San Antonio College Library

Everett Ruess was twenty years old when he vanished into the canyonlands of southern Utah, spawning the enduring myth of a romantic desert wanderer. It was 1934, and Ruess was in the fifth year of a quest to record wilderness beauty in works of art; their value was recognized by such contemporary artists as Dorthea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston. From his home in Los Angeles, Ruess walked, hitchhiked, and rode burros up the California coast,...

In July 1776 a pair of Franciscan friars, Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, were charged by the governor of New Mexico with discovering a route across the unknown Southwest to the new Spanish colony in California. They had other goals as well, some of them secret: converting the indigenous natives along the way to the true faith, discovering a semi-mythical paradise known as Teguayó, hunting for sources of gold and...