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Show 14 east toward Santa Fe. Their map, left for a future generation of explorers, labelled the land west of their trek down the Wasatch Front "tierra incognita," a designation which was still applicable for many years to come. While the expedition was a failure in its intended objective of forging an overland trail from Santa Fe to Monterey, the ambitious Catholic priests correctly established much of the geography of the eastern Great Basin; and their one enormous mistake-creating the Buenaventura River, the mythical waterway to the Pacific-became one of the expedition's greatest contributions to exploration in the Great Basin. Belief in the legendary Buenaventura renewed interest in locating the northwest passage and induced some of the most talented explorers and mountaineers to explore the Basin in the first half of the nineteenth century. Jedediah S. Smith and John C. Fremont were among them. The myth was not to die until the Fremont expedition of 1843-44. The Dominguez-Escalante expedition ended Spanish exploration in the Great Basin on an official level; however, trading parties and punitive expeditions continued to occasionally probe the Basin. The most notable was the Arze- Garcia expedition of 1813 which found a direct route between the Green River and the Sevier River. In 1821 the Mexican revolution succeeded in throwing off Spanish rule, and few explorations of any consequence appear to have been undertaken by the new government. While Fathers Dominguez and Escalante were wending their way out of Santa Fe in 1776, orders were being drawn up by the British admiralty to dispatch Captain James Cook on a voyage to the Pacific Northwest coast of North America to search for the ellusive strait to the Atlantic-a new twist from previous voyages which searched in vain for the passage from the Atlantic side. In 1792 Captain George Vancouver carried out similar orders. Both of these voyage accurately charted the Pacific coast making two important |
