The Starting Point







Salt Lake City, Utah where I now live, sits near the confluence of a number of trails which have had important roles in the lives of the people who have used them as the thoroughfares of their lives. The first inhabitants traversed the canyon trails of the Wasatch Range and the desert  trails of the Great Basin on seasonal quests for food and trade. the horses so prized by the Shoshone and Utes made there way up the Old Spanish Trail and developed into successful emigrants. Fur trappers followed the trails of their indigenous predecessors and used this knowledge to aid explorers like John C. Fremont.




In the 1840's it got serious. The almost simultaneous incidents of the discovery of gold in California, the Mexican War, and the Mormon settlement of the Salt Lake Valley, turned the Oregon trail, California Trail and Mormon Trail into well used highways of migration west in spite of the difficulties they presented. Some of the feats accomplished during this era defy the imagination. The infantry march of the Mormon Battalion from Council Bluffs Iowa to San Diego via the Santa Fe Trail and Tucson (1846-47) was the longest in U.S. history. They capped this by later developing a route back to Utah. Not many years later, the Ute leader Wakara led several expeditions from Utah into southern California to raid the settlements for horses.



The 1850's brought more westward expansion much of it stimulated by the search for gold and silver, while the post-Civil War era brought the railroads. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads met in Utah and Ogden became one of the biggest rail hubs in the west. To the south, the Santa Fe linked the Midwest and later Texas with southern California. these rail routes in many cases approximated the old Oregon, California, and Santa Fe Trail routes. The geography hadn't changed but the mode of transportation had.


The era of the automobile brought the Lincoln Highway, an early attempt at a cross-country route which bravely crossed the west desert in Utah. U.S. highway 30 is a remnant of this pioneering effort. Highways 50 and 6 also cross Utah and still connect the east and west coasts for those ambitious enough to travel off the interstates. Of course the Interstates Highways have replaced the old roads and wagon trials and in many cases have changed the routes that were followed for so many years.

The decline of the traditional cross-country routes has obscured the history and tradition these trails represent. It is my intention to explore the remnants of these trails and share what I can of the history and points of interest they transect. My first adventure which will begin on April 29, involves traveling south from Salt Lake City to U.S. Highway 50 which I will take to eastern Colorado to join the Santa Fe Trail. This I will follow east to its starting point in New Franklin, Missouri. From there I plan to drive south and join Route 66 southwest of St. Louis. I will head west on 66 following the old "mother road" as much as possible to Flagstaff, Arizona where I will return to Salt Lake City via Highway 89.

I hope you will follow me as I explore the historic sites and National Parks and  Monuments that line this route. I hope I can share some photos and anecdotes that you will enjoy and I hope you will share the love I feel for our country, its people and Its past.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Crossing the Wasatch

Image
For most Americans in the mid-nineteenth century the westward movement meant relocating to the Willamette Valley in Oregon Territory or the Sacramento Valley in California. To cross the obstacle of the Continental Divide, the emigrants followed the valleys of the North Platte and Sweetwater Rivers to South Pass in today's state of Wyoming. This was not the end of their mountain barriers, however. After crossing the Green and Bear Rivers and resting at Fort Bridger they had to find their way through the Wasatch Range. Fort Bridger National Historic Sight Not impressive but functional  For most of these travelers this meant following the Weber River through the mountains then trekking north to Fort Hall and heading west along the Snake River. After a short distance along the Snake the trails diverged with the California Trail cutting southwest through City of Rocks and on to the Humbolt River and with the Oregon Trail continuing along the Snake. This was a
Read more

Day One - Utah

Image
From my front door I drove to Interstate 15 and headed south to U.S. Highway 6 at Spanish Fork, Utah, where, turning east I began my journey to the Santa Fe Trail. My traveling of an old trail begins in Spanish Fork Canyon where Route 6 parallels the Union Pacific rail line. This is currently the route of Amtrak's California Zephyr and is heavily used to haul freight and coal as well. The miles from Spanish Fork to Helper are steep and difficult but this line was developed to bring coal from Carbon County to the west side of the Wasatch Range to provide fuel for industry, especially copper smelting. This map shows my route to The Old Spanish Trail in green and the Utah section of the Trail itself in purple. Map courtesy of d-maps.com. At the top of Spanish Fork Canyon is Soldier Summit an area of windswept open range. The streams that originate here drain westward into Utah Lake or eastward into the Colorado system. Continuing past the summit, the serpentine highway be
Read more

The Oregon/California Trail: Fort Bridger to Fort Hall

Image
This is the second in a three part series of posts on the Oregon Trail. The first is titled The Oregon Trail, Fort Kearny to Fort Bridger , and the third is The Oregon Trail in Idaho and Oregon . I plan to continue to update and improve these posts and I appreciate your feedback and comments. After crossing the Continental Divide at South Pass the westward emigrants entered the heart of fur trapping country. This was the Green River drainage, an area that had been extensively explored in the 1830's by Jedidiah Smith on behalf of General Ashley's Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Not a trapper himself, Ashley, along with his partner Major Andrew Henry, recruited young men to follow the tributary streams of The Green River, harvesting thousands of beaver pelts during the last heyday of the fur trade. As well as exploring the region for fur trapping opportunities, Ashley had the secondary purpose of following up on the possibility of  a water route to the Pacific Ocean.
Read more