Misssourian Robert Mason Clark was twenty-one when he left the lush prairies and bluffs of Marion County and its biggest city, Palmyra. Along with six other Northeast Missouri men--his brother Sam, Bill Anderson, Frank See, Mike Heckard, Carson Gatewood and Henley Maddox--Bob Clark sought adventure by crossing the plains of North America to find gold in California. He returned by the Pacific Ocean route through Nicaragua, the Gulf of Mexico, and up the Mississippi River.

This is an account of the hardships, delights, discoveries and thrilling encounters during Robert Clark's gold rush journeys of April 1850 through January 1852, when upon reaching Saint Louis, he successfully returned home by horseback to the family farm in Marion County, Missouri.

Supplementary information is provided by Marsha K. Clark, editor of this memoir and the wife of one of Robert Mason Clark's great-grandsons.