January 2014 (UTC)

To continue the Smith story, I found the book Men Against the Mountains, by Alson J. Smith (1965). I would have preferred Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West, by Dale L. Morgan (1953), but my local library didn't have it. Because both books were written prior to the 1967 discovery of the "lost" journal, they both contain some errors in particulars of the 1826-27 travel route that were corrected in Brooks' book (1977). Facts were established earlier, however, for J. Smith's 1827 return to California and the completion of the expedition at Fort Vancouver.

I found that J. Smith visited San Jose, Monterey and Yerba Buena, California before heading north up the Sacramento Valley. The Alson Smith book doesn't give the exact route of travel from San Jose to Monterey, but it seems unlikely that the expedition passed through my home turf in Santa Cruz County (my original question). They probably used the more established El Camino Real by way of Mission San Juan Bautista. 

Helped by the Alson Smith book (without citing it), I was able to expand several more articles, including:
 California hide trade
 Ygnacio Martinez
 Umpqua people
 John McLoughlin 
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