The Stephens-Townsend-Muphy Party party was a well organized party consisting of ten families who were seeking a better future for themselves in California. The fifty member group left Council Bluffs, Iowa on May 22, 1844. They left with a larger group of Oregon bound settlers in a group of forty wagons. They were most famous for being the first wagon train to cross the Sierra Mountains during the expansion of the American West. Fifty travelers left Iowa; 52 arrived in Sacramento (there being two births along the way).

Elisha Stephens was elected captain of the wagon train, because he had spent several years as a mountain man and beaver hunter in the Pacific Northwest. He also had skills as a blacksmith.

Dr. John Townsend, his wife, Elizabeth, and her younger brother, Moses Schallenberger, were going west because he was a man of vision and wanted a chance at grand adventure and opportunity in California. He would become the first licensed physician in California.

The largest family group in the party was headed by Martin Murphy, Sr. Their family was comprised of 23 members. Mr. Murphy was seeking religious, economic, and political freedoms in the West. Another member of the party who played a role in the western emigration as a guide was "Old" Caleb Greenwood.

References

• The Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party, Truckee-Donner Historical Society, Inc.
• Emigrants and extinction: Wildlife impacted by settlement, Sierra Sun
• Caleb Greenwood, Sacramento Bee