Word: lansford
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Villain of the piece was an unscrupulous publicity man, Lansford W. Hastings, the original California booster. Hastings had written the book of the year, The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California. In it he had said: "The most direct route, for the California emigrants, would be to leave the Oregon route, about two hundred miles east from Fort Hall; thence bearing southwest to the Salt Lake; and then continuing down to the Bay of San Francisco." Says DeVoto: "When Lansford Hastings wrote that passage . . . neither he nor anyone else had ever taken the trail here blithely imagined...