The Euro-American encounter with the interior North American West can be divided into three processes: the approach to and entry into the region of Europeans and Americans, which reflected the political and economic expansion of national empires; the resultant slow development and spread of awareness and knowledge of the region; and Euro-Americans’ beginning uses of, or finding of external value …
Fort Robidoux
John D. Barton Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 Fort Robidoux, a fur trading post also known as Fort Uintah and Fort Winty, was located at the junction of the Uintah and Whiterocks rivers in the Uinta Basin of northeastern Utah. It was founded in 1832 after Antoine Robidoux bought out the Reed Trading Post that had been in operation at that …
Harlan-Young Party
David Bigler Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The first to take wagons over the Hastings Cutoff from Fort Bridger to the Humboldt River were some 200 emigrants who crossed Utah’s Salt Desert in 1846 about three weeks in advance of the Donner-Reed party. They took the new route south of the Great Salt Lake at the urging of Lansford W. Hastings, …
Bartleson-Bidwell Party
David L. Bigler Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The first emigrants to cross Utah with wagons came in 1841, six years before the Mormon pioneers, this party numbered thirty-two men and one woman, who carried a baby daughter in one arm and led a horse with the other. Nancy Kelsey, barely eighteen years old and the first white woman ever to …
Overland Migrations
Thomas G. Alexander Utah, The Right Place In the tradition of Dominguez and Escalante, American clergymen led the migrants to the West. Following the visit of a group of northwestern Indians to St. Louis in 1831, Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries left for Oregon beginning in 1834. Catholic missionaries, including the intrepid Jesuit Pierre Jean De Smet, started moving west in …
Fremont’s Exploration
Thomas G. Alexander Utah, The Right Place By the early 1840s, as immigrants struck out for Oregon and California, Americans contemplated adding both of these regions as United States possessions. Enthusiasts such as Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, his daughter Jessie, and her husband, John C. Fremont, considered an empire on the Pacific as America’s “Manifest Destiny.” Judging themselves agents …
Antoine Robidoux
OLD ANTOINE ROBIDOUX LEFT HIS MARK IN UTAH Becky Bartholomew History Blazer, August 1996 Five miles west of the Utah-Colorado border, not far from I-70, Westwater Creek enters the Colorado River. A dirt road follows the creek up into the north hills. But 160 years ago some travelers chose this minor canyon as the route of least topographical resistance into …
Fort Davy Crockett
John D. Barton Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 In 1836 William Craig, Philip Thompson, and Previtt Sinclair built a fort at Brown’s Hole, where Vermillion Creek merges with the Green River. Brown’s Hole was a favorite wintering place for mountain men and Indians because of the mild winters and abundant forage and game animals. After news of the fall of the …
Utah’s Early Forts
Thomas G. Alexander Utah, The Right Place As the beaver supply declined in the West, traders rather than trappers began to dominate, and by the late 1830s, buffalo robes from the High Plains rather than beaver pelts from the Rockies became the most important prize of the fur trade. Few High Plains Indians trapped for beaver, but they readily hunted …
Mountain Green in 1825
MOUNTAIN GREEN, MORGAN COUNTY, WAS SCENE OF INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT IN 1825 Yvette D. Ison History Blazer, July 1995 In the spring of 1825 two major fur trading companies explored Utah to identify the region’s beaver supply. American trappers affiliated with William H. Ashley and led by Johnson Gardner had traveled westward along the Strawberry River and ultimately into Weber Canyon. …