A History of Beaver County

Exploration , 1776 - 1856

CHAPTER 3 EXPLORATION 1776-1856 U ntil the settlement of Beaver in 1856, the area had been a land to pass through in route to some place else. Franciscan fathers Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante pro­vided the first written accounts of Beaver County during their epic journey in 1776. Fifty years later American fur trapper Jedediah Smith crossed Beaver County. During the 1830s and 1840s caravans traveled between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and California crossing through Beaver County on their 1,100-mile journey. The first Mormons to enter the county were also California-bound under the leadership of Jefferson Hunt in late 1847. Two years later Parley P. Pratt lead an exploring expedition to southern Utah through the Beaver area. Finally, Mormon Iron Mission settlers leapfrogged over the Pahvant and Beaver valleys to found Parowan in January 1851 and Cedar City in November 1851, approximately thirty and fifty miles south of the future site of Beaver and 250 miles south of Salt Lake City. Dominguez and Escalante Expedition The 1776 Dominguez-Escalante Expedition came at the end of 36 EXPLORATION 1776-1856 37 nearly three centuries of Spanish exploration and colonization in the New World that began with the voyage and discoveries of Christopher Columbus in 1492 and drew to a close with the estab­lishment of the California missions beginning with San Diego in 1769 and Monterrey in 1770. The Spanish presence in the American Southwest began with the 1540 expedition of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado which reached the Zuni and Pueblo villages of Arizona and New Mexico while searching for the Seven Cities of Cibola. Spanish settlement of New Mexico began in 1598 under Juan de Onate. The first Spaniard to reach California was Hernando de Alarcon, when he led a fleet of Spanish ships along the California coast in 1540 as a part of the gen­eral Coronado expedition. Alarcon's assignment was to find a water route that might provide access to Coronado, his soldiers, and the Seven Cities of Cibola. No route was found, and it was more than two centuries before the Spanish attempted to settle California. Monterrey was settled in 1770, and within a few years plans were made for an overland trail to connect Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, with the new Spanish California capital of Monterrey. The assignment to open the overland route fell to Franciscian fathers Dominguez and Escalante. Leaving Santa Fe on 29 July 1776, Dominguez and Escalante along with eight companions journeyed through northwestern New Mexico and western Colorado before entering present-day Utah on 11 September 1776 near the crossing of the Green River just north of present-day Jensen, Utah. The long trek to the north was made to avoid hostile Indians and the difficult canyons of a more direct route from Santa Fe to Monterrey. After crossing the Green Paver, the expe­dition followed west up the Duchesne River through the heart of the Uinta Basin and across the mountains and through Strawberry Valley before entering Utah Valley through Spanish Fork Canyon. After a brief stay with the Ute Indians at Utah Lake in late September, the party pressed on toward California but first promised to return to Utah Valley to establish a Catholic mission among the Ute Indians. Heading south, the expedition reached the Beaver River bottoms south of Clear Lake in Millard County on 3 October. Escalante recorded: 38 HISTORY OF BEAVER COUNTY . . . we came to an arroyo which seemed to have much water, but we found only some waterholes where the horse herd might be able to drink with difficulty. Nevertheless, we stopped here because there was good pasturage. All over the arroyo there was a kind of white scum, dry and thin, which looked from afar like linen spread out, for which reason we named it Arroyo del Tejedor [Arroyo of the Weaver].1 Continuing southward, the expedition followed the Beaver River and on 5 October entered a wide valley a few miles north of the Beaver-Millard County line. They named the valley Valle de Nuestra Senora de la Luz-The Valley of Our Lady of the Light. Escalante wrote of the valley, "Through it El Arroyo del Tejedor continues with sufficient waterholes or banked ponds of good water and very spa­cious meadows abounding in pasturage, of which this valley is very scarce."2 The night of 5 October a heavy snowfall began that contin­ued all the next day and into the night. Calling on divine interven­tion to end the storm, " . . . we implored the intercession of Our Mother and Patroness by praying aloud in common the three parts of her rosary and by chanting the Litany, the one of All-Saints. And God was pleased that by nine at night it should cease to snow, hail, and rain."3 Because of the snow and muddy ground, the expedition had to spend 7 October in camp, " . . . in great distress, without fire­wood and extremely cold, for with so much snow and water the ground, which was soft here, was unfit for travel."4 Resuming their journey on 8 October, the expedition crossed into Beaver County and made camp a mile west of the river at a site eleven miles north of the town of Milford. The arrival in Beaver County was one of the most discouraging days of the entire expedi­tion and brought the first written mention that a return to Santa Fe was under consideration. Escalante recorded: Today we suffered greatly from the cold because the north wind did not cease blowing all day, and most acutely A bitter cold north wind blew all day and every direction . . . Since winter had already set in most severely, for all the sierras we managed to see in all directions were covered with snow, the weather very unset­tled, we therefore feared that long before we got there [Monterey] the passes would be closed to us, so that they would force us to stay EXPLORATION 1776-1856 39 Basalt Rock in western Beaver County. (Don O. Thorpe) two or three months in some sierra where there might not be any people or the wherewithal for our necessary sustenance. For the provisions we had were very low by now, and so we could expose ourselves to perishing from hunger if not from the cold.5 On 9 O c t o b e r the g r o u p traveled a b o u t 15.5 miles passing the future site of Milford a n d camping about 6.5 miles to t h e south. The drier g r o u n d in t h e b r o a d valley along with easy access to water and meadows for pasturage were a welcome relief from the difficulties of t h e previous days. C o n t i n u i n g southward on 10 October the group reached a s h o r t a n d very l ow hill w i t h hot springs located s o u t h of Thermo Siding o n t h e Union Pacific Railroad line. Taking advantage of what little elevation the hill offered to survey t h e extent of t h e val­ley of La Luz . . . we climbed the hill and saw that from here toward the south­west it stretched for more than thirty-five or forty leagues [approx­imately 100 miles], for where it ends in this direction one could barely discern the sierras, these being very high, as we saw better later on. We also saw three outlets of hot sulphurous water which are on the top and the east flank of said hill. Around it below are 40 HISTORY OF BEAVER COUNTY other short patches of nitrous soil. We continued over the plain and, after going two leagues south, we halted, fearing that farther on we would not find water for tonight. Here there was a large good quantity of it from the melted snow, dammed up like a lake; there was also good pasturage. We named the site San Eleuterio.6 The San Eleuterio campsite was located approximately twelve miles southwest of Minersville, about seven miles across the Iron County line. The journey through Beaver County was an anxious and difficult one. Although they thought they were on a latitude parallel with Monterrey, the early storm, lack of knowledge by native inhab­itants of any Spanish people to the west, the difficulty in finding a passage through the mountains, and the considerable distance they k n ew they would have to travel raised doubts in the minds of Dominguez and Escalante about ever reaching Monterrey. However, other members of the e x p e d i t i o n were r e l u c t a n t to give u p the intended goal. In an attempt to maintain harmony within the ranks, Dominguez and Escalante developed a plan to allow God to deter­mine their course and presented it to the others. Placing the name Monterrey on one stick and the name Cosnina-which they would pass on the r e t u rn to Santa Fe-on the other, they put the matter in God's hands. But first Father Dominguez admonished the group " . . . to subject themselves entirely to God's will and, by laying aside every sort of passion, beg H im with firm hope and lively faith to make it known to us." This the men did as Escalante recounts, "They all submitted in a Christian spirit, and with fervent piety prayed the third part of the rosary and other petitions while we ourselves were reciting the Penitential Psalms with the Litany a n d other orations which follow it. This concluded, we cast lots, a n d the one of Cosnina came out. This we all heartily accepted now, thanks be to God, mol­lified and pleased."7 With the decision made to r e t u r n to Santa Fe, t h e expedition h u r r i e d southward. After a perilous crossing of the Colorado River near the Utah-Arizona border at the Crossing of the Fathers, now under the waters of Lake Powell, they reached Santa Fe on 2 January 1777, just over five months after their epic journey began. The jour- EXPLORATION 1776-1856 41_ nal kept by Father Escalante offers the first written description of the land that would become Beaver County. The decision to return to Santa Fe reached by Dominguez and Escalante while waiting out the snow storm in Beaver County in early October 1776 and substantiated by the casting of the lots a few days later was probably a wise one. California was still hundreds of miles to the west across difficult terrain and, as later travelers would learn at the cost of their lives, early winter storms could seal off any route of escape. It would be more than fifty years before the overland route between Santa Fe and California would be opened and on a route that, of necessity, followed far to the south of the intended route to Monterrey. Jedediah Smith It is an anomaly that an area named for an abundance of Beaver in the 1850s saw little activity during the heyday of the Rocky Mountain fur trade of the 1820s and 1830s. Jedediah Smith passed through the county after leaving the fur trapper rendezvous in Cache Valley in 1826. It is unclear what the final destination of Smith's southern journey was to be. Undertaken in search of the mythical Rio Buenaventura River and its hoped-for outlet to the Pacific Ocean, as well as to assess the opportunities for beaver trapping to the south of the beaver- rich areas of northern Utah, western Wyoming, and Idaho, Smith traveled the length of Utah and continued his journey into southern California where he spent the winter and returned crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert to reach the annual summer rendezvous at the south end of Bear Lake in July 1827. During his journey southward, he entered Beaver County after crossing through Clear Creek Canyon to the future site of Cove Fort where he turned south to follow the base of the moun­tains past Beaver Creek on 8 September 1826, which he named Lost Creek, and on to Ash Creek and the Virgin River, before striking across the desert for San Gabriel, California. A few days after the 1827 rendezvous ended, Smith, with eigh­teen men, was back on the trail headed southward again passing once more through Beaver County and on to California where he rejoined some of his men left there the previous year.8 42 HISTORY OF BEAVER COUNTY Spanish Trail Jedediah Smith proved that no San Buenaventura River existed to connect the Rocky Mountains with the Pacific Ocean, but he did demonstrate that California could be reached by an overland route from Utah. In 1829, two years after Smith's second journey, a Mexican trader named Antonio Armijo carried commercial goods overland from New Mexico to California over portions of what would become the Spanish Trail. During the winter of 1830-31, two Americans, William Wolfskill and George C. Yount, made their way from Santa Fe to California over the general route of the Spanish Trail. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, the Spanish Trail was a major route of commerce between the two Mexican provinces. The route was a horse and mule trail, not a wagon road, and travelers usually took about two and a half months to complete the one-way journey of 1,120 miles. Pack mules were used to transport raw wool and woven textiles from New Mexico to California in the fall, and the return trip usually took place in the early spring before snow melt in the mountains swelled the waters of the Green and Colorado rivers. Mules and horses were brought from California to New Mexico in herds of 2,000 or more animals. A secondary item of trade was Paiute Indian slaves taken in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada and sold in both California and New Mexico. Others used the trail, including fur trappers, Indians, California-bound settlers from New Mexico, and government explor­ers. The trail also formed the western leg of a transcontinental route from Saint Joseph, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, across the Santa Fe Trail which was opened in 1821. The trail was most heavily used before Mexico lost California, New Mexico, and what became the Utah Territory to the United States during the Mexican War. After the region became part of the United States, more direct east-west routes were used.9 While Los Angeles lay farther south than Santa Fe, the Old Spanish Trail took a northwesterly course through New Mexico and across the southwestern corner of Colorado and into southeastern Utah to avoid the deep canyons of the Colorado River and to make relatively easy crossings of the Colorado River at present-day Moab EXPLORATION 1776-1856 43 Mt. Baldy. (J.D. Osborn) and the Green River at the town of Green River. Avoiding the barri­ers of the San Rafael Reef and San Rafael Swell, the Spanish Trail reached its northern apex in Emery County where it turned west passing through Castle Valley and across the Wasatch Plateau where it entered the Great Basin by way of Salina Canyon. Near present-day Salina, the main trail route struck the Sevier River and followed it south to Clear Creek Canyon where one branch turned west to cross the mountains along the general route followed by Interstate 70 to its junction with Interstate 15 near Cove Fort following the route first taken by Jedediah Smith in 1826. Here the trail turned south and passed through present-day Beaver County and rejoined the main branch of the trail which had continued south up the Sevier River at the mouth of Clear Creek Canyon past the future communities of Marysvale, Junction, and Circleville before leaving the Sevier River at Bear Valley Junction to cross the mountains and enter Parowan Valley by way of Little Creek just north of Paragonah. Travelers continued on to Mountain Meadows where animals were rested before the push across southern Nevada and on to California. 44 HISTORY OF BEAVER COUNTY Jefferson Hunt The first Mormon to pass through Beaver County was Captain Jefferson Hunt who made several trips from Salt Lake City to California between 1847 and 1851, including one in 1849 as guide for a group of California-bound gold miners and a company of Pacific-bound Mormon missionaries. One of the members of the Hunt Party, Addison Pratt, reported that they camped on Beaver Creek on 18 October 1849. Pratt described Beaver Creek as " . . . a fine stream. It has wide bottoms on each side and covered with an abundance of good grass. . . . I think this creek would support a settlement of thousands, and the creek has the appearances of affording an abundance of trout in summer.... I caught one of about two pounds weight... ."10 Parley P. Pratt Expedition In November 1849 Brigham Young and the Legislative Assembly of the Provisional State of Deseret commissioned Parley P. Pratt to lead a group of fifty men to explore the southern area and identify potential sites for future settlements. The expedition " . . . included 12 wagons, 1 carriage, 24 yoke of oxen, 7 beef, 38 horses and mules, and supplies: trade items for the Indians, 150 lbs of flour for each man, crackers, bread, meal, and 60 lbs coffee."11 Among the fifty men were eight who had been members of the original 1847 pioneer com­pany. Most were experienced frontiersmen, with Samuel Gould, at age seventy-one, the oldest, and Alexander Abraham Lemon the youngest at eighteen. Preparations for the expedition were completed quickly and the group set out from the Salt Lake Valley on 24 November in the midst of a snowstorm. The winter journey was a difficult one. Some days roads were passable and the weather cooperative; some days the company bucked snow, mud, swampy areas and tricky creek crossings. On the way to Sanpete they encountered twenty-three creeks or rivers and forded one, Salt Creek, east of Nephi, six times. Animals and men labored up rocky ascents and descents. North winds stung their faces and penetrated their clothing. At many campsites cattle went hungry; at others, neither man nor beast had fresh water to drink. The mens' energy flagged during frequent backtracking to round up straying cattle and horses. The 46 HISTORY OF BEAVER COUNTY snow-covered mountains. The route into the valley of the Little Salt Lake followed along Fremont Wash about ten miles south of Beaver.13 Continuing southward, the expedition reached the Virgin River and explorered the future sites of St. George, Washington, and Santa Clara, before circling the west side of the Pine Valley Mountains to rejoin their earlier route near Cedar City. The return trip followed the general route of Interstate 15 northward through Beaver County, Millard County, and past Nephi into Utah Valley and back to the Salt Lake Valley. Parley P. Pratt prepared a report of the expedition which was presented to the Utah Territorial Legislature. In his report Pratt outlined the best places for future settlements giving his highest rec­ommendation to the Valley of the Little Salt Lake because of the iron deposits that had been discovered there. Although he had passed through the Beaver area in January, its potential impressed him favor­ably and he wrote, "This is an excellent place for an extensive Settlement."14 The Iron Mission Two months after Pratt's report to the territorial legislature, Mormon apostles George A. Smith and Ezra T. Benson were appointed during the April 1850 LDS conference as leaders of the Iron Mission which would establish settlements and develop a pio­neer iron industry in the Little Salt Lake Valley along with utilizing the agricultural resources of the area. The colony would also help facilitate goods and immigrants which Brigham Young expected to bring to Utah from the west coast. In October 1850 one hundred men were called to the Iron Mission and preparations quickened. Provo was designated as the rendezvous point for the first company which left that community on 16 December 1850. On 8 January 1851 the main group reached Beaver Valley. John D. Lee, clerk for the mission, recorded a favorable description of the area as he viewed it from a hill at the north end of Beaver Valley. . . . here on the summit you have a full view of the surrounding country, of the kanyons that makes into the valley of Beaver, which appear to be well clothed with Pine and Fur timber. The vally is extensive, land good & well adapted for iregation with occasional springs breaking out through the vally immediately on EXPLORATION 1776-1856 47_ the bottom is aboundance of grass. Some of which is a rich growth. The hill and S[p]urs of the Mountains are covered with large sage greasewood and rabbit brush; with smawl bunch grass growing among the shrubs. The ceder timber commences about 6 ms from the center of the body of farming land 8c then contin­ues over the spurs & mountains & in the kanyons & inexhaustible quantity easy of access waggons can be drove among the groves almost in any direction-This is also a splendid situation, for a heavy settlement. . . . 15 The Iron Mission pioneers camped that night on the n o r t h side of Spring Creek near the south end of Beaver. John D. Lee writes that at t h e e n c a m p m e n t they "Tied u p t h e horses and p o s t e d strong guards araound the cattle; as the Red men were in our vicinity. This creek is about 1 r od wide and 1 foot deep banks high & steep."16 The next day there was much work to be done to locate and build a road south out of t h e valley and u p the ridge to the divide between Beaver Valley a n d the Little Salt Lake Valley. John D. Lee's entry for 9 January 1851 records: This morning the pilot los Horn and Capt S. Baker were instructed by the Pres. To examine the situation of the land on the south side of Beaver and if possible to look out a rout to avoid crossing the swamp (a wet piece of land made by springs spreading over the land) About 9 bros Horn and Baker returned 8c reported favorable. Said by driving about 1/2 mile down the stream and making a bridge or rather filling up a smawl ditch with sage brush through which the water runs, the whole camp can go over dry shod. In the mien time Capt. Anson Call by order of the Pres. Engaged as many men with picks and spades on the banks of Spring Creek as could work to an advantage digging down the banks which were very steep. Another portion of the co were collecting the teams about 10 the horse teams commenced crossing and was followed by the 2nd 50 about 3/4 of a mile is the distance between Spring Creek 8c Pure Creek [South Creek], another tributary of the Beaver. This stream is about 8 feet wide 8c 1 deep water clear as christale bot­tom gravely banks hard; but steep bad crossing. Less than a 1/4 mile distance brings you to the main creek. This is about 2 rods wide and 2 feet deep at the ford, banks low and hard bottom gravely. Good crossing-Some willow on the banks near the cross- 48 HISTORY OF BEAVER COUNTY ing and about 3 ms up the stream appears to be a considerable body of cottonwood timber.17 The night of 9 J a n u a r y was spent at t h e s o u t h end of Beaver Valley a n d the next m o r n i n g wagons were double-teamed for the climb to the summit of the ridge. The road up the m o u n t a i n was " . . . steep rocky & on account of snow, slippery and sideling, hard on waggons 8c teams."18 After reaching the summit, George A. Smith " . . . ascended to the t o p of one of the highest dwarf pine trees . . . 8c from it had a view of the Little Salt Lake Valley."19 After four weeks of travel, t h e company reached the site of Parowan on 13 January 1851. The successful establishment of Parowan in January 1851 and the wagon traffic through Beaver Valley back and forth between the Iron Mission communities and Salt Lake City brought greater attention to t h e p o t e n t i a l for settlements in Beaver Valley. For nearly three decades, Parowan was the "Mother" colony for a number of Mormon settlements throughout southern Utah that took hold in some of the most isolated parts of the American West, including the outpost of Bluff settled by Hole-in-the-Rock pioneers on the San Juan River in 1880 after being called to t h e mission d u r i n g a conference in the Parowan Rock Church. Given t h e favorable r e p o r t s of t h e Beaver Valley, it is u n d e r ­standable that one of the first areas for settlement as Parowan resi­dents pushed outward was n o r t h into Beaver Valley. ENDNOTES 1. Fray Angelico Chavez, trans., Ted J. Warner, ed., The Dominguez- Escalante Journal: Their Expedition Through Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico in 1776 (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1976), 68. 2. Ibid., 69. 3. Ibid., 70 4. Ibid., 70. 5. Ibid., 70-71 6. Ibid., 72. Chavez and Warner identify the location as Brown Knoll, about two miles east of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks, noting that "There is a small ravine in the eastern ridge of the knoll which would have been ideal for camping, as it afforded shelter from the desert and mountain EXPLORATION 1776-1856 49_ winds. At its base the ground is wet and is used today as a watering place for range cattle." 7. Ibid., 74 8. Dale Morgan, Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1953), 193-97 and 211-15. 9. C. Gregory Crampton and Steven K. Madsen, In Search of the Spanish Trail: Santa Fe to Los Angeles, 1829-1848 (Salt Lake City: Gibbs- Smith Publisher), 11. 10. S.George Ellsworth, ed., The Journals of Addison Pratt (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990) 382. 11. Donna T. Smart, "Over the Rim to Red Rock Country: The Parley P. Pratt Exploring Company of 1849," Utah Historical Quarterly 62 (Spring 1994), 172. 12. Ibid., 173-74 13. Ibid., 179 14. Parley P. Pratt, Report of the Southern Exploring Expedition Submitted to the Legislative Council of Deseret, 5 February 1850, quoted in Smart, "Pratt Exploring Company," 188. 15. "Journal of the Iron County Mission, John D. Lee Clerk," ed. Gustive O. Larson, Utah Historical Quarterly 20 (July 1952), 263-64. 16. Ibid., 264. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 265 19. Ibid., 266.