[From James G. Scrugham, Nevada: The Narrative of the Conquest of a Frontier Land (1935), vol. I, pp. 101-110]

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This trade had continued from Escalante's time and extended to the Utah Indians on the Sevier River. The trade consisted of an exchange of manufactured articles of small value for furs and for Indian women and children sold into slavery to the Mexicans. This slave trade continued with little opposition until it was ended by the action of Governor Brigham Young of Utah in 1853. It was not until 1829 that any of the trading routes from Santa Fe was extended across Nevada to Southern California ; this was a year subsequent to Ogden's exploration of the Humboldt Valley. In the article on "The Santa Fe Trail" referred to in the footnote, Mr. Hill says : "One of the factors of prime importance in the opening of the trails to the far west at this time was the Missouri-Santa Fe trade and its demand for mules. California had a great number of mules which were noted for their size and quality. This led to the organization of numerous expeditions to that country in the effort to supply the demand of the Missouri traders. Perhaps the first of these expeditions was the one led by Antonio Armijo.

"In the fall and winter of 1829-'30, a company of some sixty Mexican traders under the command of Antonio Armijo succeeded in opening a road from New Mexico to California by a route north of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. The expedition set out from

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Abiquiu on November 7, 1829, and arrived at the mission of San Gabriel on January 31, 1830. After a month spent in California the return journey was begun March 1st and completed April 25 when the party reached Jemez, New Mexico.

"Armijo, instead of following the Rivera and Dominguez-Escalante trail (the `Old Spanish Trail') northwest to the Navajo, Dolores and Gunnison rivers, took a more southerly route west from Abiquiu to Canon Largo and down that stream to its junction with the San Juan. Crossing the San Juan he proceeded down the valley (a few miles to the north of the river) across Las Animas and La Plata rivers and as far as the Mancos, which he descended to its junction with the San Juan. Here he re-crossed the San Juan and directed his course to the west across the Rio de Chelly to the Colorado which he crossed on the eighth of December at the `Ford of the Fathers,' apparently the one used by Dominguez and Escalante on their return from the Great Basin in 1776. Here the party turned to the north and on the twentieth reached `Rio Severo.' For the next ten days they seem to have directed their course, in a general way, down the Sevier River to its outlet in Sevier Lake which their itinerary mentions on December 29. On the first of January they reached what they supposed to be the Rio Grande (Colorado) but which probably was the Virgin River   

"Of their return journey, which was made in a month less time than the outgoing trip, nothing is known except that it began on the first of March and ended at Jemez, New Mexico, on the twenty-fifth of April."

In the same year a company of American trappers and traders under Ewing Young, set out from Taos in New Mexico and travelled west to California. The route followed is not known. The general supposition has been that Young entered California by the Spanish Trail. Kit Carson was a member of the party, and fifteen years later he was acting as Fremont's guide over the Spanish Trail, as already noted. Fremont makes no mention of Carson's familiarity with the country, as he had along other portions of his route; the inference is rather strong that Carson had not travelled over the trail before. In 1831 Young led a second company from Taos to California, along a route not definitely known but supposed to have been south of the Colorado River. In the autumn of 1847 following the establishment of the church of Latter-day Saints, popularly known as Mormons, at Great Salt Lake, a small party with ox-teams was sent over the Escalante and Spanish Trails to Los Angeles to secure seeds and grain for the spring sowing. This party evidently returned to Great Salt Lake by the Humboldt and Raft River route, having joined a large party of Latter-day Saints recently discharged from military duty in the so-called "Mormon battalion" at San Diego. The Latter-day Saints continued the use of the southern route, but only occasionally until they began to establish small colonies at various points along the way for the two-fold purpose of expansion and of providing stations at which Mormon emigrants from Coast points on the Pacific could stop. This use of the route led to its being called the Mormon Trail. Until 1849, however, it was still known as the Spanish Trail, and most of the travel over it was by the Santa Fe traders. These traders travelled in caravans consisting of two hundred or more people for mutual protection from marauding

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Our general course was by the great Spanish Trail, and we made as rapid traveling as possible with the view of over-taking the large Mexican Caravan which was slowly wending its way back to the Capitol of New Mexico. This caravan consisted of some two or three hundred Mexican traders who go, on one year, to the Californian coast with a supply of blankets and other articles of New Mexican manufacture; and, having disposed of their goods, invest the proceeds in Californian mules and horses which they drive back across the desert. These people often realize large profits, as animals purchased for a mere trifle on the coast, bring high prices in Santa Fe. This caravan had left Pueblo de Los Angeles sometime before us, and was consequently several days in advance of our party upon the trail—a circumstance which did us great injury, as their large caballada (containing nearly a thousand head) ate up or destroyed the grass and consumed the water at the few camping grounds upon the route.

We finally overtook and passed this party, after some eight days' travel in the desert. Their appearance was grotesque in the extreme. Imagine upward of two hundred Mexicans dressed in every variety of costume, from the embroidered jacket of the wealthy Californian, with its silver bell-shaped buttons, to the scanty habiliments of the skin-clad Indians, and you may form some idea of their dress. Their caballada contained not only horses and mules, but here and there a stray burro (Mexican jack-ass) destined to pack wood across the rugged hills of New Mexico. The line of march of this strange cavalcade occupied an extent of more than a mile                                                         

Many of these people had no fire-arms, being only provided with the short bow and arrows usually carried by the New Mexico herdsmen. Others were armed with old English muskets, condemned long ago as unserviceable, which had, in all probability been loaded for years and now bid fair to do more damage at the stock than at the muzzle. . . .

Near this motley crowd we sojourned for one night; and passing through their camp after dark, I was struck with its picturesque appearance.

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by Walker in 1833-4. From the starting points on the Missouri their route followed the Oregon Trail to Bear Valley in Utah. In order to avoid the long detour to the north which would result from following this trail to Fort Hall, the emigrants bound for California sought a more direct route from Bear Valley to the Coast. A choice of several routes was presented on their arrival in Bear Valley, but all of them necessarily converged to the head-waters of the Humboldt for the long journey across the plains of Nevada. At the point where the Oregon Trail left Bear River the stream bends abruptly from the northwesterly course and pursues a southwesterly course for approximately one hundred miles and flows into Great Salt Lake. The Bidwell party, as noted, followed the river nearly down to the lake and then went west, in a general way following Walker's route of 1833. When Walker returned from California in 1834, he left the Humboldt in order to avoid the nearly waterless wastes north of Great Salt Lake and went over to some tributary of the Snake, probably Raft River. J. B. Chiles, a member of the Bidwell party, returned to the east and in 1843 set out with a band of emigrants bound for California. His party followed the Oregon Trail to Fort Hall where Joseph Walker was engaged to guide it. Walker led the party up the Raft River, across the divide into Thousand Springs Valley and so to the head waters of the Humboldt. He subsequently guided the party far to the south along the eastern base of the Sierra in order to avoid the difficulties of crossing the mountains, which he had good reason to dread, and took them through Walker's Pass into California. Needless to say this portion of his route was not generally followed by emigrants in haste to reach California, who did not hesitate to cross the mountains through the various passes that were discovered. His route up Raft River to the City of Rocks and to Humboldt Wells came to be one of the most travelled roads of the emigrants. Subsequently a shorter route known as Hudspeth's cut-off was opened from the bend in Bear River going nearly west to the Raft River route which it joined near the City of Rocks, just east of the intersection of the present state lines of Utah, Idaho and Nevada.

All of the routes to the north of Great Salt Lake involved an extensive detour for emigrants bound for California. In 1845 Fremont crossed the long desert from the southern end of the lake to the springs at Pilot Peak and so opened a passable route in this location. The advantage of this route in the saving of time, its sole advantage, was persistently advertised to the California-bound emigrants as the Hastings' Cut-off and was followed by some ' of them, frequently with 'disastrous results. For those equipped with pack-trains or with horses and light wagons it offered a reasonably safe and time-saving route; for the slow-going ox-teams the long stretch of absolute desert meant inevitable hardship and menace to life. All these routes to the west from Great Salt Lake as distinguished from the roads following the Escalante and Spanish trails were known as the northern routes.

These northern and southern routes were the main roads followed by the emigrants who crossed the plains to California in their covered wagons in that epoch making trek of the pioneers. Other routes were occasionally followed by single groups of emigrants hastening to their goal beyond the Sierra, urged some-times by unexpected delay, by lateness of the season, by lack of

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provisions, to take desperate chances with fate. So it was with the Jay Hawkers party arriving in Salt Lake City too late in the sea-son to hope for a safe crossing of the Sierra and urged to take an untried route across the desert to Walker's Pass. After untold hardship they reached Death Valley in the winter of 1849, and there disbanding, with every man for himself, hurried on to California, leaving some members of the party in lonely graves. The route of this party was apparently from some point on the Spanish Trail in the vicinity of Parowan, Utah, southwesterly through southern Nevada north of Charleston Mountain, crossing the Amargossa Valley into Death Valley which it named. Later Fremont, in 1854, at the head of a private expedition followed much the same route but further to the north, along the 38th degree of latitude, in an attempt to locate a line for a railroad that while being a northern route, for political reasons, would be far enough south to escape the rigors of winter and the obstacles of the high Sierra. In 1859 the government sent an expedition under Capt. J. H. Simpson to locate a wagon road from Camp Floyd near Lake Utah to Genoa, a Mormon settlement in western Nevada. The road so located became the route over which later passed the famous Pony Express and the Overland Mail, and now for the most part known as the Lincoln Highway.

Many of the Oregon pioneers went up the Willamette River and over into Rogue River Valley, where they settled. For these settlers the route by way of Fort Hall and the Columbia involved a detour of many weary miles. In order to secure a more direct route, Jesse Applegate with a small party of men who had settled in southwestern Oregon, laid out a new trail in 1846 which, starting from Rogue River, went in an easterly direction to lower Klamath Lake, thence south of Goose Lake into Nevada and, crossing the Black Rock Desert, formed a junction with the emigrant road on the Humboldt at a point near the present site of Mill City. Thence the Applegate party went up the Humboldt and on to Fort Hall in order to conduct the emigrants bound for southwestern Oregon over the new route. Unfortunately the difficulties of the route were greater than had been anticipated and much suffering ensued; added to other troubles the Oregon Indians had become hostile and murdered several of the emigrants when they had almost reached the end of the journey. The route was never extensively used.

Emigrants following the Humboldt or other established routes did not in the main follow well-beaten paths but simply kept in touch with springs and water-courses and scattered out over the level country in order to secure better forage for their stock. For this reason the emigrant trails were not always well-marked roads except when canyons and passes through hills and mountains made it necessary for all wagon trains to converge to a single path. For similar reasons the emigrant trails across the Sierra converged to the various passes that had been discovered by the pioneers. From the sink of the Humboldt the emigrants sought roads through various passes over the mountains, but the main travel went either through the Truckee or the Henness Pass, or bore to the south through Daggett and Johnson, or Carson and Luther Passes and so to California. Although the methods of travel have changed from the saddle and ox-wagon to the railroad and the

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automobile, the old trails are still followed over which the emigrant toiled in his covered wagon with his rifle constantly at hand.

After the crossing by the Bidwell party in 1841 and by the Chiles party in 1843 probably no year had passed when at least one small emigrant party had not left the main trail to Oregon and crossed Nevada to California ; but only meagre records are known to exist of these earliest of the pioneers. The Chiles party was the first to cross Nevada with wagons. It carried along a complete set of iron work for a saw mill to be erected in California. It was compelled to leave both wagons and contents near Owen's Lake at the southern end of the Sierra. The Chiles party consisted of approximately fifty people, including several families with women and children.

In 1844 the Stevens-Murphy party consisting of fifty men and nearly as many women and children followed Walker's route from Fort Hall to the Humboldt. It crossed the desert from the Humboldt Sink to the Truckee River and was the first party known to have followed the Truckee River to the pass of the same name and to have crossed the Sierra there. It is said to have named the river and the pass for an Indian chief whose name, oddly enough, bore no resemblance to Truckee. The party was delayed near Donner Lake and the Indian had befriended it. His odd manners reminded one of the party of an acquaintance named Truckee so he gave him that name. Subsequently the name was attached to the river and the pass.

In 1845 a small party of some twelve men travelling by saddle and pack animals crossed Nevada and arrived at Sutter's Fort in September. Another party of fifteen men under William Sublette crossed later; and the Grigsby-Ide party with some fifty men and as many women and children arrived at the Fort on Christmas day. All of these parties, so far as known, followed the Walker route from Fort Hall to the Humboldt. During the fall of this year Fremont, as already noted, crossed the desert south of Great Salt Lake, from Jordan River to Pilot Peak.

Among emigrants bound for California with whom Bryant had travelled from the Missouri to Fort Bridger was the Donner Party

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whose cruel fate furnishes the most tragic chapter in the annals of western emigration. Persuaded to follow the new route to Great Salt Lake it was greatly delayed by the difficulties of the unmarked trail and the lack of a competent guide so that it arrived at the lake late in the season. In the hope of regaining the lost time the cut-off south of the lake was followed, another disastrous blunder. The party reached the Humboldt late in September, and hurried on in order to cross the Sierra before the winter

[picture]

DONNER MONUMENT

snows should fall. Arriving in the Truckee meadows late in October, with worn-out stock, it halted for a few days to rest, and recuperate the famished animals. These unfortunate delays were rendered doubly disastrous by an unusually early appearance of winter snows in the Sierra, already beginning to fall when the party reached the little lake just below the summit in Truckee Pass, ever after to be known as Donner Lake and to be associated with the terrible fate of the emigrants. Of a total number of eighty-four who reached the lake, only forty-eight survived, the others perished from starvation and exposure, either at the last camp near Donner Lake or in a desperate effort to cross the mountains in the dead of winter.

During the next two years, 1847-1848, the emigration across Nevada was light. Approximately seventy wagons with perhaps

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The colony of Latter-Day Saints at Great Salt Lake soon established a large and lucrative trade with emigrant trains which left

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