John Nugent

John Nugent ( – March 29, 1880) was an Irish journalist and U.S. government agent. Nugent was born in County Galway but travelled with his parents to the United States at an early age. He was educated at a Catholic college in New Jersey. In the 1840s, he worked as a journalist with the New York Herald. In 1848, Nugent was leaked a copy of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which would end the Mexican–American War after it was amended and approved by the Senate. Nugent was questioned by senators but did not reveal his source. Subsequently, Nugent traveled with a party of Forty-Niners from New York, led by John Coffee Hays, that traveled to California from San Antonio, Texas, over the Southern Route, through El Paso across New Mexico Territory to Fort Yuma. The party pioneered a shortcut on Cooke's Wagon Road that saved a long journey to the south. That route became known as the Tucson Cutoff. Later Nugent's Pass and Nugent's Springs on that route were named for Nugent, who gave his notes of the journey to aid Lt. John G. Parke in his expedition to find a railroad route from the Pima Villages to the Rio Grande. In 1851, Nugent became owner-editor of San Francisco Herald. In 1856 he opposed the re-establishment of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, an extra-legal organization for the preservation of law and order. His failure to support it was an unpopular editorial decision that caused the paper to collapse a few years later in 1860. This was an event from which his career never recovered although he continued in journalism and an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate.