Lewis Hector Garrard

Lewis Hector Garrard (15 June 1829 – 7 July 1887) was an American travel writer who wrote an enduring book, Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail, about his visit to the southwestern United States in 1846-1847.

Background Garrard, christened Hector Lewis Garrard, was the son of a prominent family in Cincinnati, Ohio On 1 Sept 1846, Garrard, 17 years old, joined a caravan in Westport Landing, Missouri to travel along the Santa Fe Trail to New Mexico. He stopped off at Bent's Fort for two months and continued on to Taos with a company of Mountain Men to avenge the death of Charles Bent in the Taos Revolt. While in Taos, Garrard attended the trial of some of the Mexicans and Pueblos who had revolted against U.S. rule of New Mexico, newly captured in the Mexican–American War. Garrard wrote the only eye witness account of the trial and hanging of six convicted men.

Wah-to-Yah is the only well-known book written by Garrard. It has won a secure place in the literature of the American West. Garrard returned home after his 10-month trip and apparently never visited the West again.

Wah-to-Yah, the title, is the Indian name for the Spanish Peaks in southern Colorado. The book is often compared with Francis Parkman's, The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life. Both are by young men visiting the West in 1846, but Garrard's account is "the fresher, the more revealing, the more engaging, the less labored."