The Portolá Expedition: Legend of the Lost Deserters

By: William Ferrier Jr

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Seven men vanished from Spain’s first over-land march into California.
This is the story the diaries erased—and the gold that doomed them.

1769. Governor Gaspar de Portolá leads soldiers, missionaries, and ships toward the mythical ports of San Diego and Monterey. Scurvy hollows the ranks, rations rot, and earthquakes rattle the coast. Deep in the fog-shrouded redwoods, five soldados de cuera and two Native scouts discover river sand that glitters with raw gold. Bound by desperation, they desert under cover of night, vowing to survive the wilderness and return for the mother lode.

Their flight triggers a relentless hunt across untamed Alta California—a labyrinth of plank-canoe villages, salt-white deserts, and mountains that keep tally of every sin. Commander Portolá swears to drag the deserters back in irons; wolves and hunger have other plans. As greed corrodes loyalty, each man faces the brutal question: what is the price of fortune when the land itself demands tribute?

The Portolá Expedition: Legend of the Lost Deserters re-imagines the true journals of California’s founding march, weaving the visceral survival of The Revenant with the gold-fever paranoia of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It is a tale of bells that fall silent, maps written in blood, and a country that never forgets the weight men try to steal from it.

Follow the footprints history left out—and discover how California’s first road was paved not by empire or faith, but by fool’s gold and five empty saddles.