As the party approached Death Valley—at that point an uncharted expanse of desert—the mood grew particularly grim. Sitting around the campfire a few nights after Manly had broken down in tears, one man described the region as the “Creator’s dumping place,” where he “left the worthless dregs after making a world.” Another said it must be “the very place where Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt,” only the pillar had been “broken up and spread around the country.”
