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 …
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 …
Seeking Adventure
Coarse-frocked Spanish friars from Santa Fe, New Mexico, penetrating the Great Basin in 1776—year of the nation’s Declaration of Independence—were Utah’s first tourists of written record. The Spanish Fathers came not to see the scenery—though they made the first written account of it in their journals and maps–but were trailblazers seeking a suitable shorter route between two Catholic frontier mission …
The Rivera Expedition
Thomas G. Alexander Utah, The Right Place Anxious to expand the Spanish Empire to thwart the expansion of other European powers, and to enrich themselves, New Mexican authorities sent expeditions northward. In 1765, a Ute from the north had sold an ingot of silver to a blacksmith in Abiquiu, a small settlement northwest of Santa Fe. That transaction set in …
Shoshone of Northern Utah
Kristen Rogers Beehive History, 26 Fifteen years after the Mormon settlers arrived in Utah, their livestock had so overgrazed the native grasses and seeds that the Indians were starving, noted Jacob Hamblin, one of those settlers. The Great Basin was hardly lush to begin with, but indigenous peoples had survived there for centuries. How did they live on the land? …
Preston Nutter Made Utah the Home of His Cattle Kingdom
Preston Nutter ranch Max Evans History Blazer, November 1995 When Preston Nutter died in January 1936 at the age of 86, the Salt Lake Telegram described him as “Utah’s last great cattle king” and “one of the last links between the old west and the new.” As “king” of the range, Nutter was one of the best known cattle barons …
The Telegraph was the Information Highway of the 1860s
Miriam B. Murphy History Blazer, October 1995 On May 24, 1844, the message “What hath God wrought” was sent by telegraph from Baltimore, Maryland, to the Capitol in Washington, D.C. A new era in long-distance communications had begun. Within a few years local companies were busily stringing the “talking wire” between many cities and towns. In 1861 the Pacific Telegraph …
A History of Utah’s American Indians, Preface
A History of Utah’s American Indians, © 2000 Preface, pp. v-viii Allan Kent Powell The commemorations of the Utah Statehood Centennial in 1996 and the Sesquicentennial of Utah Settlement in 1997 were cause for reflection not only on these milestones in Utah’s history but also for a reexamination of the people, events, and movements that constitute Utah history. To …
A History of Utah’s American Indians, Conclusion
A History of Utah’s American Indians, © 2000 “Conclusion: The Contemporary Status of Utah Indians,” pp. 315–40 Robert S. McPherson The preceding tribal histories have brought the reader through the period of termination to more contemporary times. But what direction has Indian affairs taken over the past decade or so, and what does the future promise? Significant adjustments have been …