Utah’s Trail Country history

In 1821 the British government forced a merger of the Northwest Fur Company with the Hudson's Bay Company with the idea that the latter would be better able to handle the task of maintaining British interests in the Northwest.

On 20 March 1822 William H. Ashley, then Lieutenant governor of Missouri, placed a notice in the Missouri Republican of St Louis requesting the services of one hundred "enterprising young men" to be employed in the fur trade on the upper Missouri River.

Early in 1824 Smith's detachment of "Ashley men" crossed South Pass on their way to the Green River and northern Utah, followed later by Weber's group.

Miller, David E. “Journal of Peter Skene Ogden; Snake Expedition, 1825.” Peter Skene Ogden’s Journal of his Expedition to Utah, 1825.

The first, in 1826, followed the present routes of United States Highway 91 from southern Idaho through Cache Valley and on to Utah Lake, highways 6 and 10 into and through Castle Valley, I-70 to Salina and Cove Fort, and I-15 to Cedar City, St George, and on to California.

Daniel T. Potts went with five men to Utah Valley where they traded as far south as the Sevier River; they then traveled over the Wasatch Range to a tributary of the Green River. It was also from this site that William Sublette, who had taken over the responsibility for bringing supplies to the mountains, left with Moses "Black" Harris on 1 January 1827 for St Louis to purchase supplies and conduct the trade caravan to the summer gathering.

Smith was taken in by John McLoughlin at Fort Vancouver, where he spent the winter of 1828-29.

Together they arrived at the rendezvous of 1829 at Pierre's Hole, a beautiful valley on the west side of the Tetons, along the Idaho-Wyoming border.

Undaunted by the failure of the previous year, and with the realization that they had to make a move in the mountains, the American Fur Company returned again in 1830.

Although the fur trade continued in the Rockies, after 1832 it had moved so far north that its impact upon Utah was greatly reduced.

Members of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, the American Fur Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, and Captain Bonneville were all present at the 1834 rendezvous on Ham's Fork of the Green River.

The discovery of Warren A. Ferris's Map of the Northwest Fur Country (drawn in 1836) has shed new light on the topic and adds considerable, although not conclusive, support to the argument that the Indian attack occurred on the Jordan River.

Antoine Robidoux purchased the Reed post in the fall of 1831 or the spring of 1832. It appears that Robidoux then established another post in 1837, also called Fort Robidoux, this time on the Green River.

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 1846, Mormons left Nauvoo, Illinois because of religious persecution and traveled across Iowa, ending in Winter Quarters, Nebraska.

But the first wagon was dragged over the trail in 1848 by Mormon Battalion members returning to Salt Lake Valley after mustering out in Los Angeles.

And it was a former Battalion member, Jefferson Hunt, who in 1849 led the first party to make it an actual wagon road.

In 1854 Brigham Young sent an expedition over Trail #1 to find a shorter route to Fort Bridger for the settlers near Ogden so that they would not need to go via Salt Lake City.

The wheels were locked, and my companions held onto the vehicle with ropes to prevent its breaking loose and dashing down the steep incline.) In 1856 Ogden Hole became a summer grazing area for cattle.

The first permanent settlers arrived in 1858 and located near the herd houses.

A toll road through Ogden Canyon constructed in 1860 by Lorin Farr and Isaac Goodale, subsequently became the main route into Ogden Valley.

One, made by the 1879-80 Hole-in-the-Rock expedition that was attempting to establish a Mormon settlement on the San Juan, is a carved trail through southeastern Utah country so savage it is still negotiable only by the most strenuous jeeping and hiking.

In 1913 auto and tire companies formed the Lincoln Highway Association and contracted with states along the proposed to build a transcontinental highway.

Disclaimer: Information on this site was converted from a hard cover book published by University of Utah Press in 1994.

Darren Parry, The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History (Salt Lake City, UT: Common Consent Press, 2019), 12.