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Show 17 reached the Humboldt to explore the country ncr^h of the river. Trapping in the Humboldt region was poor, and the brigade trapped its way back into the Snake River country; but, intrigued by the Humooldt, Ogden returned in May for further exploration. Following his earlier trail to the river, he descended the Humboldt to its sink southwest of the present site of Lovelock, Nevada and returned to the Columbia in July 1829. Notwithstanding his recent completion of an epic exploration, Ogden commenced his sixth and final Snake Country expedition in October on an even grander scale. Proceeding south from the Humooldt sink,he explored the entire western flank of the Great Basin to the Mojave Desert. He then crossed the Mojave to the Colorado River. Continuing his spectacular march, he recrossed the Mojave and returned to the Columbia via Tehachapi Pass and the San Francisco Bay. The Hudson's Bay Company replaced Ogden in I83O, and, although numerous expeditions were sent into the Great Basin during the next decade and a half, little new country was explored. The American fur trappers descended upon the Great Basin in the fall of 1824. The next six years proved to be the hay day for exploration of the Basin by American companies. Foremost among these companies was the famous Rocky Mountain Fur Company organized in 1822 by Major Andrew Henry and General William Ashley. When Indian depredations along the upper Missouri brought trapping to a virtual standstill in the early 1820s, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company moved its center of operations south to the Wasatch Front in the Great Basin. Jedediah S. Smith, leading the vanguard in 1824, discovered the celebrated South Pass-the future gateway of the Great Basin- and entered the Basin the following spring. Other members of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company who converged on the Great Basin about the same time were James Bridger, Daniel Potts, John Weber, Thomas Fitzpatrick, William |