David L. Bigler Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The vanguard of some 300 emigrants who took the Hastings Cutoff of the California Trail across Utah, south of the Great Salt Lake, was a nine-man pack party led by William H. Russell, a hard-drinking Kentuckian, and forty-one-year-old Edwin Bryant, former editor of the Louisville Courier. Riding mules, they traveled the seventy-five-mile stretch …
The Hastings Cutoff
Thomas G. Alexander Utah, The Right Place Anxious to attract Americans to northern California, Lansford W. Hastings published his famous Emigrants Guide to Oregon and California in 1845, which touted the Golden State over the Beaver State. At the same time, it is unclear whether Hastings intended to promote the cutoff from Fort Bridger through Salt Lake Valley and westward …