The Overland Diaries of Washington Peck

When my grandfather gave me Washington Peck’s 1858 wagon trail diary, I felt very honored, but then I realized that it came with a responsibility: his story needed to be preserved and shared. As I struggled to decipher the fading handwriting, his cryptic comments presented mysteries that took years to solve. Peck wrote that one winter day in Missouri was colder than the coldest day in Canada the year before. He came from Canada? Another entry stated that eight years earlier he had left the