In the 1860s, a formerly enslaved man made his way west and chose something most people wouldn’t — isolation. Nathan Harrison, born into slavery around 1828, gained his freedom and eventually settled alone on Palomar Mountain in San Diego County. At the time, San Diego was barely a town. Fewer than 3,000 people lived here in 1870. Dirt roads. Stagecoaches. Frontier land. Bread cost about 5 cents. Land in the backcountry sold for just a few dollars an acre. While the Transcontinental Railroad was