Daniel James Brown

They run out of water.

Their oxen, which are extremely important to them, that's the only way they're going to get anything anywhere is if they get their oxen to pull their wagons.

The oxen start to break down.

The next night, the oxen start wandering away into the dark.

And so one by one, they wind up having to abandon their wagons and just sort of stagger

ahead on foot.

There is a place called Pilot Peak where there's a spring at the base of the peak that they are aiming for.

Eventually, they all get in there.

But by then, they have abandoned some of their wagons on the salt flats.

Many of their oxen have wandered away and can't be found again.

So, they're starting to get in serious trouble even before they start trekking across the deserts of Nevada.

Yes, exactly.

In places the salt is very hard crust.

In other places where there's moisture underneath, it's very boggy and so the wagons get bogged down.

Yes, they've run out of water.

And so, as I say, some of them, like the Reed family, had to leave their wagon.

And some, Reed left part of his family in the wagon.

He had to go back, bring water back to them, then bring them in off the desert.

So it took three or four days altogether to get everybody finally across the salt flats to Pilot Peak and the springs and try to reconstitute what was left of their resources.

They're starting, by the way, to have to sort of jettison possessions all the way because as the oxen are wearing down, getting weaker and weaker, they've been carrying hundreds and hundreds of pounds of provisions and their furniture and tools in their wagons.