Death Valley 49ers accounts, 1849; the founding legend of the desert camps
Among the forty-niners who staggered out of Death Valley in 1849, one carried a piece of silver ore so pure a gunsmith made a rifle sight from it. Where he picked it up he could never say. The Lost Gunsight set off decades of searches through the Panamints and helped open the desert mining camps, and it has never been found.
Panamint country, west of Death Valley (Inyo County)
See it on the map
Other places on the map within a couple of hours of here.
