Salt Lake Cutoff
The Salt Lake Cutoff is one of the many shortcuts (or cutoffs) that branched from the
History
Samuel J. Hensley, returning to California in the summer of 1848, led a
On the Humboldt River portion of the California Trail route, Hensley met and talked with a party of former Mormon Battalion personnel consisting of 45 men and one woman under Samuel Thompson driving wagons east on the California Trail to rejoin their families in Utah. On September 15, 1848 they found the junction of Hensley's pack trail near the rock formation called the Twin Sisters.[1] Thompson's group with wagons followed Hensley's pack trail back to Salt Lake City—converting it into a passable wagon road. Thompson's company traveled southeast into northern Utah, crossing Deep Creek near present-day Snowville, Utah.[2] They found plentiful water and grass on the route just as Hensley had told them. With some difficulty they crossed the Malad River and the Bear River still traveling south east. They then went to the tiny community of Ogden, Utah where they crossed the Weber River before traveling on to Salt Lake City. Ebenezer Brown, leading a party from the 1846 Mormon ship Brooklyn, followed them three weeks later and helped to further define the trail. Word spread quickly that a good road with good grass and water was known out of Salt Lake City back to the California or Oregon Trail.
When the gold-crazy emigrants of 1849 heard of this new route to the
References
- ^ "The Salt lake Cutoff". Archived from the original on 2016-10-18. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
- ISBN 978-0252063602
- ^ "Salt Lake Cutoff". Archived from the original on 2009-09-10. Retrieved 2008-12-29.
Further reading
- Arrington, Leonard J. (1958). Great Basin Kingdom. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
- Bagley, Will (1992). S. J. Hensley's Salt Lake Cutoff. Salt Lake City: Oregon-California Trails Association, Utah Crossroads Chapter.
- DeLafosse, Peter H. Ed (1994); Trailing The Pioneers; Logan Utah; Utah State University Press with ISBN 0-87421-172-7
- Korns, J. Roderic; Dale L. Morgan (1994), Will Bagley; Harold Schindler(eds.), West from Fort Bridger, Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press