Mile 1285: Henefer, UT
"From the confluence of the Echo Creek, the Weber flows six miles through velvety meadows starred with wild flowers and then slips into the mouth of a rock-bound canyon where,…
Mile 1280: Echo City, UT
"Exhibit A is Pulpit Rock, where, so the townspeople told us, Brigham Young stood to preach yo his followers in 1847 on the way to their new home in the…
Soda Springs
"Lydia Waters came equipped with lemon extract and sugar and had an epicurean morning among the springs while her company lay over to recruit. She broke off some of the…
Balsam Gum
"Then they had stores of balsam gum from the fir grove traversed on the divide. It was not only good to chew but healthful."
The Elephant
"It was not the river alone which demanded its pound of flesh. 'The Elephant'—that fantastic name for the heaped-up terror of the trail—took its share as well. the horror of…
Green River Desert
"In '49, when the laboring, panting, exhausted line of animals and duct-caked humans arrived within ten miles of green River, they found broken country and no definite road. They must…
Feeding Oxen Without Grass
"The oxen were unyoked, fed and watered out of supplies carried in the wagons. Grass here [before the Bear River on Sublette's Cutoff] was nonexistent, and the normal amount at…
Rebuilding Fort Bridger
For a long time [after the Utah War] the troops maintained an uncertain tenancy at Jim Bridger's old trading post . . . naturally much building was necessary; and, with…
Colonel Johnson at Fort Bridger
"The little known Rocky Mountain country could be terrifying in winter. While Johnson's men were still east of South Pass the temperature dropped below zero, and blizzards set in. There…
Brief History of Mormon Settlement in Utah
"At the time the Mormons chose their new homeland on the Great Salt Lake and settled down to farm, their colony was in Mexican domain several hundred miles beyond the…
Fort Bridger and the Mormons
"The beautiful and fertile valley of Blacks Fork, with Fort Bridger standing squat and picturesque in its midst, was well known to the Mormons. The first small Mormon advance party…
Mile 1193: Fort Bridger
"The majority of the migration arrived at Fort Bridger in the month of July. . . . The valley of Blacks Fork is beautiful out of all reason, like a…
Mile 1160 to 1193: Hams Fork to Fort Bridger
"The wagons had various routes as the years went by, but these all tended to center near the confluence of Hams and Blacks Forks. Both the original trail and the…
Mile 1134 to 1160: Green River to Black’s Fork
"From the original Oregon trail crossing [about twenty miles upriver, near present-day Fontanelle], the early wagon trains converged toward what was later known as the Lombard ferry trail. the two…
Mile 1134: Green River
"The trouble with the Green River Desert was not lack of water. There was plenty, but it was all in the Green River—'by far the most formidable stream to be…