Sarah Royce

Sarah Royce, her husband, and her two-year-old daughter made their way to California using only a handwritten diary of a Mormon pioneer to navigate the trail. They left Salt Lake City with three other men in their party. It was October and they had to hurry to cross the Sierras before the snows closed the passes. After making a wrong turn into the desert, they nearly perished from lack of water and food. Luckily they were found by a military relief party who helped them pack their possessions onto mules in order to make the late crossing over the mountains. Unless the commander had disobeyed orders and gone out of his way to assist them they would surely have met a horrible fate.

In 1932, Royce wrote her memoir of her frontier experiences, in which she recalled the peril of being lost in...