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Walker Pass
Route (to Visalia and Bakersfield).
By 1870, "a good wagon road the entire distance from Gilroy to Cerro Gordo" was available for travellers using this route (Rossiter, 1871, p. 17). The Kern River Trail was also available to travelers from Gilroy via the Havilah stage; this route was not as well suited for wagons.
Walker Pass was used by Joseph Reddeford Walker on his 1833-34 exploring trip from Salt Lake to California (Roske). In 1843 he would lead an emigrant party to California via this route and in 1845 he led a company of Fremont's men over this pass. In the American period it became an important trail from San Joaquin Valley to the Mohave Desert, and it now serves automobile traffic via state highway 178, up Freeman Canyon.
In the 1870's and '80's, a hideout of notorious outlaw Tiburcio Vasquez and Cleovaro Chavez was located near the trail at the foot of the pass on the Mohave Desert side. The area of large rocks is known now as Robber's Roost, in the vicinity of a spring known as Coyote Holes (Nadeau 1965b, p. 191; Hoover, et al, p. 118).
109. Coyote Holes (Robber's Roost)
110. Panamint Station
Cultural Resources of the California Desert,
1776 -1880 -- Historic Trails and Wagon Roads
Elizabeth von Till Warren & Ralph J. Roske
1981 cultural Russell L. Kaldenberg, Series Editor
