page_title: Rose–Baley Party
section_title: Formation
hierarchical_section_title: Rose–Baley Party / Formation
caption_attribution_description: This is an image or page from The How and Why Library, a book first published in the United States in 1909. Location: Pioneer Days and Ways, between pages 34 and 35
context_page_description: The Rose–Baley Party was the first European American emigrant wagon train to traverse the 35th parallel route known as Beale's Wagon Road, established by Edward Fitzgerald Beale, from Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico to the Colorado River near present-day Needles, California.
  In 1858, a wealthy businessman from Keosauqua, Iowa, Leonard John Rose, formed the party after hearing stories from gold miners returning from California. He subsequently financed a well-equipped wagon train that included twenty horses and two hundred head of purebred red Durham cattle. He also acquired four large covered wagons and three yoke of oxen to pull them each wagon. The Rose company left Iowa in early April, and in mid-May they were joined by the Baley company, led by a forty-four-year-old veteran of the Black Hawk War, Gillum Baley. Their combined outfits numbered twenty wagons, forty men, fifty to sixty women and children, and nearly five hundred head of cattle. John Udell, a 62-year-old Baptist minister kept a daily journal of the party's travels, recording the locations of their campsites, documenting their progress, and noting the availability of resources.
context_section_description: During the summer of 1858, a large emigrant wagon train became the first to traverse Beale's 35th parallel route to Mohave country. A wealthy businessman from Keosauqua, Iowa, Leonard John Rose, known as L.J. Rose, formed a company with his family of seven, his foreman, Alpha Brown, and his family, and seventeen grubstakers, workers who were not paid a salary, but given food and board in exchange for their labor. Rose was born in Rottenburg, Germany in 1827; at the age of eight, he immigrated to the United States. In 1892, writing in The Californian, he identified what motivated him to leave Iowa, where he had built several successful businesses:
  In 1858 some miners who had just returned from California so fired my imagination with descriptions of its glorious climate, wealth of flowers, and luscious fruits, that I was inspired with an irresistible desire to experience in person the delights to be found in the land of plenty.
  To finance the venture, Rose sold the majority of his assets, and after paying off his debts was left with $30,000, then a considerable amount of money. These funds enabled him to finance an especially well-equipped wagon train that included twenty horses, including two Morgan fillies and a Morgan stallion named Black Morrill; their combined value exceeded $3,000. He also purchased two hundred head of red Durham cattle, which he planned to resell in California for profit. To complete the train, Rose acquired four large ox-drawn prairie schooner style covered wagons, each required three yokes (i.e. six oxen) to pull each wagon.  Three wagons were loaded with supplies, and the fourth was used by Alpha Brown and his family. Rose's family traveled in a small wagon that had once been used as an ambulance, which was pulled by a pair of mules. 
  According to Baley, political and economic factors prompted two Hedgpeth and two Baley families to leave northwestern Missouri for California in early 1858. One factor was the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which admitted Nebraska into the Union as a free territory and granted Kansas the right to decide on the legality of slavery within the state. The resulting tensions between pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups fueled conflict near the Missouri state line, affecting its western counties, including Nodaway, where the Baleys and Hedgpeths lived. In Baley's opinion, the financial Panic of 1857 further contributed to instability in the region, driving many mid-westerners to seek a better life in California. The combined Baley-Hedgpeth outfits were led by a forty-four-year-old veteran of the Black Hawk War, Gillum Baley, and comprised eight Murphy wagons, sixty-two oxen, seventy-five head of cattle, and several riding horses. They employed half-a-dozen grubstakers to tend their stock.
caption: A "prairie schooner" covered wagon, 1909
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