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Show 279 Sacramento Pass into Snake Valley. While Smith's route did not often parallel the White Mountain t r a i l , i t did intersect i t at points along the northern t i er 2 of the Mormons' explorations. The White Mountain expedition, with a combined force of over 160 men, combed virtually every inch of the country between Duck Creek on the north and the Pahranagat Lakes on the south and from Railroad Valley on the west to the Wasatch Front. Their own calculations placed their explorations in this region at over two thousand miles in a period of four months»-by far the most extensive examination of the Great Basin's i n t e r i o r to that date. They explored nearly every mountain, valley, stream and spring in the area, while making journals and naps of their findings. Climate, s o i l , water, grass, fuel, Indians, and the potential for settlement were carefully and accurately recorded. unlike other explorations of the Great Basin, the Mormons were not looking for a convient t r a i l to California nor for a way t o expropriate i t s native wealth; they were searching for a place to l i v e . Eventually the explorers settled on the best land they could find and commenced the establishment of three farms- the first agricultural attempts in t h i s region. With the exception of the White Mountain Mission of 1855, previous entrants into this region were only "passing through, " with no particualr interest in the country they were in. Surely the accomplishments of the White Mountain Expedition deserve to be ranked with the explorations of Fremont, Bonneville, and Smith. Had circumstances been different; had the expedition not been cloaked in secrecy, i t s accomplishments would almost certainly have attracted wider notoriety. While the whole world was aware that the Mormons had fled their homes, few outside of Utah knew anything about the expedition scouring the deserts for a refuge to hide the people. Indeed, Captain James H. Simpson of the Topographical Engineers declared while writing of his own expedition in 1859, " . . . n o t even a. Mormon had ven- |