Sometime in 1868, Captain Joe Walker went to live with his nephew (probably Jeemes) in Contra Costa County near San Francisco. Joseph R. Walker passed away on October 27, 1876, at the age of 77. He is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery in Martinez, California. The lives of many of the leaders and heroes of the west ended badly. Some died young like Jedediah Smith at the hands of Indians because they were careless or arrogant, and some died with little dignity like Joe Meek who died in poverty and bitterness because of the treatment his Indian family received from whites.
Jim Bridger was driven from his trading post in Utah by the Mormons and spent his last years in a small house in Kansas City nearly blind, watching the West and wishing he was "back there among the mountains again, you can see so much further in that country."
I hope you have enjoyed this journey of Joseph Walker's life and the characters that were party of it. Hopefully, like me, you have developed a fondness for Captain Joe and a sincere appreciation and respect for the man he was and what he did for the Old West. I shall miss him :)
Next time...we will explore some myths and mysteries of the Old West.
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On This Day in History: On February 8, 1887, President Grover Cleveland, in a well-meaning but ultimately flawed attempt to assimilate Native Americans, signs an act to end tribal control of reservations and divide their land into individual holdings.