Samuel Clemens Opines About Skull Valley

It seems that Mr. Samuel Longhorne Clemens opined about the harshness of Skull Valley. Local broadcast journalist Ken Verdoia continues his interview with historian Dennis Defa over the history of the Goshute Indians in the harsh environment of Skull Valley.

Verdoia: By the early 1860s when a young writer by the name of Samuel Clemens transits the [Skull Valley] area, he comments that he has seen the most miserable form of human existence. You reference it in your chapter. His view of the Goshute people from, I would assume, the Overland Stage route, is one of a horrific existence on a horrific landscape. Is that one of the consequences of this conflict between Goshute and increasing white settlement?

Defa: It is. It's a direct result. To go across the desert in a stage, and especially someone like Samuel Clemens who comes from Missouri, where it is so green and it is so lush that for many of these people, as you read their journals, their descriptions would, would make one think that they had arrived on the backside of the moon, they just could not appreciate, nor could they understand, that kind of a landscape. It provided them with no references in terms of what their experiences had been. It was an area to get through as fast as possible.

LDS lesson learned in an LSD World:

• Samuel Clemens was smart