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Over the Range

Utah State University Press

Chapter One

(1820–1850)

In the early 1800s, when the words rail road began to be heard in the United States, much of the area west of St. Louis and east of Spanish California was terra incognita for most Americans. At that time, the term rail road (or, somewhat later, railroad) referred to any method of transport that relied on rails laid horizontal to the ground and upon which wheeled vehicles could roll. At this early date, the rails were wooden, but might also be made of iron. Horses or mules likely provided the power to haul cars over such a railroad. By around 1820, however, people began to envision railroads in a more modern way: the rails would be lengths of iron, or perhaps sheet metal, strapped onto wood stringers, and the power would be steam. Although most of the early railroad development occurred in England, this new form of transport had especially strong advocates in the United States, where distances were vast and resources seemingly unlimited. By the mid to late 1820s, even before a railroad was built in the United States, a few visionaries actually believed that this iron road would take the westward moving nation to the Pacific Ocean. Fairly primitive and not especially dependable railroad technology did not dampen their enthusiasm. The fact that Mexico and Britain claimed much of this country west of the Rocky Mountains did not deter their ambitions. After all, intrepid explorers were constantly bringing back encouraging reports about the opportunities and resources in this far western frontier.

One of these explorers was John Charles Frémont, who made his way westward into the area around the Great Salt Lake in the summer of 1843. At this time, Frémont was far from American soil as he moved along a poorly defined boundary between Mexico and Britain. His goal was to find better routes of travel for the people who hoped to settle the Oregon country of northwestern North America—an area claimed by Britain but highly desired by would-be settlers from the westward-expanding United States. But Frémont also had an ulterior motive that was part of a larger agenda of national expansion—to help claim this portion of the North American West for the United States.

Unbeknownst to Frémont and his exploring party at this time, the huge desolate region they now entered was an area of interior drainage: About a quarter-million square miles in size, this region was peculiar in that none of the rain or snow that falls here reaches the sea. As the Frémont party gazed across the area, they saw tall, snow-covered mountains (most of which ran in a north-south direction), broad slopes covered with grasses and desert brush, and vast valley bottoms covered either by sheets of water like the Great Salt Lake or, more commonly, glistening flats of salt. Fascinated by the landscape here, Frémont became obsessed with figuring out what lay in this huge area that would soon be called the Intermountain West.

Frémont knew, and acknowledged, that many others had traveled into portions of this region long before he arrived. These visitors included early Spanish explorers in the 1770s and mountain men and trappers who searched for beaver pelts here in the 1820s and 1830s. Frémont also knew that the area was not only remote but poorly mapped. In fact, one of his missions was to map a large portion of the area that was claimed, but essentially unoccupied, by Mexico. Less than a year later, Frémont confirmed something he had deduced from earlier explorers. In early 1844, he proved to his satisfaction that the region's streams and lakes had no outlet to the sea. Frémont coined the term Great Basin for this region of mountains, desert playas (dry lakes), marshy areas, and scattered lakes. These water bodies were remnants of much larger (and deeper) lakes that had occupied almost half the surface area during the last ice age. That cooler and wetter period had ended just about 10,000 years ago when the climate became warmer and drier. By the mid-1840s, American pioneers trekking to the Oregon country traversed a portion of this area. Most of them, too, considered it a desolate place; getting through it was the dues they had to pay in order to reach a fabled land—the lush green valleys and fir-clad mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Thankfully, Britain gave up claims to this area without firing a shot, but Mexico was not easy to intimidate. The maps by German-born master cartographer Charles Preuss, that resulted from Frémont's reconnaissances in extreme northern Mexico, helped set the stage for the United States taking the region after the bloody, but relatively short, U.S.-Mexican War of 1846–48. In that war, Mexico lost about half its territory, almost a million square miles of land that included the Great Basin. There was intense interest in this area as Americans wanted to know more about the region they had just acquired and that Frémont knew so much about.

Frémont's maps were a perfect source for such information. Under the direction of Preuss, Frémont's expedition of 1844 had mapped as much of the region as they could. By 1848, the Frémont-Preuss map summarizing the state of knowledge about the entire Interior West was published, and it helped the American public visualize the Great Salt Lake and environs (fig. 1–1). On this map, their notations stated that the Great Basin was sparsely inhabited by "miserable" Indians—by which they meant that the native peoples had little in the way of possessions—and they lived a difficult life in a region of marginal resources. The map also showed "Mormon settlements" which were of intense interest to Americans as the Mormons were said to be building a "New Jerusalem" in the desert near the Great Salt Lake.

The Mormons played (and still play) a major role in this part of the West, and their claims here predate the United States' victory over Mexico in 1848. In fact, well before the U.S.-Mexican War began, the area was eyed by the Mormons, or members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormons knew about, and used, the best maps they could find. With earlier maps prepared by Frémont and S. A. Mitchell in hand, the Mormons arrived at the eastern edge of the Great Salt Lake in July 1847. Led by Brigham Young, the Mormons had fled persecution in the Middle West and now sought a place where they could settle and worship unmolested. The Mormons believed that they had left the United States, which had betrayed them by refusing to protect them from mobs. Upon their arrival in Utah, the Latter-day Saints now had the entire region pretty much to themselves—or so they thought. The Indians offered little resistance at first, and the main battle the Saints would have to fight was the physical environment. However, shortly after the Mormons developed their first community (Great Salt Lake City) and began spreading into the Great Basin, gold was discovered in California. That discovery, in February 1848, reshaped the new nation. Although the U.S.-Mexican War was just about to end, and the entire area would soon become part of the United States, few, including the Mormons, could anticipate the effect that the Gold Rush would have on the interior North American West. In 1849, thousands of people found their way to California, either by sea or by land. Some of those who crossed overland entered Utah east of the Great Salt Lake, on the Mormon Trail, circled north to avoid the forbidding Salt Lake Desert, and continued southwestward to follow the Humboldt River Valley in what would later (in 1864) become the state of Nevada. The Gold Rush of 1849 was yet another event in history that brought calls for better—which is to say, faster and safer—forms of travel from the settled eastern United States to the Pacific Coast. By this time, about 1850, it was well understood that the most desirable way to travel on land was by rail.

The opening of the Great Basin to Anglo-American settlement coincided with growing federal interest in the Intermountain West. Most of the federal expeditions to the area, in fact, were both military and scientific in nature. This was the age of what historian William Goetzman calls the "soldier-scientist." The relatively young discipline of geology was one of their skills, and it helped the nation open the West to development. Less than ten years after Frémont's initial exploration of the area, and at just the time that Congress was being lobbied to support the exploration of a railroad route, a team of geological and topographical researchers found themselves on the shore of the Great Salt Lake—a huge inland sea that was among the West's signature landmarks (fig. 1–2). This expedition, like many at the time, focused on resources that could speed the area's development and sustain a railroad as part of the process. The expedition, charged to learn more about the area around the lake, including its mineral resources, vegetation, and climate, was led by Captain Howard Stansbury, for whom Stansbury Point and the Stansbury Mountains are named. As tensions began to mount between the Mormons and the federal government over who would control the region, some saw Stansbury's presence as a way for the United States to increase its visibility on the Mormons' doorstep. Stansbury was wise enough, however, to employ Mormons as part of his survey team. It was, in fact, Stansbury, who helped put the area around the Promontory Mountains on the map, as it were. In a remarkable reconnaissance under difficult conditions, Stansbury helped demystify the unusual geography of this enigmatic lake, into which one particularly prominent feature—the brooding Promontory Mountains—extended.

As seen on Frémont's 1848 Map of Oregon and Upper California, the Promontory Mountains are easily the most significant landmark in the northern part of the Great Salt Lake, a long peninsula separating Bear River Bay on the east from Spring Bay on the west. These mountains also continue northward, becoming more fragmented as they rise above the surrounding countryside. Delineated in more detail on a modern map at a much larger scale (fig. 1–3), the mountains are still the most apparent feature at the northern end of the lake. That increased detail is a result of technology that enables the accurate depiction of the topography, vegetation, and other features of the environment.

To today's airline passenger gazing down from an altitude of 36,000 feet, the Promontory Mountains appear as stark and forbidding as they did in Frémont's time (fig. 1–4) In this northeastward-looking air view taken in December 2006, the mountains separate the waters of Spring Bay and the northwestern end of the Great Salt Lake (lower left) from the shallow margins of Bear River Bay (center right). The mantle of windblown snow and the mountain's steep-sided canyons accentuate Promontory's harsh character in this view. This was, and still is, a place where nature dominates. The average airline passenger looking down on this scene would have no idea that this was the place where history was made in 1869. To the untrained eye, it looks much like other beautiful, if bleak, scenery that passes below a jet airliner traveling at about 400 miles per hour.

To imaginative observers on foot (or horseback) in the 1840s and 1850s, though, the silhouette of the Promontory Mountains looked like a huge whale nosing its way into the Great Salt Lake. The nose of these mountains makes contact with the lakeshore at a place that would soon be called Promontory Point. Travelers would also have noted an island, named Fremont Island after the famed explorer, toward which the whale appeared to be diving. Although these mountains are easy to imagine as one huge, dark-colored whale, they are quite complex. Divided into two separate mountain ranges—the Promontory Range and the North Promontory Mountains—the mountains seem to be two cavorting whales; that is, the smaller Northern Promontory Mountains seem to be chasing the bigger Promontory Range southward into the lake. Where the tail of the Promontory Range and the nose of the North Promontory Range meet, there is a lower, relatively smooth, valley-like swale. Called Promontory Summit, this area is the lowest—and hence easiest—place to cross over the Promontory Range. Much like a pass between the two separate ranges, this is where history was made in 1869.

The name of Promontory Summit deserves some interpretation. According to the dictionary definition, the word promontory signifies a high point of land or rock projecting into the sea or other water beyond the line of coast, a headland. It can also be a bluff, or part of a plateau, overlooking a lowland. Note that two factors are present in these definitions: a promontory is a landmark that towers above the surrounding land and, according to the first definition, is actually a point of land that juts out into a body of water. The very concept of a promontory, then, is closely tied to a place that is both a landmark and very specific in location. The term Promontory Point, where the mountains actually reach the lake, is, in a sense, redundant; after all, a promontory is a point. As an astute writer observed in the early 1870s, the name Promontory Point "... appears a strange bit of tautology." In this case, however, it is understandable, for the mountains themselves are the promontory (that is, the high land that rises abruptly to form a landmark). Promontory Point, then, is the place where the southern end (or tip) of the Promontory Mountains meets the Great Salt Lake. Promontory Summit, on the other hand, is that location within the Promontory Mountain range(s) where a route of travel can cross the range at the lowest point to avoid strenuous mountain climbing. The term summit here refers to the elevation of the mountain pass, while the highest point in the range would be, and is, called the peak. In the Promontory Mountains, the summit or pass lies at about 4,909 feet (1,496 meters) above sea level, while the peak stands at about 7,760 feet (2,365 meters). As seen on a map showing the area's general topography (fig. 1–5), the Promontory Mountains are the most prominent topographic feature in this area.

There are, however, many important geographic features from the Wasatch Mountains westward all the way to the western edge of the Great Salt Lake Desert. Leaving Brigham City and vicinity and skirting the northeast edge of the Great Salt Lake, one first arrives at the aptly-named Little Mountain after crossing the Bear River Valley (fig. 1–6). Like most of the mountains in this area, Little Mountain is a block of sedimentary rocks originally laid down in a marine environment but now high and dry—a result of faulting resulting from the stretching of the western North American continent. Little Mountain provides a hint of the uplifted topography that is so characteristic of the Great Basin. Geologists use the terms horst and graben for such topography, a horst being an uplifted block of terrain and a graben being the lowered valley adjacent to it. Continuing westward, one encounters the Blue Spring Hills, and then crosses Blue Creek, which is at the southern edge of the Blue Creek Valley and its northern extension, Howell Valley. Lying west of here is the Promontory Range, which so impressed Stansbury.

Westward of Promontory, the land descends in a sweeping arc just northeast of Spring Bay. This is called the Hansel Valley, which is bordered on the west by the Hansel Mountains and on the east by the North Promontory Mountains. West and north of this range, one finds the broad Curlew Valley, which reaches, at its southern edge, the north shore of the Great Salt Lake and the large salt flats. Farther west from the Curlew Valley, the land rises again into the Baker Hills and Hogup Mountains. Still continuing westward, there is a broad swale called the Sink of Dove Creek. West of this swale, the Matlin Mountains rise, as do Red Dome and the Terrace Mountains. These prominent features provide a stunning view of the Great Salt Lake Desert to the south and the Great Salt Lake to the southeast. A series of springs sustained travelers at Lucin, at the southern edge of the Grouse Creek Mountains and the Muddy Range. Farther west, Nevada looms on the horizon. We are concerned here with the area ultimately selected as the route for the first transcontinental railroad, between the Wasatch Mountains and the Nevada state line.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Over the Range by Richard V. Francaviglia Copyright © 2008 by Utah State University Press. Excerpted by permission of Utah State University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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