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Show Page 155 Within days the little settlement soaked up Indians, battalion stragglers, and Sam Brannan and his California dreams. Like a lodestone it drew thousands on the trail as well as tramps and curiosity-seekers among the Utes, who turned out to be innocuous. The apostles decided to explore their new Zion on Tuesday, to ascertain just how much of the desert was habitable - and to take in the sights they had memorized and dreamed about from Fremont's descriptions. Orson rode along with Brother Brigham's carriage due west to the "Utah Outlet," the Jordan River, about six rods wi<U and three feet deep. They forded, presumably near the North Temple Bridge, and cantered out onto a flat range of greasewood to the west which is still uninhabited to this day. About thirteen miles brought them to the looming barrenness of the mountain block that walled in the valley from the west, following the ruts left by the Donner-Reed party. "We all bathed in the salt water," writes Orson, "...its specific gravity is such as to buoy us up in a remarkable manner." A small butte reared out of the water - they recognized this as the emigrant landmark, Black Rock. Brigham sent Orson and two others down west to look at a valley "putting up to the southward from the lake" - Tooele Valley. They camped that night where the Oquirrh range points at the lake,in a brackish little oasis near the present-day Magna smelter. Next morning, the thermometer rose above eighty degrees as Orson clambered up the grade of the Oquirrhs to see what he could see, always a few miles ahead of everyone else. From here, the whole sweep of Utah Lake, the "western Galilee," and the monumental castle of Timpanogos came into view - Orson's were the first Mormon eyes on the Utah Valley. It looked good to him. The rest of the camp caught him, about ten miles south of the lake, standing on a mountain which would one day be ground to dust for the copper it contained. The whole party jumped with alacrity |
