The El Dorado Trail: The Story of the Gold Rush Routes Across Mexico

This new volume in The American Trail Series covers the old Mexican land routes traveled by goldseekers who were "infected" with gold fever and who believed in the existence of a land called El Dorado. The routes from Corpus Christi to Mazatlan, from Parras to Janos, from Vera Cruz to Mexico City and on to Acapulco and San Blas are explored fully. The perilous journey across the Sierra Madre is also described: the spread of cholera, the Indian raids, the Mexican bandits, the treacherous canyons. Journals of such goldseekers as John Woodhouse Audubon and John Durivage are used in rendering a day-by-day account of what the men of the trail encountered, how they were able to survive, or how their journey was cut short by their deaths.