Diamond Mountain
The mapmakers won't print it, says Frank, but back up there on the other side of Diamond Mountain is where the old Trail came through. Two squaws were picking pin.on nuts one day…
Continental Divide
And note this. The Nez Perces, like the Walla Wallas, lived in a country that lay outside the boundary of the United States. They were probably Spanish Indians, though no one could…
Walla Walla
They were land travelers again when on April 27 they met a roaming band of Walla Wallas (kindred of the Nez Perces) and their chief. The captains, who called him…
End of the Spanish Empire
Toward the end of the Columbia's winter stay the Americans had witnessed the incidents that produced the "Nootka Sound Controversy." Vancouver Island, which was not yet so named, was Spanish…
Claiming Oregon for America
So [Robert Gray in 1792] gave the United States a claim recognized by the polity of nations. Discovery and entrance of a river mouth gave the discovering nation sovereignty over the valley…
San Buenaventura River
Escalante could have reached [Great Salt Lake] in less than two days' travel and that he did not make the journey is inexplicable. It is all the more so because,…
Cook’s Accomplishment
[Cook by 1779] forever destroyed two shining myths, erasing the Southern Continent and the Northwest Passage from the map of human ignorance. He added great stores of knowledge to the…
Oregon
A great name has been found. Rogers was to make it Ourigan in his second proposal, 1772, and in 1778 Carver was to use the spelling that endured, Oregon. No…
American Territorialism
At the beginning of his climactic volume Francis Parkman says, "The most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this continent was: Shall France remain here or shall…
English Land Charters to the Pacific
The Pacific was so near that the charters of Massachusetts ( 1628 and 1691) granted the colony the full extent of the land west to the ocean. Virginia (second charter…
Scott’s Bluff
Miller's paintings of Scott's Bluff and Chimney Rock are reproduced in our plates. The convention of Western books requires me to remind the reader that the former were named for…
Last 36 Miles to Salt Lake
By the testimony of every diarist, the thirty-six last miles, from the Weber to the Salt Lake Valley, were worse than anything on the whole road. It was as if…
Green River Basin to the Mormons
Two days into the land of promise, they saw little that was promising. Pilot Butte and then Church Butte, well-known landmarks were on their left, to the southeast. Far to…
Casper to Independence Rock
They would learn, and their guides and experienced wagonmasters would warn later corners, that the fifty miles between Last Crossing and the Sweetwater were the worst stretch of trail between…
Crossing the 98th Meridian
They did not know it, and their journals reflect it only in half-comprehended observations, but they had come into the West. Their crossing of the Loup Fork was almost directly…