Luzena recounted her memoirs to her daughter Correnah, in which she describes her journey from the early days in Sacramento, her founding of the “El Dorado” hotel in Nevada City, and her purchase of land in Vaca.
The buzzards and coyotes, driven away by our presence from the horrible feasting, hovered just out of reach.” The enormous lure of gold led to many people embarking on the same westward trails.
Guidebooks purchased by miners (49ers) spoke of how the crucial timing was to a successful journey; therefore, it was not uncommon to have multiple groups of men traveling together.
Abandonment of possessions by caravans traveling the perilous overland trek was common to lighten loads of the wagons through dangerous or muddied roads.
Mason Wilson, Luzena's husband, told her it would be necessary to abandon her dirty, but prized calico apron, and three sides of bacon to spare the oxen on the ever-worsening roads.
The apron would not have made a significant difference in the weight of the wagon but it symbolized the need to prioritize in order to survive the passage over the vast terrains.
Luzena, while her husband was busy fixing the wagon, decided to clean the apron and render the fat out of the bacon to refill her lard can and leave the rest as he requested.
Broke and desperate to start anew, Luzena found a man with an idle team who said he would take her, her two children, a stove, and two sacks of flour to Nevada City for seven hundred dollars.
Upon arrival in Nevada City Luzena saw a sign for the Wamac Hotel and remarked, that her being a woman made her decide to take in boarders as a source of income.
Lacking the funds to buy land, Mason set off to cut hay in order to make money, leaving Luzena on her own.
Her final statement in her memoirs remarked how the difficulties of her earlier pioneer days are left far behind in this current age of plenty.
Luzena Stanley Wilson's memoirs present an alternate view of the California Gold Rush in which women are often left out.