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Famed adventure writer David Roberts retraces the route of the legendary Domnguez-Escalante expedition.In July 1776 a pair of Franciscan friars, Francisco Atanasio Domnguez and Silvestre Vlez de Escalante, were charged by the governor of New Mexico with discovering a route across the unknown Southwest to the new Spanish colony in California. They had other goals as well, some of them secret: converting the indigenous natives along the way to the true faith, discovering a semi-mythical paradise known as Teguay, hunting for sources of gold and silver, and paving the way for Spanish settlements from Santa Fe to Monterey.In strict terms, the expedition failed. Running out of food and beset by an early winter, the twelve-man team gave up in what is now western Utah.
