In late summer Sage returned west to Fort Lancaster on the South Platte. He left the fort on 10 September 1842 with the intention of visiting Taos in Mexican Territory. With four companions he followed the Taos Trail southward over the Platte-Arkansas divide. The fourth day out the party reached Jimmy Camp and Sage wrote of it in his journal:
"Our place of stay was in a sweet little valley enclosed by piny ridges. The entrance leading to it is through a defile of hills from whose rugged sides protrude vast piles of rock, that afford a pass of only fifty or a hundred yards in width. An abundance of grass greets the eye, arrayed in the loveliness of summer's verdancy, and blooming wild-flowers nod to the breeze as enchantingly as when the fostering hand of spring first awoke them to life and to beauty.
"The creek derives its name from Daugherty, a trader who was murdered upon it several years since. At the time he was on his way to the Arkansas with a quantity of goods, accompanied by a Mexican. The latter, anxious to procure a few yards of calico that constituted a part of the freight, shot him in cold blood and hastened to Taos with his ill-gottn gains, where he unblushingly boasted of his inhuman achievement."(1)
Rufus Sage and his companions remained at Jimmy Camp for five days. The extended stay gave them time to explore the surrounding hills. Sage found several geological specimens as well as outcroppings of coal in the vicinity of Daugherty's Creek. Fresh meat came in the form of three buffalo cows which chanced into the line of fire. That night the scent of the butchered cows attracted a sow bear and her cub; two shots from the ever-present rifles sent the pair scampering to safety. The final night of their stay in Jimmy Camp, the Sage party was visited by two old mountaineers, Fitzpatrick and Van Dusen. Fitzpatrick had earlier in the year guided a party of emigrants from Missouri to Oregon, and was now returning with dispatches from the West Coast settlers to officials in Washington, D.C.
After leaving Jimmy Camp on 11 September 1842, Sage drifted into further adventures in the west. A length, he returned to the States to begin work on his journals. The result was a book entitled Rocky Mountain Life, first printed in 1846. Several editions followed. The book quickly became a bestseller of its time, and the story of the Sage party's stay on Daugherty's Creek became known nationwide.
The second account of Jimmy Camp came from the hand of Francis Parkman in 1846. Parkman, wtih his friend and relative Quincy Adams Shaw had left St. Louis on 18 April 1846 "on a tour of curiosity and amusement to the Rocky Mountains."(2) The two had spent most of late spring and early summer in the vicinity of Fort Laramie, traveling with a band of Sioux into the Black Hills of what is now eastern Wyoming. Towards the middle of the summer Parkman and several of his companions began the journey home. Their route began south along the Taos Trail. On 18 August 1846 they reached the southern edge of Black Forest in present central Colorado. Parkman/s account reads:
"Nooned on Black Squirrel Creek after traversing a fine piece of pine woods. In the afternoon, a thunder-storm gathered upon the mountains. Pike's Peak and the rest were as black as ink. We caught the edge of the storm, but it had passed by the time we arrived at Jamie's Camp, where several little streams were tumbling down to the bottom in waterfalls."(3)
This account of Jimmy Camp comes not from Parkman's famous book, The Oregon Trail, but from his private journals, which were first edited by Mason Wade in 1947. Dorothy Price Shaw found this passage (as well as that of Steele which follows) while she was researching an article on Jimmy Camp for publication in the Colorado Magazine, of January 1950.
The third early account of Jimmy Camp comes from the journal of John Stele. Steele had wintered over in the old Pueblo area with other members of the Mormamn Battalion, and in the late spring of 1847 was on his way to Salt Lake. His journal, later published in the Utah Historical Quarterly of January 1933, has the following entry for 26 May 1847: "...camped James Camp him that James' Peak was named for."(4)
Steele seems to have been somewhat confused as to the origin of the Jimmy Camp name. He obviously thought that the name came from Dr. Edwin James of the Long Expedition of 1820. Dr. James was the first white man to have climbed Pikes Peak and, early on, the mountain - but not the camp - had been named for him.
FOOTNOTES
(1) - Rufus B. Sage, Rocky Mountain Life(Lincoln:Univ. of Nebraka Press, 1982, p.218.
(2) - Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail (New York: Airmont Publishing Co., Inc.), p.15.
(3) - Francis Parkman, The Journals of Francis Parkman, ed. Mason Wade (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1947), p.472.
(4) - John Steele, "Extracts from the Journal of John Steele," Utah Historical Quarterly, VI (January, 1933, p.13f.