Indian Trails Monument - Early Explorations - Utah Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

Early Explorations

Indian bands of the Shoshone Tribe were located throughout Northern Utah, Southern Idaho and Western Wyoming long before the advent of the white men. Northern Utah was inhabited by hunting and wild berry-pinenuts-roots gathering bands of the Northwest Shoshones and some Ute Indians. The Indians wandered from area to area on a network of well traveled trails throughout the region.

Pathfinders, trappers and explorers followed the well worn Indian trails through Utah Territory. In May 1825 Peter Skene Ogden of the Hudson's Bay Company led a party of trappers south from Cache Valley on Trail #2 and in seven days the party took 585 beaver pelts in New Hole as Ogden called the valley. The Ogden party left New Hole and followed Trail #4 south to the Weber River. After a skirmish with some American trappers at Mountain Green Ogden retraced his steps north, never descending to the lower valley. Mountain men called the valley Ogden Hole, such men as Smith, Fitzpatrick, Weber, Sublette, Bridger, Russell, Clyman and Goodyear. In 1843 John C. Fremont and his expedition traveled south on an Indian trail from Fort Hall, arriving at the Weber River they launched a boat and visited the island in the Great Salt Lake which now bears his name. In 1849 Capt. J. Howard Stansbury led an expedition of Topographical Engineers of the U.S. Army to the west. He left the Donner Trail south of Evanston and descended the Bear River until he found "an Indian lodge trail" going west (Trail #3). "We soon arrived at the headwaters of Pumbar (Lost) Creek, a tributary of the Weber". The Party took Trail #1 west and visited Brownsville, now called Ogden. Later while encamped on the west side of Promontory Mountain Capt. Stansbury noticed indications of the area's having been inundated at some remote time by "a vast inland sea". Stansbury thus became the first person to record the existence of ancient Lake Bonneville.