William Warner
Authors Patricia Barry of Alturas, CA and Philip Warner, Cousin of Captain Warner, tell the story of the life of Captain William Henry Warner. His military career spans the years 1831, when he entered the US Military Academy, West Point, to his untimely death in 1849 near what is today named the Warner Mountains/Wilderness in North-East California/South-Central Oregon. In 1838, artillery officer Warner was assigned to the first group of Army Topographical Engineers, to help map the “vast wildernesses” that became the United States of America. His many assignments during the 1830s and 1840s included: establishing the NE US-Canadian border; Indian relocation in Central Florida and Georgia to Oklahoma; harbor improvements in the Great Lakes Region; assignment with General Stephen Kearny’s “Army of the West” as they trekked from Ft. Leavenworth, KS, to San Diego, CA, and his resulting involvement in the Battle of San Pasqual (after which he was promoted to Brevet Captain for “gallant and meritorious services in California”); association with western artist John Mix Stanley, who helped draw his maps; and association with subordinate/business partner Lt. William Tecumseh Sherman of Civil War fame. In 1849, he applied for a leave of absence to pursue business opportunities around Sutters Mill, but instead received an order to find a railroad pass thorough the Sierra Mts. At the point when he nearly determined there was no such route, he met his untimely death when his small party, decimated by illness, was attacked by a band of American Indians near what is today the corner of the California-Nevada-Oregon border. Many a locale in NE California/SC Oregon bear his name. His story is one of an intelligent, brave and courageous American soldier, who died in the service of his young country during an important time in American and California History.
