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Show 29 employed by the Livingston & Kinkead Company in driving stock to California. In July of 1855 he laid out a new route to California south of the Great Salt Lake which greatly shortened the distance. The new trail, which connected with the Humboldt River route near present Elko, was made with the object of obtaining the mail contract for this part of the California mail. Egan was subsequently awarded the contract. It was also in I855 that Brigham Young decided to open an Indian mission in the so-called "White Mountains'* of the unexplored regions to the west. Bishop David Evans of Lehi was called to lead the expedition and plant the settlement. Leaving Fillmore on May 28, he made his way northwest to Antelope Springs at the eastern base of the House Range about thirty miles west of present-day Delta, Utah. The company then proceeded west to the Snake Valley near the present Utah-Nevada boundry. Here they considered planting crops and erecting a fort, but, for want of proper supplies, they set out for home and never returned. Evans's report of the country was not very flattering, but he did conceed that success was a possibility on the Snake Creek.xc The mission of I855 was in some respects the forerunner of the White Mountain Expedition of three years later. Thus can be seen the extent of exploration in the Great Basin from 1771 to the dawn of the Utah War. The Spaniards explored the Mojave regions and the eastern flank of the Basin from Utah Lake south. The trappers, who appeared in the mid-l820s, thoroughly explored the Wasatch Front area and discovered the Humboldt River. Smith was to cut a swath right across the interior valleys in 1827 in an attempt to locate the Buenaventura. Ogden was the first to explore the western flank of the Great Basin, and the Walker- Bonnevile expedition established the Humboldt River route to California. The first emigrant parties refined the overland trail, and traders refined the |