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 …
Dominguez-Escalante Expedition
Thomas G. Alexander Utah, the Right Place Much better known than the Rivera expedition, the travels of Fathers Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante have left the name of the latter on a number of Utah sites. Utahns did not honor Dominguez, the expedition’s leader, with site names until the bicentennial of their trek in 1976. Both Dominguez …
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 …