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Show 26 years, they established their first settlements along the fertile base of the Wasatch Range. By the time of the White Mountain expedition, eleven years later, over forty settlements had been founded down the entire length of the Wasatch from Cache Valley in the North to Washington in the South. In addition, the Mormons fanned out establishing an "outer cordon" of settlements which included Carson Valley at the foot of the Sierras, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, and the Salmon River in present-day Idaho. With a few exceptions, the Mormons usually confined themselves to the valleys along the Wasatch Front or the established overland trails. This is not to say that they did no exploring, but for the first few years most of their exploring activity was in the area previously explored by the trappers or others. The year 1849 brought a notable exception. Several large companies enroute to California attempted a shortcut to the coast directly across the Great Basin west of present-day Cedar City, Utah. A large wagon train of Forty-niners along with other parties of Mormon missionaries and gold-seekers tried the new route in an effort to reach Walker Pass in the Sierras and cut more than two hundred miles off the Spanish Trail. It was only a matter of time before somebody would put Fremont's map and report, with its apocryphal east-west mountain range, to the test. The theory was;: if grass and water are found at frequent intervals along the base of the Wasatch, then the same should be true of Fremont's east-west range which struck the Sierras in the vicinity of Walker Pass. Barney Ward, a mountain man who lived in the Wasatch, also influenced the several parties on the Spanish Trail to attempt the route saying he had been over it several times himself. The upshot of the affair was the disasterous ordeal in Death Valley in which eighteen members of the Forty-niners" company lost their lives. Several of the other parties turned back at different points along the trail when the going became difficult. |