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Show 13 southern Great Basin came to light. Unfortunately, the Sonora-California trails were severed by the bloody Yuma uprising of I78I. Another dramatic fete was accomplished by the Spanish fathers in I776 which yielded an abundance of fresh information about the region in question. In an attempt to forge a direct route from Santa Fe to Monterey, the Dominguez - Escalante party explored the eastern flank of the Basin from Utah Lake to the site of modern Cedar City, Utah. Fathers Francisco Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante set out from Santa Fe on July 29 with a party of eight volunteers. Following the trappers' trails to the Dolores River of southwestern Colorado, they turned northwest to discover the Green River in Utah's Uintah Basin. They desiganted this stream the Rio San Buenaventura, but failed to recognize it as a tributary to the Colorado. Pivoting to the west, the explorers crossed the Wasatch Range and enterred the Great Basin. The fathers descended the Spanish Fork Canyon (named in their honor) and discovered Utah Lake and noted the existence of the Great Salt Lake to the north as reported by the Indians. Rather than striking due west for the coast at this time, they attempted to regain some southern latitude to put them on a similar parallel with Monterey. Proceeding south and a little west, they struck the Sevier River near its great bend to the west and assumed they had again discovered the Rio San Buenaventura at a point further downstream and speculated that the river flowed to the Pacific. Many decades elapsed before the myth of the Buenaventura River was fully exploded. The Sevier River is a Basin Stream born in the Wasatch and sinks in the Sevier Lake of western Millard County, Utah. The party continued south through the Beaver River Valley until they were forced to turn back by the onset of an early and severe winter. Below the site of present-day Cedar City, the fathers exited the Great Basin and turned |