch trading caravans over the old Santa Fe Trail. He had traded and trapped throughout wide regions of the Southwest for twelve years by the time Lt. B. L. E. Bonneville gained a leave of absence from the United States Army to enter into the fur trade business.

Historians have a documented hunch that Bonneville’s real assignment was to search out passes across the Sierra that would make California reasonably accessible for conquest. Bonneville secured Walker’s services and sent him out with fifty men to explore west of the Great Salt Lake.

On this expedition Walker and his men broke trail down the Humboldt River over what was to become a main migration route during the gold rush. They were the first white men to cross the Sierra from east to west and, in doing so, they were the first to gaze on Yosemite and the Big Trees

They spent the winter of 1833-34 in Monterey where they were kindly treated and entertained by California caballeros and senoritas. In the spring of 1834, with "fifty-two mounted men, over three hundred horses, and a mobile food reserve of at least thirty dogs," Walker started the return journey to his rendezvous with Bonneville. He moved southerly through the San Joaquin Valley. Near the mouth of Kern River Canyon he picked up two Indian guides who escorted him over Greenhorn Mountain and up the South Fork of Kern River to a pass that opened out on the Mojave Desert to the east. From this pass, which henceforth bore his name, Walker traveled northward along the eastern base of the Sierra to retrace his steps along the Humboldt and on to his meeting with Bonneville in the region of Salt Lake.

Walker’s exploration proved extremely important. They settled for all time the question that had prevailed as to whether or not a river cut through the granite barrier of the Sierra from the interior basin around Salt Lake. They also laid groundwork for migrations yet to come if the dreamers of Manifest Destiny could make such dreams come true by moving the frontiers of the United States westward to the shores of the Pacific. In this field, too, Walker’s role was important. As early as 1843 he led the Chiles Party, one of the first companies to migrate to California, over Walker Pass on their way to carve out homes among the California's.

In 1845, as the time of conquest approached, Walker led the main contingent of the third Fremont Expedition over the pass he had discovered eleven years before. This military organization, thinly disguised as a scientific expedition, arrived in California just in time to help take it over from Mexico when the long-expected Mexican War broke out.

On October 19, 1963 Walker Pass was appropriately dedicated as a National Historic Landmark in accordance with a directive from Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall and under the auspices of the Kern County Historical Society.

This is as it should be. Ever since that far day when Joe Walker first rode across its pinon-covered slopes, and especially during the century that is just concluding, Walker Pass has served to funnel history into the Kern watershed from gold rush to glamour day’s of modern receptionists.