Walker, Joseph Reddeford (1789–1876)

US explorer, mountain man, and guide. His journeys helped to open up California to the east. Walker engaged in extensive fur trapping and trading in the upper Missouri region in the 1820s and 1830s, giving his name to Walker Lake and Walker's Pass. In 1833, he set out from Missouri, took the South Pass through the Continental Divide (the land separating rivers flowing north and east from those flowing west), crossed the Great Basin, traversed the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and finally entered California. This route became the California Fork of the Overland Trail.

Walker was born in Tennessee but moved to Missouri in 1819. He was employed as a guide on the US government survey of the Santa Fe Trail in 1825, and helped to found Independence, Missouri in 1827, becoming the town's first sheriff. In 1832 he led a group of fur trappers in the northern Rockies, before making his epic journey the following year. He traded with the American Indians of the Great Basin for ten years, before leading the first settlers along the California Fork in 1843; he also guided prospectors during the 1849 California gold rush. In 1861 he set out on an expedition to Arizona, discovering rich ore deposits near the present-day town of Prescott. During the 1860s he led the first US settlers into Arizona.