Among the hundreds captivated by the vision of quick riches in the gold fields of California was Elisha Douglass Perkins, a tall handsome youth from Marietta, Ohio, who has here left a remarkable first-hand account of the great trek westward in 1849. Perkins' diary is an unusually full and intimate record of crossing the plains and mountains of the Great West.

Extensive notes supplement the text, associating it with numerous other published and unpublished accounts, while an appendix of reports and letters from the Marietta newspaper reveals the involvement of those at home with the...