National Trails System

National Park Service

U.S. Department of the Interior

National Historic Trails

Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah — Crossroads of the West

“Wagons Through Echo Canyon,” 

by William Henry Jackson
Pony Express Bible photograph is courtesy of Joe 

Nardone, — Pony Express History Association.

Every Pony Express rider working for Russell, Majors, and Waddell, was 

issued a personal Bible to carry with them and obliged to pledge this oath: 

“I, [name of rider] - do hereby swear before the great and living God that 

during my engagement and while I am an employee of Russell, Majors, and 

Waddell, I will under no circumstances use profane language, I will drink no 

intoxicating liquors; that I will not quarrel or fight with any other employee 

of the firm and that in every respect I will I conduct myself honestly, 

faithful to my duties, and so direct my acts, as to win the confidence of my 

employers, So help me God.”
NATIONAL HISTORIC TRAILS

AUTO TOUR ROUTE INTERPRETIVE 

GUIDE

Utah — Crossroads of the West

Prepared by

National Park Service

 National Trails—Intermountain Region

324 South State Street, Suite 200

Salt Lake City, Utah 84111

Telephone: 801-741-1012

www.nps.gov/cali

www.nps.gov/oreg

www.nps.gov/poex

www.nps.gov/mopi

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

September 2010
Contents

INTRODUCTION • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 1

A NOTE ON STATE BOUNDARIES • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 2

THE BIG EMPTY • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 3

SAGEBRUSH AND SALT FLATS • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4

FIRST WAGONS INTO UTAH • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 7

‘A NIGHER ROUTE’: The Hastings Cutoff • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 11

‘THIS IS THE PLACE’: The Mormon Pioneers • • • • • • • • • • • • •18

A HALF-WAY HOUSE ON THE CALIFORNIA TRAIL • • • • • • • • • 28

THE UTAH WAR • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 34

‘THE FORLORNEST SPOT’: The Pony Express Trail in Utah • • • 36

THE WARPATH • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 43

CROSSROADS OF THE WEST• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 47

SITES AND POINTS OF INTEREST • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 49

AUTO TOUR SEGMENT A: Wyoming Border To Salt Lake 

City, Utah — (Hastings Cutoff Of The California, Mormon 

Pioneer, and Pony Express Trails) • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 49

OPTIONAL BACKCOUNTRY ROUTE: East Canyon/Little 

Emigration Canyon • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 65

SALT LAKE CITY PIONEER TOUR • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 77

AUTO TOUR SEGMENT B: Salt Lake City To West Wendover, 

NV • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 90

OPTIONAL BACKCOUNTRY ROUTE: Skull Valley and Hastings 

Pass • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 95

AUTO TOUR SEGMENT C: Salt Lake City To City Of Rocks NR, 

ID (Salt Lake Cutoff of the California Trail) • • • • • • • • • • 105

AUTO TOUR SEGMENT D: Pony Express Trail National Back 

Country Byway • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 110

For More Information • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 122

Credits • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 122
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INTRODUCTION

Many of the pioneer trails and other historic routes that are important in 

our nation’s past have been designated by 

Congress as National Historic Trails. While 

most of the trail ruts still in existence are not 

open to motorized traffic, people can drive 

along modern highways that either overlie 

the original route or closely parallel it. Those 

modern roads are designated as Auto Tour 

Routes, and they are marked with highway 

signs and trail logos to help today’s travelers 

follow the routes used by the pioneers who 

helped to open the American West.

This interpretive publication guides visitors along the Auto Tour 

Routes for the California, Mormon Pioneer, and Pony Express 

National Historic Trails across Utah. Site-by-site driving directions 

are included, and an overview map is located inside the back 

cover. To make the tour more meaningful, this guide also provides 

a historical overview of the three trails, shares the thoughts and 

experiences of emigrants who followed these routes, and discusses 

how the westward expansion impacted the native peoples of what is 

now Utah.

Individual Auto Tour Route interpretive guides such as this one 

are in preparation for each state through which the trails pass. 

In addition, individual National Park Service brochures for the 

California, Mormon Pioneer, and Pony Express National Historic 

Trails are available at many trail-related venues, and also can be 

requested from the National Trails System administrative office at 

324 South State Street, Suite 200, Salt Lake City, Utah 84111. Each 

brochure includes a map of the entire trail and a general overview 

of trail history. Additional information about each trail also can be 

found on individual trail web sites. Links are listed on the “For More 

Information” page in this guide.
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Map of Deseret. Base map is courtesy of the Utah State Historical Society, but 

has been modified by NPS to outline the proposed nation of Deseret.

2

A NOTE ON STATE BOUNDARIES

National, territorial, and state boundaries across the West shifted repeatedly throughout the overland emigration era. Mexico 

ceded its holdings between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific 

Ocean to the United States in 1848, six months after the Mormons 

settled near the Great Salt Lake. In 1849, Mormon leaders proposed 

a State of Deseret that took in most of the ceded area, including 

southern California. Congress rejected that huge “provisional state” 

but in 1850 created Utah Territory, which included today’s Utah, 

western Colorado, southwestern Wyoming, and most of Nevada. This 

area gradually was subdivided into more territories and states through 

the 1860s. The State of Utah, with its modern-day boundaries, was 

admitted as the 45th state in the Union in January 1896.
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The Great Salt Lake Desert west of Salt Lake City, Utah.

3

To simplify geographical descriptions in the pages that follow, 

references to states and specific historical locations — for example, 

Fort Bridger, Wyoming — reflect modern state boundaries. 

THE BIG EMPTY

West of the Wasatch Range a pale sky yawns, exposing rows of mountains like teeth in a fearsome mouth.

The Great Basin, that Big Empty between hither and yon, is a raw and 

merciless land. Many 19th century emigrants, after several months 

trudging from the Missouri River with ox and wagon, stopped 

at its hither edge to settle near the Great Salt Lake. Many others, 

gazing west into that alien expanse, wanted urgently to meet its yon 

side at the Sierra Nevada as quickly as possible. Very few stopped 

permanently, willingly, in the thirsty in-between.

Despite its forbidding qualities, or more likely because of them, the 

Great Basin was the setting for some of the most absorbing stories 

of the American West. Their plots would bloom and ripen along the 

emigrant trails of Utah, in the eastern Great Basin.
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Pilot Peak and the Great Salt Desert with spring 

snowmelt.

4

SAGEBRUSH AND SALT FLATS

The Great Basin is a vast, high-elevation desert that takes in almost 200,000 square miles of southeastern Idaho, western Utah, nearly 

all of Nevada, and slices of California and Oregon. Like a shallow 

bowl, the Basin catches and holds water, allowing none to escape to 

the Pacific. Many thousands of years ago that bowl was full of lakes, 

some of immense size, but today its inward-flowing streams bleed 

into a few isolated remnants of those ancient lakes — or choke and 

die at river-graveyards called sinks. In places, groundwater bubbles 

up into springs and expansive marshes or collects in broad, shallow 

playa pools that evaporate and leave a bright crust of crystallized 

salts.

A bone-dry playa or salt flat makes a superb road, smooth, flat, and 

firm; but when the underlying clay is wet, a horse or ox can break 

through the white crust and mire to its knees, and a wagon might sink 

to its axles in the muck. Wet or dry, salt playas glare like snow in the 

midday sun, burning unprotected eyes and skin. Midsummer daytime 

temperatures on the Bonneville Salt Flats west of Salt Lake City can 

exceed 100 ° F, and heat waves there distort the light to create surreal 

illusions. Out in the salt desert, travelers on the Hastings Cutoff to 
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5

California might see non-existent lakes, mountains floating on air, 

distant rocks resembling lost cattle, and approaching pack trains 

magnified into fantastic, writhing serpents.

But the Great Basin is not just a big, flat salt pan: it is a bowlful of 

mountains. Hundreds of mountain ranges rise in roughly parallel 

north-south rows, separated by broad valleys. From the air, these 

ranges look like enormous swells cresting in a sagebrush sea. From 

the height of a horse, they look like serious obstacles. Anyone 

crossing the Basin by ox and wagon had to find a way around the 

mountains. Only one natural pathway cuts through this washboard 

barrier: the Humboldt River Valley of Nevada.

Salt desert and sagebrush steppe. Sun-tempered mountains the 

color of steel. Heat and eye-scalding dust, turbid streams and briny 

waterholes... miles and miles with no water at all. The Great Basin 

is stark, yet it offers a living to those who know where and when to 

look for food, and who keep an open mind about what makes a good 

meal. On the Great Basin menu are grass seeds, pine nuts, berries, 

cattail roots and pollen; fish and waterfowl, jackrabbits, antelope, 

deer, ground squirrels and lizards (few buffalo here); and ant eggs, 

caterpillars, crunchy grasshoppers, leggy Mormon crickets, and 

well-seasoned brine fly larvae that wash up in windrows along some 

Great Basin lake shores. Pioneers scorned many of these wild foods, 

although there would be times on the road ahead when they might 

gratefully eat much worse. But the native peoples of the desert could 

ill afford to be so choosy.

The riverless region southwest of the Great Salt Lake, between 

the Oquirrh Range of Utah and the Schell Creek Range of eastern 

Nevada, is some of the harshest, most food-scarce country in 

the Great Basin. It also is the ancestral homeland of the Goshute 

Shoshone Indians. When they had the desert to themselves, the 

Goshutes — “dry earth people” — spent most of the year scattered 

across the landscape in small family groups. They ranged the country 

on foot, keeping no horses that would eat up the seed-grasses the 

people needed for their own survival. The Goshutes were too few 

and too dispersed to form a tribe, but families gathered from time to 

time to cooperate in hunts and harvests. They ate whatever the earth 
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Salt desert and sagebrush with scattered waterholes — some fresh, but most 

are salty — make up the natural habitat surrounding much of the Great Salt 

Lake .

6

provided, sheltered in simple brush huts and cliff-side alcoves, and 

carried few possessions. Isolated, desert-savvy, and resourceful, the 

Goshutes lived like shadows on the land, in trembling balance with 

nature. They had enough to survive but nothing to spare.

Although the Great Salt Lake Desert may have looked vacant, it was 

fully occupied, altogether and efficiently used. The arrival in the 

1840s of new people and their livestock, competing for the same 

precious resources, would topple the delicate balance the Goshutes 

had maintained for many centuries.
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7

FIRST WAGONS INTO UTAH

Ahandwritten letter was all the 69 pioneers had to guide them to 

California as they prepared to leave Independence, Missouri, in 

May 1841. The first covered wagon train to head West had no road 

to follow, no guide, no experience with long-distance overland travel 

or the native people they would meet along the way — and for good 

measure, they had no useful map. But before leaving home, young 

John Bidwell, a 21-year-old Pennsylvania schoolteacher, had studied 

some old maps belonging to a friend. Beyond the Continental Divide, 

the drawings showed a huge lake, and from it two great rivers snaked 

west to the Pacific Ocean. Simply find one of the rivers and follow it 

to California. What could be simpler? In fact, the map’s owner (who 

was not going along) suggested that the emigrants carry tools so that 

they might build boats and ride the currents to the Land of Promise.

By stroke of luck, these ill-prepared pioneers soon joined up with 

mountain man Thomas “Broken Hand” Fitzpatrick, who guided their 

wagons over plains and mountains to Soda Springs, in today’s Idaho. 

But that was the end of Fitzpatrick’s trail: from there the emigrants 

were on their own. Before leaving them, the frontiersman persuaded 

about half of the wagon company to follow the old trappers’ route 

along the Snake and Columbia Rivers to Oregon instead of venturing 

into unknown country between Soda Springs and California. Only 

a few mountain men, including the great Jedediah Smith and Peter 

Skene Ogden, had ever probed that region, and their opinions of it 

were grim. “A Country of Starvation,” warned Smith; “truly a barren 

country,” cautioned Ogden. Undaunted, on August 11, 1841, the 

other thirty-four pioneers of Fitzpatrick’s party resolutely steered 

their wagons southwest along the Bear River toward the Great Salt 

Lake. They would find their own way to California.

This group, called the Bidwell-Bartleson Party, did send four riders 

north to the Fort Hall trading post to recruit a guide from among the 

fur trappers there. The returning outriders overtook the wagons 10 

days later in what is today northern Utah, but they brought no guide 

— nothing but second-hand information gleaned from trappers who 

had only heard about the country ahead.
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1841 Route taken by Bidwell - Bartleson between South Pass and Pilot Peak.John Bidwell portrait Courtesy of the Utah 

State Historical Society.

8

Don’t go too far south before turning 

west to California, the trappers 

advised, for there lay an immense 

desert with no feed or water for the 

livestock. And don’t turn off too far 

north, either, they warned, for there 

lay a maze of streams and canyons 

where the travelers would wander, lost 

and starving. But if the emigrants were 

to turn west toward California at just 

the right spot, neither too far south nor 

too far north, they eventually would 

strike Mary’s River (later named the 

Humboldt River), which they could 

follow into the heart of the Great Basin.

The fact was no one knew but little about the country. No one had 

been through to California by that route so far as we could learn. 

— John Bidwell, California emigration, 1841.
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As the determined emigrants continued down the Bear River looking 

for the perfect place to split off toward Mary’s River, they noticed 

that the stream was growing increasingly briny. Even the nearby 

grass was “shining with salt,” so the suffering draft mules and oxen 

could neither feed nor drink. Adding to the torment, the August heat 

magnified the landscape and made distant shrubs look like wellwatered groves of trees. In their confusion, the emigrants followed 

mirages across the mud flats west of today’s Brigham City toward the 

Great Salt Lake.

Thus misled, we traveled all day without water, and at midnight 

found ourselves on a plain, level as a floor, incrusted with salt, and 

as white as snow ... This plain became softer and softer until our 

poor, almost famished, animals could not pull our wagons. In fact, 

we were going direct to Salt Lake and did not know it. — John 

Bidwell, California emigration, 1841.

Disoriented and uncertain, they looped around, crossed their own 

track, struggled through sagebrush so dense that it overturned the 

lighter wagons, and blundered their way along the north end of 

the lake. At last finding a source of good water (later named Tenmile Spring), the company sat in camp for over a week until their 

scouts returned with news that Mary’s River was about five days’ 

travel ahead. Onward the emigrants toiled. East of the present-day 

state border near Lucin, Utah, a month after leaving Soda Springs, 

the faltering oxen belonging to pioneer Ben Kelsey moaned to a 

halt. Kelsey unyoked his cattle, emptied the wagon, and loaded 

belongings, his 18-year-old wife, Nancy, and their toddler daughter 

onto horses. They would pack to California, driving their oxen before 

them. Within a few days, Kelsey’s companions would abandon their 

wagons, too.

Now it was mid-September. The Bidwell-Bartleson Party, already out 

of provisions, faced a hungry two-month trek across the Great Basin 

and a perilous late-season crossing of the Sierra Nevada.

The Bidwell-Bartleson wagon route around the north end of the 

Great Salt Lake was abandoned until 1869, when Union Pacific laid 

tracks through that area for the transcontinental railroad. Today, state 
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1846 route of the Hastings Cutoff on the California Trail between South Pass 

and Pilot Peak.

10

highways and local roads between Snowville and Lucin approximate 

the Bidwell route.

But the oncoming emigration would find other — and not always 

better — ways to California.
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Lansford Hastings portrait, Courtesy 

of the Utah State Historical Society.

11

‘A NIGHER ROUTE’: The Hastings Cutoff

This new cutoff from Fort Bridger to California could save 

hundreds of miles, Lansford W. Hastings promised westbound 

emigrants during the summer of 1846. The great Pathfinder himself, 

Captain John C. Fremont, only last year blazed a direct route between 

the Great Salt Lake and the Humboldt River. Hastings had just ridden 

that route east from California. If anyone cared to try it, he and his 

partner, James Hudspeth, would personally lead the way.

And a fine, level road it was, chimed Jim Bridger, a proprietor of a 

Wyoming trading post that was conveniently located to serve travelers 

on the new cutoff. Plenty of water and grass — well, except for a 

40-mile dry stretch. With few wagons on the brand-new trail, dust 

wouldn’t be bad, either.

But not everyone thought this cutoff was a good idea. The route, 

in fact, was not a road, not even a pack trail, and had never seen a 

wheel. The relief was more rugged, 

the desert more dangerous than 

reported, and it was doubtful that 

the “cutoff” was any shorter than 

the established wagon trail through 

Fort Hall, in today’s Idaho. James 

Clyman, who had ridden the route 

from California with Hastings and 

Hudspeth, continued east on his 

own and warned emigrants along 

the way that Hastings’ new shortcut 

was “verry little nearer” than the old 

road through Fort Hall—and likely impassable for wagons. He said so 

plainly to a California-bound friend he encountered at Fort Laramie, 

Wyoming: James Reed of the Donner-Reed Party.

I told him to ‘take the regular wagon track [by way of Fort Hall, 

Idaho] and never leave it — it is barely possible to get through if 

you follow it — and it may be impossible if you don’t.’ Reed replied, 

‘There is a nigher route, and it is of no use to take so much of a 
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James and Margret Reed: Courtesy of 

the Utah State Historical Society.

12

roundabout course.’ — James Clyman recounting conversation 

with James Reed at Fort Laramie, 1846.

Clyman had impressive frontier credentials. He had trapped the 

Green River country in the 1820s, ridden with Jedediah Smith and 

Thomas Fitzpatrick, helped rediscover South Pass, explored the 

Great Salt Lake in a rawhide bullboat, and crossed the continent 

several times — most recently by the very cutoff now in debate. But 

in the end, Reed and others thought an open letter from Hastings, 

sent east by courier to recruit emigrants along the trail, was more 

compelling than the advice of crusty old Clyman. Why, Hastings 

was an author, had written The Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and 

California, and he and Hudspeth were waiting at Fort Bridger to pilot 

them! Besides, the Donner-Reed Party was among the last groups 

on the trail that summer. The travel season was growing late and 

the fearsome Sierra Nevada still lay ahead. With Jim Bridger himself 

vouching for it, this new shortcut was surely too good to pass up.

When the emigrants reached Bridger’s post on July 28, though, they 

learned that their guides had departed eight days earlier leading a 

group of mule-packers and 70 to 80 emigrant wagons. A note left by 

Hastings urged late arrivals to come on and catch up. It should be easy 

enough, following the tracks of slower-moving advance wagons that 

were doing the hard work of breaking trail.

As the 20 wagons of the DonnerReed Party rolled out of the fort 

and onto the Hastings Cutoff 

on July 31, it did seem easy. 

They followed the trail of the 

lead wagons southwestward 

across the corner of Wyoming 

into Utah, over the bluffs east of 

today’s I-80, and through scenic 

Echo Canyon. Near the junction 

of I-80 and I-84 at the modern 

community of Echo, the trace turned northwest, crossed the Weber 

River, and continued along the water course toward present-day 

Henefer. There the river entered Weber Canyon, a narrow defile that 
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13

squeezed the stream so tightly that it thrashed and screamed. Wedged 

into a sagebrush near the head of the canyon fluttered a second note 

from Hastings. Its message was a punch in the gut.

The lead wagons, misdirected by Hudspeth, had barely escaped 

catastrophe in dangerous Weber Canyon. Do not attempt passage 

by that route, the note warned. Wait here and send a rider ahead to 

overtake Hastings and fetch him back. He would guide them along a 

faster, safer route through the Wasatch Mountains.

Now there would be no wagon trail to follow. The men of the 

Donner-Reed Party would have to blaze their own track through the 

rugged wilderness. The date was August 6.

Four days later, James Reed returned to camp with more bad news. 

He had overtaken Hastings near the south shore of the Great Salt 

Lake. Reluctantly, Hastings had accompanied Reed only partway 

back to the Weber River encampment where the others waited; he 

could not abandon his lead wagons, which were about to enter the 

salt desert. So, from a mountaintop east of the Great Salt Lake Valley, 

Hastings had stood in his stirrups and pointed out to Reed a route 

through the jumble of Wasatch peaks. And then he rode way.

With a growing sense of urgency, the Donner-Reed Party turned 

from the Weber River and began grubbing trail southwestward 

through a maze of brush-and-boulder-choked gulches, each more 

grueling than the last. Today’s Highway 65 over Big Mountain Pass 

and the Emigration Canyon Road into Salt Lake City approximate 

their route. Up and down mountainsides, crossing and re-crossing 

streams, whacking through willows growing thick as grass, chopping, 

shoveling, prying, pushing ... many days they gained only two or 

three miles of trail after hours of back-breaking work. Along the way, 

another emigrant family out of Fort Bridger overtook and joined 

them, bringing the Donner-Reed Party to a total of 23 wagons and 87 

souls.

Finally the travelers dropped into Emigration Canyon, one of the 

worst of the Wasatch drainages, strangled with underbrush, wagons 

pitching over 18 deep creek crossings, passage growing tighter, 
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Pilot Peak, in the early Spring, from the west side of Hastings Pass in the 

Cedar Mountains and the Great Salt Desert in the foreground.

14

tighter, tighter until, at the very gate of the Salt Lake Valley, they found 

themselves at a dead end, blocked by heavy brush and a limestone 

abutment. Unable to summon the strength to punch through, the 

emigrants wheeled left and drove their wagons one by one directly up 

the steep slope of the ravine to an eminence that still bears the name 

Donner Hill.

The last wagon lurched out of Emigration Canyon into the dry air of 

the Great Basin on August 22. Altogether, the delay at the Weber River 

plus the 36-mile crawl through the mountains to the Salt Lake Valley 

— a distance that should typically take three to four days by ox and 

wagon — had cost the Donner-Reed Party 17 precious days.

We at last came within one mile of Salt Lake Valley, when we were 

compelled to pass over a hill so steep that from ten to twelve yoke of 

oxen were necessary to draw each wagon to the summit. From this 

height we beheld the Great Salt Lake, and the extensive plains by 

which it is surrounded. It gave us great courage; for we thought we 

were going to have good roads through a fertile country .... 

— Adult reminiscence of John Breen, 14-year-old member of 

the Donner-Reed Party.
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Many pioneers along the California Trail commented that the Great Salt 

Lake Desert was the most desolate place they had ever seen. Photograph is 

courtesy of the Utah State Historical Society.

15

Continuing west across the Salt Lake Valley, the emigrants merged 

two days later with the tracks of Hastings’s lead wagons. But the 

relief they had felt since cresting Donner Hill soon was shattered at 

a waterhole later named, ironically, Hope Wells (at today’s Iosepa in 

Skull Valley). There on August 28, the Donner-Reed Party discovered 

a third and final message from Lansford W. Hastings, note-writer 

extraordinaire.

The paper lay in scattered scraps, picked apart, perhaps, by ravens. 

Stunned, the emigrants wordlessly bent to collect and piece together 

the message: 2 days — 2 nights — hard driving — cross — desert — 

reach water.

What! This meant that the dry crossing must be much longer than 

40 miles — maybe twice that span! (Later emigrants measured the 

distance at over 80 miles.) There was nothing to do but move on. 

The group paused at one last brackish waterhole, Redlum Spring, 

clambered over Hastings Pass through the Cedar Mountains, and 

followed the tracks of the lead wagons over the rocky ribs of the 

Grayback Hills. Now they entered the salt desert.
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In the 1940s, historians photographed the remains of emigrant wagons that 

often became mired in the soft sands and soils of the Great Salt Lake Desert. 

Photograph is courtesy of the Utah State Historical Society.

16

& we had to go through a long drive of 40 miles With out water or 

grass Hastings said it was 40 but I think it was 80 miles We traveld 

a day and night & a nother day....we laid down on the ground we 

spred one shawl down we laid doun on it and spred another over us 

and then put the [pet] dogs on top it was the couldes night you most 

ever saw the wind blew and if it haden bin for the dogs we would 

have Frosen — Virginia Reed, 13-year-old member of DonnerReed Party, letter dated May 16, 1847.

Out on the glaring salt flats, the sun broiled people and livestock from 

above and radiant heat roasted them from below. At night, icy winds 

rattled the wagon covers and slapped through thin clothing. Thirsty 

cattle collapsed and never rose, and the slower wagons dropped 

behind. In the extreme heat, mirages of grassy lakeshores taunted the 

travelers. On the third day in the salt desert, the desperate emigrants 

unyoked their suffering oxen to drive them ahead to the next known 

water at the base of Pilot Peak. Some animals, mad with thirst, 

stampeded into the desert. On the sixth day of the dry crossing, the 

last of the scattered emigrants reeled into camp to join the others at 

the Pilot Peak waterhole, now called Donner Springs.
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17

There the group spent a week recovering from the frightful ordeal 

and searching for missing cattle. Two Goshute men approached 

camp and with hand-motions made known that they had found some 

lost livestock; but the emigrants feared it was a trick and hurried 

the Indians away. Many of the missing animals never were found. 

Altogether the brutal crossing had cost 36 oxen, along with two 

wagons ruined by the drying effects of salt and sun and two more 

abandoned for lack of draft animals to pull them.

 In fact, it was impossible to find cattle on those plains, as the 

mirage, when the sun shone, would make every object the size of 

a man’s hat look as large as an ox, at the distance of a mile or 

more; so one could ramble all day from one of these delusions to 

another, till he became almost heart-broken from disappointment, 

and famished from thirst. — Adult reminiscence of John Breen, 

14-year-old member of the Donner-Reed Party.

To conserve the strength of their remaining oxen, the emigrants were 

forced to leave many cherished possessions behind in the desert. 

When instructed by her parents to forsake her belongings, eightyear-old Patty Reed secretly tucked a tiny wooden doll, a lock of her 

beloved grandmother’s hair, and several other small mementos into 

her clothing. Dolly, especially, would comfort her in the months to 

come.

The morning of September 10, 1846, with an overnight dusting of 

snow frosting nearby Pilot Peak, the Donner-Reed Party broke camp 

and rolled toward Nevada.

For riveting first-person accounts of Hastings’s lead companies 

down the Weber River and across the Great Salt Lake Desert, see 

“From St. Louis to Sutter’s Fort, 1846” by Heinrich Lienhard and 

“What I Saw in California” by Edwin Bryant.
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Echo Canyon near Echo, Utah.

18

‘THIS IS THE PLACE’: The Mormon Pioneers

Lurid accounts of certain events that had occurred in the Sierra 

Nevada over the past winter were already circulating among the 

California newspapers as the first Mormon wagons followed the 

Donner-Reed ruts into Echo Canyon the summer of 1847.

It was mid-July and the Latter-day Saints’ destination, the Great Salt 

Lake Valley, lay only 40 miles ahead. Although this party of about 145 

vanguard pioneers (including three women and two children) was 

in no danger of being trapped by mountain blizzards, other worries 

dogged them. The company’s head and heart, Brigham Young, lay 

wracked with pain and fever in a sick-wagon that lagged miles behind 

the two forward wagon groups. More critically, the settlers were 

arriving in the valley very late in the planting season without enough 

provisions to see them through the approaching winter. Finally, at 

least 1,500 more pioneers, mostly families, even now were on their 

way from Winter Quarters (Omaha). They, too, would need food and 

shelter to survive the first winter in their new home.
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Utah

“Wagons Through Echo Canyon.” Painting by William Henry Jackson (NPS)

19

And survive there they would, come what may, for they were done 

with fleeing. The Latter-day Saints first had been violently expelled 

from Missouri in 1838. Their beloved founder and prophet Joseph 

Smith was murdered by a mob in 1844, and two years later antiMormon vigilantes drove his followers out of Nauvoo, Illinois, their 

settlement on the Mississippi River — drove them, homeless, onto the 

prairie.

Never again. The Great Basin belonged to Mexico, but the land was 

not settled. Remote and barren, the Basin had no known resources 

of particular value; nobody would come soon to wrest it from the 

Mormons — and when they did come, the Latter-day Saints would 

be ready. The Basin would be their final and permanent refuge, the 

Rocky Mountains their line in the sand.

Now their destination lay just ahead, and the red rock gateway into 

the Wasatch Mountains was like nothing they had experienced 

along the trail so far. William Clayton, a chronicler for the company, 

thought it “seemed strange that a road could ever have been made” 

through the narrow confines of Echo Canyon. Echo Creek burrowed 

between steep banks that forced crossing wagons to plunge sharply 
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Utah

“First View Of The Great Salt Lake Valley” from the top of Big Mountain 

east of present-day Salt Lake City. Painting by William Henry Jackson (NPS)

20

down to the water and groan, double-teamed, up the opposite side, 

and the canyon floor was littered with boulders and brush. Yet the 

place had its charms: peculiar rock formations practically begging 

to be given fun names like Castle Rock, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and 

Noah’s Ark; shady bowers of wildflowers and sweet berries; and 

canyon narrows where a single shout could rebound 21 times (and 

where, one pioneer observed, a few men might hold off an army). 

Travelers through the years would praise the beauty of Echo Canyon, 

a delightful interlude on the long road west.

There is a very singular echo in this ravine the rattling of wagons 

resembles carpenters hammering at boards inside the highest rocks. 

The report of a rifle resembles a sharp crack of thunder and echoes 

from rock to rock for some time. The lowing of Cattle and braying 

of mules seems to be answered beyond the mountains. — William 

Clayton, 1847 Mormon advance party.
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Utah

The canyon road from Big Mountain west to the Salt Lake Valley is still 

used by modern-day travelers.

21

[It is] beyond description for wilderness and beauty; we are indeed 

among the everlasting hills. — Jean Rio Griffiths Baker, 1851 

Mormon emigration.

In front the eye runs down the long bright red line of Echo Kanyon, 

and rests with astonishment upon its novel and curious features, the 

sublimity of its broken and jagged peaks, divided by dark abysses, 

and based upon huge piles of disjointed and scattered rock. — Sir 

Richard Burton in The City of the Saints, an account of his 1860 

stagecoach trip west.

Entering the head of Main Canyon near today’s town of Henefer, 

the Mormon company’s scouts found disappointingly little trace 

of the passage of the 23 Donner-Reed wagons just a year earlier. 

With axes, shovels, and pry-bars, a work crew set to clearing the 

trail anew. Despite the improvements, the oncoming wagons had to 

move cautiously, often tilted with two wheels in the streambed and 

two rolling through boot-piercing willow stubble on the creek bank. 

After Main Canyon came more of the same in Broad Hollow, Dixie 

Hollow, and what William Clayton named “the worst piece of road 

on the whole journey,” East Canyon. Even in later years, with further 

improvements, the wagon track through these drainages was horrific.
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Utah

View looking up Emigration Canyon from near the top of Donner Hill.

22

The road grew worse — it was bad in every way—it was sidling, 

muddy, rocky, and full of sharp pitches — and then, too, we had 

to cross, I don’t know how many times, a brawling stream, which 

seemed to be out of temper with us and everything else. — Cornelia 

Woodstock Ferris, wife of federal appointee to Utah Territory, 

1852.

The worst road that wheels ever rolled over. — Jotham Newton, 

1853 California emigration.

Next the trail crew and wagons labored up Little Emigration Canyon 

to the summit of Big Mountain, where travelers caught their first 

glorious view into the Great Basin. Then and thereafter, it was a 

breath-taking sight.

The spirit of light rested upon me and moved over the valley, and I 

felt that there the Saints would find protection and safety. 

— Brigham Young, recalling his experience of July 23, 1847.
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Utah

23

It was the grandest view that ever mortal beheld. The air was clear 

and perfect for a good view — the Great Salt Lake glittering under 

the suns rays, range after range of mountains in every direction, 

the great desert to the west .... A more sublime view was seldom 

seen from a mountain top. — Abner Blackburn, 1847 Mormon 

emigration.

All the world was glorified with the setting sun, and the most 

stupendous panorama of mountain peaks yet encountered burst 

on our sight .... Even the Overland stage-driver stopped his horses 

and gazed! — Mark Twain in Roughing It, an account of his 1861 

stagecoach trip west.

Perhaps the view stoked travelers’ courage for what came 

next: a nerve-wracking jump off the summit, straight down the 

mountainside. Many emigrants locked their wagon wheels with 

chains and skidded down the slope or lowered their wagons with 

ropes. The scars scraped into the earth by their passage are visible still 

from Highway 65, which switchbacks across the old ruts.

I started down with the horse & it was as steep as the roof of a house 

for a half a mile .... — Pardon Dexter Tiffany, letter to wife, 

1849 California gold rush.

We came to a brow, called by a wag ‘the jumping-off place,’ where 

parachutes might be brought into requisition, the drop being so 

quick and so long that it appeared an undertaking of hopeless 

impossibility to get down in the ordinary way. — William Kelly 

in An Excursion to California, an account of his 1849 travels to 

California.

Now the wagons rolled down Mountain Dell and double-teamed 

up Little Mountain, where emigrants caught a second glimpse of 

the valley. Next came another steep descent to narrow, twisting 

Emigration Canyon, the last and, some said, worst of the Wasatch 

drainages. Time and again, the wagons pitched 15 to 20 feet down 

the stream bank to deep-running Emigration Creek and careened, 

with oxen double-teamed and groaning, up the opposite bank. Later 

travelers would find the road just as difficult.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

This Is the Place Heritage Park, 

located below Donner Hill, 

commemorates the arrival of the 

Mormon Pioneers in July 1847. 

Photo is courtesy of Cory Maylett.

24

You enter a Kanyon in many places so narrow & with such short 

turns in it that the middle one of three wagons travelling close 

together could not see the one behind. Beside this you have to cross 

the creek 19 times in 5 miles every one so cut by the wagons as to 

[be] exceedingly dangerous & some places nearly swimming a horse 

in mud and water. — Pardon Dexter Tiffany, letter to wife, 1849 

California gold rush.

We traveled six hours down a narrow ravine which leads to the 

valley of the Salt Lake, over the most miserable road ever traveled 

by civilized man. — James Abbey, 1850 California emigration.

Of all the splendid scenery and awful roads that have ever been 

since creation, I think this day’s journey has beaten them all....The 

road was completely covered with stones as large as bushel boxes, 

stumps of trees with here and there mud holes in which our poor 

oxen sunk to the knees ... One of my own teams was forced down 

a [creek bank] with such rapidity that one of the oxen fell into the 

stream and was drowned before it could be extricated. — Jean Rio 

Griffiths Baker, 1851 Mormon emigration 

The 1847 company’s forward 

scouts at length reached the place 

where the Donner-Reed Party, in 

exhausted frustration, had pulled 

up out of Emigration Canyon. 

The two men, Orson Pratt and 

Erastus Snow, climbed Donner 

Hill and gazed into the Great 

Basin and the broad valley at their 

feet. It was an emotional moment.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Salt Lake City, circa 1867. Photograph is courtesy of the Library of Congress.

25

After issuing from the mountains among which we had been shut 

up for many days, and beholding in a moment such an extensive 

scenery open before us, we could not refrain from a shout of joy 

which almost involuntarily escaped from our lips the moment this 

grand and lovely scenery was within our view. — Orson Pratt, July 

21, 1847, Mormon scouting party.

The company’s trail crew arrived the next day and in four hours cut 

through the brush and dug a road around the limestone abutment 

that had stymied the Donner-Reed Party at the foot of Donner Hill. 

One by one, the weary workers stepped out of the canyon and onto 

the eastern slope of the Great Basin. The Wasatch, last and most 

difficult of the Rocky Mountain ranges, stood finally at their backs. 

Below the mouth of Emigration Canyon, the Valley of the Great Salt 

Lake rippled with a soft green blanket of tall grass, well-watered by 

mountain streams.

I could not help shouting ‘hurra, hurra, hurra, there’s my home at 

last.’ — Thomas Bullock, July 22, 1847, Mormon emigration.

At their passage through the same limestone portal later that day, 

many among the pioneers shared Bullock’s joy. Others were less 

enthusiastic. Heavily pregnant Harriet Young, Brigham Young’s 

sister-in-law, looked her husband in the eye. “We have traveled fifteen 

hundred miles to get here,” she told Lorenzo Young with steel in her 

voice, “and I would willingly travel a thousand miles farther to get 

where it looked as though a white man could live.”
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

View of Salt Lake City from the south, circa 1891. Photograph is courtesy of the 

Library of Congress.

26

William Clayton climbed Donner Hill for a better view and demurely 

proclaimed himself “happily disappointed” in his new home. Clayton 

was troubled by the lack of timber for construction in the mostly 

treeless valley. With what would they build their homes? He also 

observed, “The ground seems literally alive with the very large black 

crickets crawling round, up grass and bushes. They look loathsome ....”

Brigham Young, driven in a carriage to the valley overlook two days 

later, famously harbored no doubts. His companion later recalled 

Young’s words as he gazed toward the valley encampment where the 

earlier Saints already had planted several acres with potatoes and 

turnips, dammed a creek, and turned water into their ditches. “It 

is enough,” said Brigham Young. “This is the right place. Drive on.” 

July 24, the date of Young’s entry into the Salt Lake Valley, has been 

a day of public celebration in Utah every year since 1849. Today the 

anniversary, called Pioneer Day, is a state holiday.

In little over six months from the Mormons’ arrival in the Salt Lake 

Valley, the Great Basin and California would belong to the United 

States and gold would be discovered at John Sutter’s mill. The 

Latter-day Saints’ mountain sanctuary was about to become a busy 

crossroads on the trail to California.

At this place [the mouth of Emigration Canyon] the pilgrim 

emigrants ... give vent to the emotions long pent up within their 

bosoms by sobs and tears, laughter and congratulations, psalms and 
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Utah

27

hysterics. It is indeed no wonder that the children dance, that strong 

men cheer and shout, and that nervous women, broken with fatigue 

and hope deferred, scream and faint .... — Sir Richard Burton in 

The City of the Saints, an account of his 1860 stagecoach trip 

west.

Oh, have we come all the way for this? — Ruth May, age 13, 1867 

Mormon emigration.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

28

A HALF-WAY HOUSE ON THE CALIFORNIA 

TRAIL

Roughly 10,000 treasure-hunters on their way to California the summer of 1849 followed the combined Donner-Reed and 

Mormon Trail into the Great Salt Lake City, which by then was a 

town of several thousand residents. Another 15,000 gold-seekers 

poured into the Mormon city of refuge the next year. Some were ill, 

needy, and desperate. Some were difficult, demanding, and profane. 

Many were polite, curious, and amazed at what the Mormons had 

accomplished. And nearly all of them drove into town with jaded, 

footsore livestock, heavy wagons over-packed with dry goods and 

equipment, pockets full of spending money, and a powerful incentive 

to trade.

Upon his arrival in the Great Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young had 

vowed that the Latter-day Saints would reject the outside world that 

had rejected them, and would have no trade or commerce with it. But 

the ragged realities of life in the provisional state of Deseret (a word 

from Mormon scripture translated as “honeybee” and signifying 

industry) were sobering. Many goods in the new settlement were 

prohibitively expensive because everything the Mormon settlers 

could not yet produce for themselves — quality farm implements, 

industrial equipment, certain household items, good milled cloth 

— had to be freighted overland. More critically, for two consecutive 

years, drought, frost, grasshoppers, and crawling hordes of armored 

katydids the size of mice, popularly called Mormon crickets, had 

taken the bulk of the crops. Mormon settlers survived the winter of 

1848-49 on boiled rawhide, gritty determination, and faith.

So Brigham Young’s prohibition on trade quickly went out the 

window. God might be in their eyes and in their hearts but that did 

not make the Latter-day Saints blind and senseless to the gold-road 

gravy train that chugged into Deseret the summer of 1849. There was 

dealing to be done. The treasure-hunters and the Mormon pioneers 

needed one another, and so the Great Salt Lake City became the 

“Half-way House” on the trail to California.
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Utah

29

Salt Lake City, especially as it grew and matured through the 1850s 

and ’60s, was a sight for travelers’ sore eyes. The carefully planned 

community was an orderly green grid of 10-acre blocks trimmed 

by wide streets, with deep residential lots and lush orchards and 

gardens, tidy adobe houses set back from the streets, and curbside 

ditches that brought running water to every home. At the north end 

of Main Street was a parcel of land set aside for church purposes, 

where the populace and curious visitors gathered beneath a shady 

bowery for Sunday worship. There on Temple Square, the Latterday Saints gradually raised a dazzling granite temple, completed in 

1893, with soaring spires that lift the eyes to heaven. Nearby, the 

Mormon Tabernacle — a turtle-backed architectural wonder — stood 

completed in 1867.

Great indeed was our relief at beholding the settlement of the 

persecuted Mormons. Even corn fields and sheaves of wheat never 

possessed such beauty in my eyes before .... — Adonijah Strong 

Welch, 1849 California gold rush.

We camped for several days in the outskirts of the city, and enjoyed 

to our heart’s content the luscious fruit and fresh vegetables that 

we were able to buy or trade from the Mormon women. — Lavinia 

Porter, 1860 California emigration.

It was with feelings of joy that I beheld streets beautifully 

ornamented with shade trees and silver brooks by each sidewalk. 

Almost every garden is an orchard loaded with apples, peaches, 

plums &c. — Dr. Charles L. Anderson, 1862 California 

emigration.

It was quite a treat for us way worn emigrants coming off of the 

plains of sage and sand. to find in a few hours travel everything 

changed to life and bustle, with all the comforts and luxuries of life.

— John N. Rush, 1864 California emigration.

In this orderly, civilized outpost, visitors could get fresh produce 

when there was a surplus; well-rested livestock, at a profitable markup; and a refreshing soak at the warm-spring bathhouse north of 

town. They could find a frontier doctor to treat their illnesses and 
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Utah

30

injuries, ask a Mormon judge to lance festering wagon-party disputes, 

hear some muscular preaching at the bowery on Temple Square, and 

get a good long gander at the venerable Lion of the Lord himself, 

Brigham Young, who typically led the open-air Sunday meetings. A 

lucky man might even enjoy an evening dance or two with a lovely 

Mormon belle under the watchful eyes of her guardians.

All comers were shocked, though, by the high cost of conducting 

business with the Mormons, and many, in astonished disbelief, 

recorded lists of prices in their trail journals. (Emigrant John Hawkins 

Clark remarked in 1852 that visiting Salt Lake City was “something like 

taking in the Irishman’s show: it cost nothing to get in, but a great deal to 

get out.”)

Most travelers stayed in the Great Salt Lake City for about a week, 

although some — “winter Mormons” — stayed through till the 

following spring. Many visitors left town with warm regard for 

their hosts despite the cost of merchandise, but not all opinions 

were charitable. Emigrant women, trembling at tales of trailside 

kidnappings by Mormon desperados, fearful they would be captured 

and forced into scandalous polygamous marriage, were on edge until 

they left Mormon territory. A number of travelers through Salt Lake 

City complained of unfair legal fines and property confiscations 

levied exclusively against non-Mormons. Where some visitors 

saw industry, order, intellect and thrift, others saw depravity, filth, 

ignorance and theft. Where some discovered the Mormons to be 

uncommonly sharp traders, others found them to be larcenous 

scoundrels. A few, impressed by the kindliness shown them by Latterday Saints, converted to that faith and lived out their lives in the Salt 

Lake Valley. Others, with different experiences, could not wait to 

conclude their business and get out.

 [The Mormons] were neat and well clad, their children tidy, 

the rosy glow of health and robustness mantling on the cheeks 

of all, while the softer tints of female loveliness prevailed .... [I 

was] perfectly enraptured with the Mormon ladies, and Mormon 

hospitality. — William Kelly in An Excursion to California, an 

account of his 1849 travels to California.
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Utah

31

I would not live here if the whole city belonged to me among such a 

class of community. I haven’t seen a handsomely dressed lady since 

I have been here. — Mary Ringo, 1864 California emigration.

I am living among the mormons about as hospitable a set of people 

as I have been among since I left home. — Andrew McFarlane, 

1850 California gold rush.

A meaner set lives not on this earth than those very people calling 

themselves Latter day saints. — Lucena Parsons, overwintering 

in Salt Lake City 1859.

And there were several ways to leave town. One way was to go 

south along today’s I-15 corridor past Cedar City and then follow 

the Old Spanish Trail west to Los Angeles. But that route, known 

as the Mormon Corridor or the Southern Route to California, was 

indirect and not suited for travelers in a hurry to reach the central 

and northern California gold fields. Another way was to follow the 

Hastings Cutoff across the Great Salt Lake Desert, but that route 

grew no easier with the passing years. It was just as salty, hot, mucky, 

dangerous, unbearable, and weird in 1850 as it had been in 1846. In 

fact, difficulties on the Hastings Cutoff led directly to the blazing of a 

new cutoff in time for the California gold rush.

Frontiersman Samuel J. Hensley was heading to California on the 

Hastings Cutoff with 10 men and a string of pack mules in July 1848 

when the animals mired in the salt flats west of the Great Salt Lake. 

To save the mules, the men cut free their packs and returned to the 

Salt Lake Valley. Hensley’s party then went north, along roughly the 

present-day alignments of I-15 and I-84 to today’s Snowville, and 

continued northwest to join the California Trail at the City of Rocks 

in Idaho. Farther west on the Humboldt River, Hensley described 

his new cutoff to an eastbound wagon train of Mormon Battalion 

veterans who were on their way home from service in the MexicanAmerican War. The Mormon train followed Hensley’s track back to 

Salt Lake City, thereby opening the trail to wagons. Within two years, 

the new road carried most of the California traffic out of Salt Lake, 

and the Hastings Cutoff across the salt flats was largely abandoned.
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Utah

32

That’s not to say that Hensley’s Salt Lake Cutoff was a joyride. 

Englishman William Kelly, who published an account of his travels in 

An Excursion to California, left vivid descriptions of his experience 

along the route in 1849.

North of Salt Lake City:

As the wind came off the lake it carried with it a mineral stench 

arising from the stagnant water close along the brink, which was 

offensive to the utmost degree ....

The crickets are a serious nuisance, for the ground is alive with 

them; and they are not only destructive where they have their way, 

but the effluvia they emit is about as disgusting a sample of scent as 

any to be met with.

Later, Kelly added that even his livestock stared in alarm at the 

twitching mass of insects.

North of Ogden:

The sun, so early as ten o’clock, was so fearfully hot that I could 

not bear my hand upon the rifle that was slung from the horn of 

the saddle; and soon after it became so intense that two men got 

suddenly ill, and had to be placed in the wagons ....

At the Bear River crossing:

There was here a genus of gigantic fly, which attacked the horses 

with a degree of ferocity that I did not conceive could belong to the 

insect race. It darted at them with a humming whizz, perforating 

the skin...in some places letting out a perfect jet of blood.

West of the Bear River:

I did not before see so appalling a picture of awful desolation and 

utter solitude as that presented by the barren waste intervening 

betwixt the hills on which we were, and the mountains to the west. 

It had a scorched and withered aspect, that repulsed the eye and 

sickened the spirit.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Shoshone Indian Village, circa 1890. Photograph is courtesy of The Library of 

Congress.

33

As the Mormon settlements spread northward from Salt Lake City, 

parts of the Salt Lake Cutoff corridor became hemmed with farms 

where travelers could purchase, at a hefty price, fresh produce and 

butter. Along with that agricultural and commercial development 

grew increasing tensions between white pioneers and the Shoshone 

Indians, whose ancestral lands these were. On occasion, those intercultural conflicts broke out into bloodshed among the Mormon 

settlements and along the Oregon and California Trails through 

today’s Idaho and northeastern Nevada.

In Utah Territory, another kind of conflict briefly captured the 

nation’s attention.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

34

THE UTAH WAR

Wagon traffic on the California Trail swelled in 1857 but dropped 

sharply in ’58. Fear of fighting between the Mormons and the 

U.S. Army during a tense standoff called the “Utah War” usually takes 

the blame.

Both emigrants and Mormon settlers had good reason to be afraid. 

As federal troops marched unannounced toward Salt Lake City in 

May 1857 to install a non-Mormon territorial governor, informants 

quickly brought the news to acting governor Brigham Young. After 

several months of monitoring and pondering this federal show 

of force, Young declared martial law. Armed men had descended 

before on the Latter-day Saints in Missouri and Illinois, and Young 

suspected that another invasion was at hand. The Mormon leader 

mustered his militia to harass the oncoming army and fortify the 

emigrant wagon road through the Wasatch Mountains. Remnants 

of those fortifications are still visible in Echo Canyon and elsewhere 

along the trail into Salt Lake City. Fiery speeches and furious defense 

preparations stirred traumatic memories, fed local hysteria, and 

prompted some bellicose Mormons to destroy a passing wagon train 

at Mountain Meadows on the Southern Route near Cedar City, Utah. 

Leaking news of the massacre, along with on-going press-chatter 

about the Latter-day Saints’ then-practice of “plural marriage” and 

complaints of injustice in Utah Territorial courts, in turn fanned 

outrage against the Mormons.

Curious Indian spectators from miles around gathered at vantage 

points in the Wasatch Mountains to watch the coming good fight 

among the white men. But they were disappointed, for the sputtering 

face-off between Utah Territory and the federal government never 

flared into civil war. The U.S. Army halted and huddled for the winter 

of 1857-58 near the site of old Fort Bridger as cooler heads calmed 

the confrontation. Brigham Young, defiant and unbowed, accepted a 

presidential pardon and cooperated in the peaceful installation of the 

new territorial governor.

But now the “war” turned cold. The U.S. Army marched cautiously 

through the broad, empty streets of Salt Lake City (which residents 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Camp Douglas circa 1861-1870. 

Photograph is courtesy of the Library of 

Congress.

35

had evacuated) and established Camp Floyd about 45 miles southwest 

of town. The soldiers were there mainly to protect the overland trails 

but also to keep an eye on the Mormons, who naturally resented the 

troops’ presence. “They hate us, and we hate them,” an officer told Sir 

Richard Burton during the Englishman’s 1860 visit to Utah. Chilled 

relations between Latter-day Saints and outsiders, including passing 

emigrants, persisted for years. The bitterness toward Mormons that is 

expressed in the journals of many California-bound travelers through 

Salt Lake City during the late 1850s and early ’60s follows from these 

events.

Contained antagonism 

between Utah Territory 

and the federal government 

continued to chafe through 

the Civil War years. Camp 

Floyd, renamed Camp 

Crittenden, was disbanded 

in 1861 and its garrison 

sent east to battle the 

Confederates — but now the 

Mormons found themselves 

suspected of plotting to 

secede and blamed for 

inciting Indian attacks 

along the emigrant trails. To 

maintain control in Utah Territory and to protect the overland trails 

and telegraph from Indian attack, in 1862 the U.S. Army established 

Camp Douglas (later, Fort Douglas) on a bluff east of Salt Lake City. 

The camp commander, Col. Patrick Edward Connor, trained his 

artillery west toward the family homes and cheerful gardens of Salt 

Lake City. Although some visiting emigrants approved of Connor’s 

threatening posture toward the Latter-day Saints, the U.S. Army 

would never find cause to fire on the city.

For an account of the massacre of Shoshones on the Bear River 

in Idaho by soldiers from Camp Douglas, see the Auto Tour Route 

Interpretive Guide Along the Snake River Plain Through Idaho.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

36

‘THE FORLORNEST SPOT’: The Pony Express Trail 

In Utah

An indirect outcome of the Utah War was the establishment of the Pony Express.

Mormon militiamen, attempting to delay the approaching U.S. Army, 

raided government cattle herds that were meant to feed the troops 

and attacked army supply trains carrying provisions for the soldiers. 

Some of the cattle and supply wagons destroyed or “liberated” by the 

Mormon militia belonged to the firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell, 

which was under contract with the War Department to haul military 

freight to Utah.

The firm lost to the Mormons 52 freight wagons, 300,000 pounds of 

provisions, 300 head of oxen, and 700 head of beef cattle, altogether 

wiping out more than two years’ profits. These losses deepened the 

financial hole in which Russell, Majors & Waddell already stood as 

the result of several failed business ventures. In hope of winning a 

profitable government mail contract that would ward off bankruptcy, 

the firm’s partners organized a horse-and-rider relay to carry 

mail year-round between St. Joseph, Missouri, and San Francisco, 

California, in 10 days’ time. The Pony Express launched on April 3, 

1860.

The Pony Express route followed the combined Oregon and 

California Trail from St. Joseph to Fort Bridger and continued 

southwest on the old Donner and Mormon Trail through the Wasatch 

Mountains. From Salt Lake City, the Pony turned south for almost 30 

miles and then struck west along an existing stage and mail trail across 

the Great Basin to California. That route through the Basin was called 

the Central Overland Trail because it lay between the main California 

Trail through northern Nevada and the southern Butterfield stage 

route, also called the Oxbow Trail, across Texas, New Mexico, and 

Arizona. Unlike the northern trail, the Central Overland was (barely) 

passable on horseback in winter; and unlike the Butterfield stage 

route, it was not controlled by Southern interests as the Civil War 

loomed.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

After spring rains, the Utah desert quickly greens up 

with a kaleidoscope of colors.

37

Captain James H. 

Simpson, of the 

U.S. Army Corps 

of Topographical 

Engineers, was 

instrumental in 

developing the 

Central Overland 

Trail in 1858-59. 

Simpson surveyed 

a strategic military 

supply route — one 

not controlled by 

Brigham Young — 

directly between 

Camp Floyd and Genoa, Nevada, and improved it for wagon use. He 

then published notices in the Salt Lake newspapers announcing that 

his route was “from 25 to 50 per cent better” than the old California 

Trail along the Humboldt River. It had (he claimed) more wood and 

grass, could be used later in the fall and earlier in the spring, and 

because it went directly over several Great Basin mountain passes, the 

Central Overland route would be about 300 miles shorter than the 

established emigrant trails that meandered around mountain ranges. 

But Simpson’s assessment was a bit too rosy (the actual savings was 

closer to 200 miles), and his commander quickly ordered him to 

stop promoting the route as an emigrant road. Even so, some 20,000 

emigrants drove their covered wagons this way in the 1860s.

Happily, as it turns out, for the Pony Express, the Central Overland 

Trail was also developed as a stagecoach and mail-by-mule route by a 

hardworking competitor, George W. Chorpenning. Chorpenning held 

the federal contract for mail and stagecoach service between Salt Lake 

and San Francisco when Pony Express agents came sniffing around, 

looking for opportunity. The U.S. Post Office abruptly canceled his 

contract in May 1860, about a month after the Pony Express started 

operations, due in part to behind-the-scenes conniving by the 

Pony and others hoping to grab that contract for themselves. Even 

while Chorpenning’s “Jackass Mail” was still up and braying — and 

without a government contract in hand, itself — the Pony took over 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

The Stagecoach Inn at Fairfield served both Pony 

Express riders and passengers on overland stages.

38

his route, brazenly moved into his stage and mail stations, seized his 

livestock and equipment, and hired away some of his key employees. 

Chorpenning brought a claim before Congress for his losses, but was 

still uncompensated when he died in 1894. Meanwhile, the Pony 

Express would share its pirated route and assets with a passenger, 

freight, and “heavy mail” stage line operated by its parent company, 

the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Co.

Chorpenning’s way stations became home and swing stations for the 

Pony Express. Home stations were located 75 to 100 miles apart, the 

length of a Pony relay, to provide bed and board for Express riders 

between their mail runs. Stage drivers and passengers also took 

meals and lodging there. Many of the other home stations along the 

trail from St. Joe to San Francisco were private homes or inns under 

contract with the 

Pony Express. 

Some, including 

Mormon-run 

contract stations 

across Utah, 

were reputable 

establishments 

with satisfactory 

service and 

attentive hosts, 

but others were 

filthy, flyspecked 

shanties where 

skinflint 

proprietors 

dished up inedible slop — and where a prudent traveler might prefer 

to skip a meal and sleep outside. Newspaperman Horace Greeley, 

English adventurer and writer Sir Richard Burton, and humorist 

Mark Twain wrote gritty descriptions of the stage and mail stations 

they visited during their overland travels in 1859-61.

Between home stations at 10- to 25-mile intervals were the swing 

stations, where station keepers would have fresh horses saddled and 

waiting for the approaching riders. A rider would leave his home 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

39

station with the mail pouch (called a mochila) as soon as it arrived, 

day or night and in any weather, change horses at each of the swing 

stations along his route, and pass the mochila to his relief rider at 

the next home station at the end of his relay. In this way mail moved 

steadily across the West, carried between the eastern and western 

Pony terminals in 10 to 17 days. In contrast, regular mail sent by 

ocean-going steamer took about 45 days for delivery — longer in 

stormy weather. Regular postage going overland by stagecoach was 

often left by the roadside when the driver needed to take on other 

freight, and the mail bag might remain there for weeks before another 

coach picked it up.

When the Pony Express dashed past, it seemed almost like the wind 

racing over the prairie. — Mary Ann Stucki, 1860 Mormon 

emigration.

The Pony Express owes no small measure of its fleeting success 

to the hard work of many Mormon pioneers who blazed routes, 

located, built, and operated trailside stations, supervised employees, 

and rode with the mail. Major Howard Egan stands tall among these 

men. Egan arrived in Utah with the first 1847 pioneer party. In the 

late 1850s, he took a job as superintendent for Chorpenning’s mail 

operation, and in that capacity scouted key parts of what would 

become Simpson’s Central Overland road across the Great Basin. 

When the Pony Express elbowed Chorpenning aside, Egan became 

division superintendent for the Pony between Salt Lake and Robert’s 

Creek, Nevada. He built additional stations and hired relay riders, 

and operated a home station from his Deep Creek ranch near today’s 

Ibapah, Utah. Then in his mid-40s, Major Egan became the oldest 

man to ride for the Pony Express when he mounted up and carried 

the first eastbound mochila 75 miles from Rush Valley Station to Salt 

Lake City in April 1860. His sons, Howard R. Egan and Richard Egan, 

were Pony riders as well.

Two other well-known Latter-day Saints connected with the 

operation were widely reputed to be “Avenging Angels,” a vigilante 

group that, as Mark Twain delicately put it, “conducted permanent 

disappearances of obnoxious citizens.” These alleged Angels, 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

40

Ephraim Hanks and Orrin Porter Rockwell, owned contract stations 

for the Pony Express and Overland Stage in Utah Territory.

Hanks, a jovial, sandy-haired frontiersman with a grizzled beard and 

smiling mustache, ran the Mountain Dell Station near the head of 

today’s Little Dell Reservoir. Mountain Dell was part trading post, 

part mail station, and part inn, where Eph’s stepson worked as a 

Pony rider and his bustling “plural wives” served meals (on at least 

one occasion, boiled badger) to well-heeled stage passengers. “Port” 

Rockwell operated Rockwell’s Station, a combined mail and stage 

station, hotel, and brewery near Bluffdale, south of Salt Lake City. 

Although capable of remarkable acts of kindness, Rockwell looked 

the part of a badman: his portrait reveals a physically powerful, 

bearded man with long curls and pale piercing eyes that stare you 

down across 150 dusty years. Like Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, 

and other high-profile triggermen of his era, Port Rockwell briefly 

was a lawman, a deputy territorial marshal. Ironically, Rockwell and 

Hanks had been among the Mormon guerilla fighters who helped run 

Russell, Majors & Waddell into debt during the 1857-58 Utah War.

Despite the grim stories that circulated far and wide about the two, 

Pony riders and nervous travelers had nothing to fear from either 

man. In fact, Sir Richard Burton, during his 1860 trip to Salt Lake 

City, sought out and visited both and later wrote admiringly of them. 

Hanks and Rockwell held no blood grudge against their customers, 

and both Mountain Dell and Rockwell’s were comfortable enough 

establishments. If anything, the notoriety of the two men cast 

protection over their guests and employees.

West of Camp 

Floyd, Utah Pony 

Express stations 

rarely were 

comfortable 

and some 

were distinctly 

unsafe. The 

lot of station 

employees, 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

41

particularly in the deserts of western Utah and Nevada, was tedious, 

hard, hot, dirty, and dangerous. There was little to do day after day 

but guard and tend the livestock, cut hay and haul water, keep records 

of arrivals and departures, collect firewood, boil up some grub, sweat, 

swat flies, and watch for the distant plume of dust that signified an 

approaching Pony rider, stagecoach, wagon, or Indian war party.

It is a hard life, setting aside the chance of death — no less than three 

murders have been committed by the Indians during this year — the 

work is severe; the diet is sometimes reduced to wolf-mutton, or a 

little boiled wheat and rye, and the drink to brackish water ....

— Sir Richard Burton in The City of the Saints, an account of 

his 1860 stagecoach trip west.

The riders, at least, basked in the applause of the nation — their 

exploits were well-reported in newspapers and some became 

celebrities in their time — but their work was hard and dangerous, 

as well. Regardless of weather or warpath, these men rode out alone 

across the empty Utah desert, including the bleak, eerie area known 

as Paiute Hell.

Imagine a vast, waveless ocean stricken dead and turned to ashes; 

imagine this solemn waste tufted with ash-dusted sage-bushes; 

imagine the lifeless silence and solitude that belong to such a place 

.... The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless malignity; 

... there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not a 

merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not 

a living creature visible in any direction .... — Mark Twain in 

Roughing It, an account of his 1861 stagecoach trip west.

Simpson Springs Station, a sturdy stone building planted in the 

middle of this wasteland, provided much-needed water and brief 

respite for travelers. Beyond Simpson Springs is Dugway Station, 

where Sir Richard Burton discovered a station-keeper, a rider, and 

a curiously misplaced English bulldog sheltering within a rude hole 

in the desert floor. Several hand-dug wells nearby were bone dry, 

forcing the employees to haul water by wagon some 18 miles from 

Simpson Springs. The laborious chore still left time weighing heavy 

on their hands. Burton’s Pony acquaintances passed the empty hours 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

The reconstructed Simpson Springs relay station in the Utah west desert 

provides visitors with a glimpse into the daily life of the unsung heros of the 

Pony Express — the station keepers.

42

underground, carving “niches and Egyptian heads” into the dugout 

walls. The miserable station-keeper who greeted Horace Greeley at 

Dugway a year earlier, when it was Chorpenning’s way station, had 

begged for newspapers, magazines — anything to relieve his mindnumbing boredom. Greeley kindly donated an old newspaper.

[Dugway Station] was a mere ‘dug-out’— a hole four feet deep, 

roofed over with split cedar trunks, and provided with a rude 

adobe chimney. — Sir Richard Burton in The City of the Saints, 

an account of his 1860 stagecoach trip west.

It was about the forlornest spot I ever saw. —Horace Greeley, 

from his 1859 trip west by stagecoach and mail wagon.

West of Dugway is a mess of salt sloughs and gooey mud flats that 

forced the Pony Express and stagecoaches to swing five miles wide 

instead of cutting directly to the Fish Springs home station. Today 

Fish Springs is a quiet National Wildlife Preserve, but the place 

bustled with activity in the day of the Pony Express. Long before its 

brackish waters were appropriated by settlers and station-keepers, 

though, the sprawling wetland was home to native people. Here, for 

some 10,000 years, Indians had fished, trapped, hunted waterfowl 

and game, and harvested plant foods. Now it was theirs no longer.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

43

THE WARPATH

By 1860 the Goshutes’ precarious balance with nature had long 

since tipped toward starvation. Their most important food, 

fuel, and water resources were taken up by emigrant campgrounds, 

settlements, farmers’ fields, grazing livestock, mining camps, the 

military, and a string of stage and mail stations that squatted on 

every key waterhole between Camp Floyd and the Humboldt 

Sink. A federal Indian agent, working with Mormons, established 

a government farm at Deep Creek (Ibapah) and tried to teach the 

Indians to plant, but the effort failed. The Goshutes starved, and 

many travelers who encountered them along the various trails 

through the Great Basin seemed more repelled than moved by their 

poverty.

All of these are the lowest order of human beings eating roots, 

bugs, crickets & all such like things without any arms [weapons] 

of any kind and in most cases without arms or clothing excepting 

the women and the old men. — Pardon Dexter Tiffany, 1849 

California gold rush.

They are a terrible pest and nuisance to travelers and emigrants 

.... — William Kelly in An Excursion to California, an account 

of his 1849 travels to California.

Of course, the Goshutes were not the only Great Basin people 

impacted by the arrival of white settlers. Conflicts began shortly after 

the Latter-day Saints settled in the Salt Lake Valley, a border zone 

between the powerful Ute and Shoshone tribes. Confrontations 

soon led to killings and retributions, and hostilities deepened as the 

Mormons began colonizing Ute country to the south and Shoshone 

territory to the north. Both tribes raided Mormon settlements in the 

1850s and 60s, while Shoshones and their Bannock allies menaced 

travelers on the California Trail through southern Idaho and 

northeastern Nevada.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

44

Some warriors from these equestrian tribes 

married among the Goshutes and 

began leading raids along the Central 

Overland Trail. Isolated 

mail and stage 

stations, stocked 

with provisions, 

their corrals 

full of 

cattle 

and fast 

horses, 

and 

defended by 

only a handful of men, made particularly tempting targets. Coaches 

and express riders, with their regular routes and schedules, might 

easily be taken, too, and made to pay for white incursions.

He said I had no right to cross their country. The land was theirs 

and they were going to drive out the white man, burn the stations, 

and kill the pony men. — Nick Wilson, Pony Express rider 

accosted and released by warriors in western Utah.

We hear a lot of praise for the boys that rode the ponies, and they 

deserve it; but I’m not forgettin’ the boys that took care of the 

stations and the stock. It took real grit to stay with that job, always 

exposed to Indian arrows. — Wash Perkins, Pony Express rider.

In western Utah, Indian fighters attacked stage coaches, chased 

Express riders, and raided the Lookout Pass, Dugway, Willow 

Springs, and Deep Creek Stations, killing several men in the early 

1860s. Soldiers from Camp Floyd were detailed to ride the coaches 

and escort emigrant wagon parties along the Central Overland 

Trail, and detachments patrolled the road and guarded the stage 

and mail stations. Although the military effort managed to keep the 

eastern part of the Central Overland road open, determined Paiute, 

Shoshone, and Bannock fighters farther west forced the Pony Express 

temporarily to suspend operations in May and June 1860. Losses 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

A small stone monument identifies 

the location of the burned out Canyon 

Pony Express station at the west end 

of Overland Canyon.

45

of personnel, horses, and station facilities amounted to more than 

$75,000, adding to the fledgling operation’s money problems.

But Indian resistance and financial woes, serious as they were, did 

not bury the Pony Express. Technology did. About two months after 

the first mochila left St. Joseph, Congress authorized funding to 

build a transcontinental telegraph. Crews from Nebraska and what 

is now western Nevada began working toward each other, erecting 

poles and stringing wire along the Pony Express route. The lines 

met on Salt Lake City’s Main Street. On October 24, 1861, Western 

Union ceremoniously linked the two segments and made nearinstantaneous, coast-to-coast communications a reality. Two days 

later the now-obsolete Pony Express closed its doors. Mail that was 

already underway continued to its destination, with the last mochila 

arriving in San Francisco on November 20, 1861. The Pony’s parent 

company, the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Co., 

soon fell into bankruptcy and was acquired by “Stagecoach King” 

Ben Holladay. That operation continued under a new name, the 

Overland Stage Company.

Troubles along the Central Overland Trail outlived the Pony Express. 

In 1863, for example, several Camp Douglas soldiers assigned to 

protect Simpson Springs Station, which now served Holladay’s 

Overland Stage Company, set out on a search-and-destroy mission 

against the Indians. A stage line employee named “Deaf Bill” Riley 

led the patrol six miles south to a peaceful Goshute encampment, 

where the troopers shot down 

women, children, and elders. 

One warm July morning not 

long after that, four soldiers 

guarding Canyon Station, 

at the mouth of Overland 

Canyon, stacked their weapons 

in the barn after chores and 

headed into the dugout 

for breakfast. A fifth man 

remained outside to finish 

currying a horse. Goshute 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

46

warriors concealed nearby shot that man — it was Deaf Bill Riley — 

and cut down the soldiers as they burst from the hole to run for their 

guns. In a final act of retribution the Goshutes burned the place to 

ashes, giving the site a second name, Burnt Station. The Overland 

Stage Company rebuilt Canyon Station at the upper end of the 

canyon, this time including a circular stone structure where defenders 

could take cover. It stands sentinel there still.

On October 12, 1863, the Goshutes ended hostilities by signing a 

peace treaty that allowed access to, but did not cede, their lands. 

Passively resisting occasional government attempts to move them to 

a Ute reservation in northeastern Utah, the Goshute people gathered 

and continued living — with little federal attention — alongside 

settlers on their traditional lands at Deep Creek/Ibapah and Skull 

Valley. Local Latter-day Saints, including genial Howard Egan, quietly 

helped them establish farms, acquire plows and seed, and learn to 

plant. Finally, President William Howard Taft set aside reserves for the 

Goshutes at Skull Valley (1912) and Deep Creek (1914), and President 

Woodrow Wilson enlarged the Skull Valley reservation (1919).The 

Goshutes remain in their homeland today.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

47

CROSSROADS OF THE WEST

I

n the popular lore of the American West there is a hole where Utah 

ought to be.

The state’s southern red rock country serves as a cinematic backdrop 

for movies about 19th century cattle drives, crime and justice, and 

cultural conflicts that play out in California, Wyoming, Arizona, and 

Texas, but almost never in Utah. Few fans of the Old West realize 

that outlaw Butch Cassidy, leader of the infamous Wild Bunch and 

subject of a popular 1969 movie, was the Utah-born son of Mormon 

handcart pioneers. The grand themes and iconic images of the West 

— covered wagons on the windblown prairie, thundering buffalo 

herds, bluecoats and plains warriors, frontier forts, wild and woolly 

boomtowns—touch on other places, not here. Utah’s most legendary 

names, native peoples, and core stories, even the astonishing account 

of Brigham Young going toe-to-toe with the U.S. Army, are little 

known beyond state boundaries.

Yet events here helped to establish some of the overland trails, 

nurtured and shaped them, and finally brought them to a close.

Members of the Bidwell-Bartleson Party, blazing the first wagon trail 

into the Great Basin, wandered over Utah’s Promontory Summit 

in 1841. Their eventual hard-won success encouraged others to try 

the trip and seek out better routes to California. One new California 

cutoff through Utah’s Wasatch Mountains led to the Donner tragedy 

in the Sierra Nevada, a story of human endurance and courage that is 

still widely known today. The same cutoff brought an entire people, 

defined by religious belief rather than by a common language or 

country of origin, to colonize the Great Basin. Their capital city near 

the shores of the Great Salt Lake became a crucial supply stop and 

trail hub, a Crossroads of the West, for thousands of Forty-niners 

on their way to California. Tensions between Mormon and federal 

officials led to armed confrontation, a permanent military presence 

in Utah Territory, development of the Central Overland route to 

California, and financial losses for the already-shaky freighting 

company of Russell, Majors & Waddell. These events, in turn, helped 

pave the way for the opening of the Pony Express in April 1860. Some 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Last Days of the Pony Express. Image if courtesy of the Library of Congress.

48

19 months later, workmen in downtown Salt Lake City joined the 

eastern and western lines of the transcontinental telegraph and put 

an end to the far-famed horse-and-rider relay. Finally, 28 years after 

the Bidwell-Bartleson Party first trailed over Promontory Summit, 

dignitaries gathered at that location to hammer the golden spike that 

completed the transcontinental railroad and closed the overland 

emigration era.

As a result of its Mormon heritage and history, Utah is in some ways 

culturally distinct from other Western states. But it is not separate 

from them. Utah is an integral chapter of the big story of the 

American West. 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

49

SITES AND POINTS OF INTEREST

Touring the Trails Across Utah

Auto tours for the California, Mormon Pioneer, and Pony 

Express National Historic Trails begin on I-80 at the 

Wyoming/Utah state line southwest of Evanston, Wyoming, 

and follow Auto Tour Segment A to Salt Lake City. Trails and 

tour routes split there. Travel options from Salt Lake City are 

described on page 75.

Visitors joining the Utah trail tour from I-84 in Idaho on the Salt 

Lake Cutoff should consult Auto Tour Segment C. The route 

described here proceeds south to north, the direction most 

emigrants traveled. If traveling north to south, begin with entry 

C-3 on page 105 and work back toward Salt Lake City.

Maps and visitor guides for Salt Lake City are available on-line 

and by mail from several sources. Before your visit, consult the 

Salt Lake City Pioneer Tour on page 77 to identify any materials 

you might need to print or request ahead of time. This guide does 

not include a separate map for the city tour.

AUTO TOUR SEGMENT A: Wyoming Border 

To Salt Lake City, Utah — (Hastings Cutoff Of The 

California Trail, Mormon Pioneer Trail, And Pony Express 

Trail)

Auto Tour Segment A follows paved roads along the combined route of the Hastings Cutoff of the California Trail, the 

Mormon Trail, and the Pony Express Trail from the Wyoming/

Utah border to the Utah/Nevada state line at Wendover. I-80 

exit numbers referenced here deviate from numbers shown on 

Utah road maps and travel guides printed before 2006, but are 

consistent with numbers on current highway signs. 

Begin this tour on westbound I-80 at the Wyoming/Utah state line. 

From that location, the historic corridor for the California, Mormon 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Echo Canyon looking east from the 

state welcome center on I-80.

50

Pioneer, and Pony Express Trails lies about 7 miles south of the 

freeway. The freeway alignment converges with the trail corridor 

about 4.8 miles southwest of the old railroad siding of Wahsatch, 

Utah. Left of the highway, faint trail traces marked with white 

fiberglass posts can be seen descending the distant hills about a halfmile southwest of Exit 187. From there, the combined corridor of the 

old trail and the modern highway heads into scenic Echo Canyon.

A-1. Head of Echo Canyon 

(between Wahsatch and 

Echo, UT). Echo Canyon 

is a natural conduit through 

the Wasatch Mountains, 

used for thousands of years 

by wildlife and native people 

migrating between the Rockies 

and the Great Basin. Once 

discovered by mountain men 

in the early 1800s, the 24-mile 

passage eventually became a 

thoroughfare for pack trains, 

commercial and emigrant wagons, Forty-niner brigades, military 

columns, handcart processions, the Pony Express, the Overland 

Stage, and the transcontinental telegraph. The Donner-Reed 

Party was the third emigrant wagon party to pass through the 

canyon. 

Today Echo Canyon is still a busy transportation corridor, 

occupied by I-80, the Union Pacific Railroad, a segment of 

the Old Lincoln Highway (the nation’s first coast-to-coast 

automobile highway), and modern communications and utility 

lines. More than 160 years of development have altered the 

canyon, but fascinating traces of 19th century uses still are 

visible.

Directions: Westbound I-80 enters Echo Canyon between 

mileposts 188 and 187 southwest of Wahsatch. 

As you approach Exit 185 on westbound I-80, look ahead and to 

the right toward the bare rampart of Castle Rock, an emigrant 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Castle Rock on the north side of I-80 

east of Echo Canyon.

51

landmark near the head of 

Echo Canyon. The Mormon 

pioneer company headed 

by Brigham Young, who 

had taken ill with a tickborne infection, camped 

near here on July 14, 1847. 

The combined California, 

Mormon Pioneer, and Pony 

Express Trail ran between the 

two modern railroad grades, 

and a Pony Express and stage 

station once stood on the grounds of the “old automobile graveyard” 

that is visible from the freeway. The site is on private property, not 

open to the public. 

Continue west on I-80. A few miles ahead, travelers can:

Leave I-80 at Exit 178 (Emory) to take a side-trip and visit trailrelated features along quiet Echo Canyon Road (the one-time 

Lincoln Highway), which parallels I-80. (This exit is not available 

from the eastbound lanes.) Continue with entry A-2 below.

OR,

Continue on I-80 to Exit 170 to visit the Echo Junction Welcome 

Center, which is accessible only from the westbound lanes of the 

freeway. The staffed center has pedestrian paths with a canyon 

overlook and interpretive wayside exhibits about the historic trails. 

The center also offers state maps, statewide travel information, 

state and national park brochures, restrooms, beverages, and picnic 

facilities. If planning to visit Mormon and emigration-related sites in 

Salt Lake City (refer to the Salt Lake City Pioneer Tour on page 74), 

pick up maps and guides to downtown here. The center is open yearround during daylight hours. 

From the Welcome Center, continue westbound on I-80 and take Exit 

169. Turn right at the end of the ramp and cross under the railroad 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Echo Canyon road parallels I-80 and 

affords travelers the opportunity to 

see its many historical features.

52

track. At the intersection with Echo Canyon Road, turn left to Echo 

and skip to entry A-8 on page 57.

OR,

Follow the designated Auto Tour Route along westbound I-80 

directly to Salt Lake City, a distance of 36 miles from the community 

of Echo. This option leaves the Hastings Cutoff but follows the route 

of the old Golden Pass Road, which was improved and opened by 

Mormons as a wagon toll road in 1850. There are no trail-related 

stops on this route. On arriving at Salt Lake City, skip ahead to page 

75 for further options.

A-2. Echo Canyon Road

evolved from an Indian trail 

into a wagon road, an early 

automobile highway (the 

Old Lincoln Highway), and 

a federal highway (U.S.-30). 

Today it is a narrow, winding 

frontage road. Proceed slowly 

and be prepared to stop along 

the road shoulder to view the 

historical features described 

in the entries below. Many of 

these historic features are on 

private land; please observe them from the public right-of-way.

Directions: Leave westbound I-80 at Exit 178 (Emory). Cross 

the bridge and pause at the cattle guard to set the trip odometer. 

Continue in a southwesterly direction, paralleling the freeway, to 

stop A-3 about 2 miles ahead.

A more detailed, full-color guide to all of the historic sites 

along Echo Canyon Road is available free from the Summit 

County Historical Society. Numbered brown signposts 

along Echo Canyon Road correspond to the Summit County 

historic sites guide. Also along this stretch of road are 

numbered red, white, and blue signposts that correspond to a 

separate Lincoln Highway tour guide. Copies of both guides 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

A three-foot-tall steel post marks the 

location where the Hanging Rock 

station once stood.

53

are available from the Summit County Courthouse at 60 

North Main Street in Coalville, Utah, about 8 miles south of 

Echo on I-80 (Exit 162). To request copies by mail, call (435) 

336-3015.

A-3. The Hanging Rock 

Pony Express Station (Echo 

Canyon), also called Halfway 

Station, was located near a 

spring about halfway down 

the canyon. Nothing remains 

of the relay station, but a Pony 

Express marker post standing 

in a trough-like wagon 

swale marks its approximate 

location. The “hanging rock” 

itself — a small natural bridge 

— is just around the curve to the south. The area was an emigrant 

campground.

Directions: From the cattle guard at Exit 178, enter Echo 

Canyon Road. Drive 2.3 miles and pull onto the right shoulder 

near a lone juniper by the side of the road. Look down off 

the road to the right about 25 feet to find the silver-colored 

steel post that marks the Pony Express station site. The trough 

where the post is located is emigrant wagon swale. Continue 

to odometer mile 2.5, just around the curve, to a turnout on 

the right marked with brown Summit County tour sign No. 9. 

Hanging Rock is the natural bridge to the right of the turnout. It 

is on private property; please do not trespass.

Continue southwest down Echo Canyon Road. At odometer mile 

3.9, look toward the ridge top on the right to view a columnar rock 

formation and minor landmark known as Jack-in-the-Pulpit. The 

viewing location is marked by Summit County’s brown tour sign 

No. 8. A private ranch entrance is on the right at odometer mile 4.1, 

and near the road to the left of the entrance is a brown T-rail marker 

(made of railroad rail) with an emigrant quote about camping in the 

area. About two miles beyond that the canyon begins to constrict. 

Before modern highways were built, this segment of Echo Canyon 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

“Defensive Breastworks” high above 

Echo Canyon.

54

was narrow, forcing wagon traffic to travel single-file. For the 

Mormon militia, this seemed a strategic location to stop or delay 

approaching federal troops.

A-4. Defensive Breastworks 

(Echo Canyon) positioned 

along the rim of the cliff to 

the right are barely visible in 

several places from the canyon 

floor. Mormon militiamen, 

fearing an attack on Salt Lake 

City by the U.S. Army, built 

the low rubble walls above the 

emigrant road in 1857. The 

breastworks would protect the 

defenders as they fired down 

on approaching federal troops. Because they are made of local 

sandstone from the cliffs and were meant to be unobtrusive, the 

structures can be difficult to see.

Directions: At odometer mile 7.3, pull into a turnout on 

the right side of the road to view a large wooden sign that 

describes the Mormon defense preparations in Echo Canyon. 

Continue to the next turnout at mile 7.7 and pause at Summit 

County’s brown tour sign No. 7 for Billboard Bluff. From the 

turnout, look up at the base of the cliff face to see 19th century 

roadside advertisements painted directly onto the rock. (These are 

unassociated with the Utah War.) 

Continue to odometer mile 7.8, watching for brown Summit County 

tour sign No. 6 on the left. From the tour-stop sign, face the cliff to the 

right of the road and look along the rim to see a low stone wall. Then 

turn and look east across the freeway to the bluffs on the opposite 

side of the canyon. Just below the alignment of telephone poles that 

crosses the slope, a faint horizontal line in the earth is sometimes 

visible, depending on the quality of the light and vegetation. The line 

is what remains of a defensive trench dug by the Mormon militia. 

Approaching federal troops were to be caught in crossfire from 

between the cliff-top breastworks and the entrenchment.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Death’s Rock in Echo Canyon 

prior to the construction of I-80. 

Photograph is courtesy of John Eldredge.

55

Now walk north along the roadside toward the speed limit sign and 

watch along the rim of the cliff for additional stone breastworks. 

Continue walking north to the first utility pole that is immediately 

next to the road at the curve where the canyon narrows. More 

breastworks are visible from here. In this area the militia also 

planted land mines made of oak barrels and 1-pound cans of 

gunpowder, dug deep trenches across the canyon floor to obstruct 

the passage of troops, and built a rock-and-earthen dam (no longer 

visible) to flood the canyon.

A-5. Death’s Rock (Echo 

Canyon) is named for a 

fatal incident that occurred 

when a Mormon militiaman, 

during horseplay, shot and 

killed a fellow militiaman 

who was standing on the 

rocky crag. The victim was 

the only Mormon to die in 

the 1857 troubles between 

Utah Territory and the 

federal government. (The only 

U.S. Army death, which occurred 

in Wyoming, resulted from a heart 

attack.)

Directions: From the last fortifications turnout at tour sign No. 

6, continue southwest (toward Echo) to odometer mile 8.1, a 

turnout on the right marked by Summit County’s brown tour 

sign No. 5. Standing at the sign, turn around and look back up 

the canyon in the direction of Wyoming. The outcrop where 

the death occurred is on the left (west) side of the road.
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Utah

A century ago, Salt Lake City 

businesses sometimes wrote 

advertisements promoting their 

services on the canyon walls.

Steamboat Rocks.

56

A-6. The Steamboat Rocks 

(Echo Canyon), a series of 

geological formations that 

protrude into the canyon like a 

row of great ships at dock, were 

another emigrant landmark. 

They were called by other 

names, as well, including The 

Great Eastern and Noah’s Ark. 

Southwest of Steamboat Rocks 

is a meadow where Brigham 

Young’s 1847 company and later 

emigrants camped.

Directions: At odometer mile 

9.1 on the Echo Canyon Road 

tour, the Steamboat Rocks are 

the large bluffs just ahead on the 

right. A flag is sometimes visible 

on the projecting ledge of one of 

the formations. The Steamboat Rocks also can be viewed from the 

overlook at Echo Junction Welcome Center on I-80.

A-7. A second Cliff-face 

Billboard is painted on the 

rock wall at the base of the 

Steamboat Rocks. One of 

the ads promotes Salt Lake 

House, a stagecoach stop 

and comfortable hotel on 

downtown Salt Lake City’s 

Main Street.

Directions: At odometer mile 

9.2, pull into the turnout on 

the left, marked by Summit 

County tour sign No. 4. 

Look on the right, at the foot 

of the Steamboat Rocks, to see the faded billboard.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

A historic marker identifies the 

site where the Weber Pony Express 

Station once stood.

57

Continue along Echo Canyon Road, passing a Utah Department 

of Transportation facility at odometer mile 9.7 and the I-80 Echo 

interchange at mile 10.7.

A-8. The Weber Station 

(Echo, UT) began as a 

settler’s isolated log cabin 

and blacksmith shop in 1854 

and later served as a stage 

stop and Pony Express home 

station. As Union Pacific 

workers poured into the area 

in 1868, a rollicking railroad 

boom-town sprang up around 

the station. Local lore holds 

that several artifacts and a 

love letter to a Pony Express 

rider were discovered hidden in the walls of the old station 

building when it was torn down years later, but that story, like 

many others concerning the Pony Express, has been discredited. 

The stone building in which the items supposedly were found 

was built around 1866, at least six years after the Pony Express 

shut down.

Directions: A granite memorial commemorating the station 

(nothing remains of the building itself) is at a turnout on the right at 

odometer mile 11.3. The site is also marked with Summit County’s 

brown tour sign No. 17 and with a silver-colored Pony Express 

marker post.

The road now turns sharply, following a narrow strip of land 

between the bluffs and the Weber River. Ahead at Echo (odometer 

mile 11.5), the road splits. Turn right onto the frontage road that 

passes the café and parallels the canyon road.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

A small historical marker identifies 

the location of Supplication Hill.

A cluster of interpretive wayside 

exhibits provide travelers with some 

early history of the community at 

Echo.

58

A-9. The Echo Town 

Interpretive Area (Mary 

Avenue & Durant Street, Echo) 

includes interpretive wayside 

exhibits about James Bromley 

and the Pony Express, the 

Mormon Pioneer Trail, and the 

settlement history of the area.

Directions: The interpretive 

area is on the right at odometer 

reading 11.8. From here, the 

frontage road merges with 

Echo Road, which continues 

northwest toward Henefer.

A-10. Temple Camp 

and Supplication Hill 

(northwest of Echo) are 

named for the prayers 

offered here on July 17, 1847, 

on behalf of Brigham Young 

and other members of the 

party who were seriously ill. 

A wayside exhibit tells the 

story.

Directions: From stop A-9, 

continue northwest on Echo 

Road. A Pioneer Memorial sign denotes the interpretive turnout, 

which is on the right at odometer mile 12.4. Look to the hills to the 

northeast: the stone pillar that peeks up between the hills is Sentinel 

Rock. The second hilltop beyond Sentinel Rock is the Supplication 

Hill where prayers were offered.

Continue toward Henefer on Echo Dam Road. At odometer reading 

13.1 miles, look to the right to see the Witches Rocks. This cluster 

of geological hoodoos was a minor landmark often sketched and 

described in emigrant journals. Nearby, a white fiberglass trail post 

marks the location of the Hastings Cutoff wagon trace. A couple 

miles ahead, the 1846 Donner-Reed Party faced a critical decision.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Historical markers identify the Weber 

River Crossing site.

59

About a mile north of Henefer, the Weber River begins a 6-mile 

rush through a narrow gorge past Devil’s Slide. The stream 

slows and plays through pretty Morgan Valley, then gushes 

through another cleft called Devil’s Gate before spilling from 

the mouth of the mountains south of Ogden. Today the torrent 

is tamed and I-84, carved into the mountainside, provides easy 

passage. But in 1846 there was no room for a wagon road 

through the narrows: the canyon floor was a frothing, boulderchoked stream channel edged by cliffs and steep talus. Despite 

the obvious danger, two wagon companies that started along the 

Hastings Cutoff about a week ahead of the Donner-Reed Party 

tried to pass through Weber Canyon. The larger train lost a 

wagon and a yoke of oxen to the hungry chasm at Devil’s Gate.

A-11. Weber River Crossing

(Henefer, UT). In this vicinity 

the 20-wagon Donner-Reed 

Party found a note from 

Lansford Hastings warning 

them not to attempt passage 

through Weber Canyon. Not 

knowing how to proceed, the 

bewildered emigrants camped 

near here (where I-80 crosses 

the Weber River) for 5 precious 

days while James Reed rode 

ahead to find Hastings, who was escorting an earlier wagon train 

westward. Based on Hastings’s advice, the emigrants crossed the 

Weber River here on Aug. 11 and cut their own way through the 

Wasatch Mountains to the Salt Lake Valley. Interpretive exhibits at a 

turnout near the river crossing touch on these events and also tell of 

a deputy sheriff who drowned at the ford while rescuing emigrants in 

1853. From here, the trail crossed streams more than 40 times before 

entering Salt Lake Valley.

Directions: The turnout is on the left, overlooking the river ford 

site, at odometer mile 15.0. A Pioneer Memorial road sign denotes 

the turnout.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

60

The road blazed by the Donner-Reed Party and improved by 

Mormon pioneers the following summer became the main 

road into the Salt Lake Valley. A primitive road later built 

through Weber River Canyon to Ogden was used by local 

residents and a few emigrants. The transcontinental railroad 

was constructed through the canyon in 1868-69.

On the right side of the road at odometer mile 15.4 is a large 

trail information sign supported by stone pillars. Here the 

road splits. Bear left and follow Echo Road/UT-65 onto the 

overpass toward Henefer. 

To leave the auto tour and explore Weber Canyon, turn right on 

the overpass and enter westbound I-84 at the Exit 115 interchange. 

Past the next exit (Exit 111), watch for a viewing turnout for Devil’s 

Slide. The slide, a chute formed by two protruding layers of rock, 

is on the south (left) side of the highway. Take Exit 108 and enter 

eastbound I-84 to return to Henefer and continue the auto tour, or 

follow the freeway through to I-15 at Riverdale. From Riverdale, 

to rejoin the Hastings Cutoff of the California Trail, the Mormon 

Pioneer Trail, and the Pony Express Trail at Salt Lake City, turn 

south on I-15 and consult Further Options and Directions on page 

77; or, to join the Salt Lake Cutoff to the California Trail at City of 

Rocks National Reserve in Idaho, turn north on I-15 and skip to 

entry C-2 on page 106.

To continue on the combined corridor of the Hastings Cutoff of the 

California Trail, the Mormon Pioneer Trail, and the Pony Express 

Trail to Salt Lake City, follow UT-65 into Henefer. About 13 miles 

southwest of Henefer, UT-65 through East Canyon is typically closed 

October through May due to snow. Inquire locally or phone 511 for 

an automated status report if visiting during those months.

 At the north edge of Henefer, turn left to follow UT-65 as it heads 

south and becomes the Pioneer Trail Memorial Highway. An Auto 

Tour Route directional sign marks the turn into Main Canyon, 

where the Donner-Reed Party began breaking trail through the 

mountains. Zero your trip odometer here. Watch for white fiberglass 

posts that signify the presence of original wagon trace.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

An historical marker identifies the 

site of the Spring Creek Depot.

Interpretive exhibits inform modern 

travelers of the experiences pioneers 

had enroute to Salt Lake City.

61

A-12. Henefer Pioneer 

Trails Park (Henefer, UT)

has a memorial and several 

interpretive exhibits about 

the Donner-Reed, Mormon 

pioneer, and Pony Express 

history of the trail in this area.

Directions: The park is on 

the left at odometer reading 

0.4.

A-13. Spring Creek 

(southwest of Henefer) was the site of a Mormon depot 

established during the Utah 

War of 1857-58. The depot 

provisioned militiamen who 

were building defenses for 

the expected assault by U.S. 

troops headed this way. 

Interpretive exhibits tell the 

story; no ruins are visible.

Directions: An interpretive 

turnout is on the right at 

odometer reading 3.2 miles.

White trail markers ahead on the right show the wagon route up 

onto the ridge.

Continue south on UT-65 through Main Canyon. At odometer 

reading 5.0 look for trail trace through the sagebrush along the right 

side of the road. 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

A stone monument marks the 

location where pioneers turned 

west.

Historical marker identifies the 

beginning of the Hogsback Summit.

62

A-14. Hastings Cutoff 

and Mormon Trail Wagon 

Ruts at Hogsback Summit 

(southwest of Henefer), 

marked by white fiberglass 

trail posts, are clearly visible 

along the right side of the 

road beyond the fence line 

at the Summit and Morgan 

County boundary. Just ahead 

at Hogsback Summit, the 

pioneers looked west and saw a discouraging jumble of mountains. 

An interpretive sign at the turnout tells the story.

Directions: Look for the swales on the right near the Morgan 

County sign at odometer reading 5.7 miles.

Continue down the south side of the Hogsback divide. Wagons 

followed Dixie Hollow, the ravine to the right side of today’s paved 

road. The hollow bristled with brush and its boulder-choked bottom 

was too narrow for wagons to pass. The Donner-Reed wagon party 

grubbed a dangerous sideling trail along the sloping bank before 

dropping, exhausted, into their first camp beyond the Weber River. 

Mormon pioneers improved the rough track, but despite their efforts, 

many wagons over the years tumbled sideways off the trail.

Just ahead, Dixie Hollow narrows and becomes impassable to 

wagons. 

A-15. Broad Hollow, which 

drains into Dixie Hollow near 

the Donner-Reed campsite of 

August 11, provided a detour 

around the Dixie Hollow 

chokepoint. The pioneers veered 

northwest up Broad Hollow, 

turned west across a wide bench, 

and then dropped south again to 

East Canyon Creek and through 

today’s East Canyon State Park. 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

East Canyon Reservoir State 

Recreation Area.

63

A monument commemorates their effort. Some researchers think 

the two-track to the right of the monument may be the original trail 

alignment, but it might be a more recent ranch road.

Directions: The monument is at a turnout on the right at odometer 

reading 7.4 miles. 

A road junction is located at odometer mile 8.0. Reset your trip 

odometer here and bear left to stay on UT-65, following the Auto 

Tour Route directional sign toward East Canyon Reservoir.

A-16. East Canyon 

Overlook provides a view 

of the reservoir, which 

submerges the original 

trail between East Canyon 

State Park and East Canyon 

Resort. Wagons entered the 

canyon near the modern 

boat ramp on the opposite 

shore and continued up the 

creek. Here the Donner-Reed 

Party hacked a passage through endless willow thickets, but less 

than a year later re-growth forced the Mormon pioneers to clear 

the way once more.

Directions: The turnout is on the right at about odometer mile 9.3. 

From there, continue south along the rim of the lake.

UT-65 and the Hastings Cutoff diverge temporarily beyond the 

south end of East Canyon Reservoir at odometer reading 13.7 

miles. There the highway curves right and a gravel road branches 

off from the pavement, continuing south along the original trial 

alignment. At this road junction you can:

Reset your trip odometer and bear right to stay on the highway and 

rejoin the trail 5.5 miles ahead at Big Mountain Pass. Follow UT-65 

as it curves west into Little Dutch Hollow and squirms up the north 

flank of Big Mountain. Skip to entry A-17 on page 68.

OR,
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

64

Continue south (straight ahead) onto unpaved Jeremy Ranch Road 

for a pleasant backcountry side-trip and a hike along an important 

segment of the combined Hastings Cutoff, Mormon Pioneer, and 

Pony Express Trails. This option entails a round-trip drive of about 

7 miles on a bladed road that is suitable when dry for 2-wheel-drive 

passenger cars. For this drive, consult the Optional Backcountry 

Route: East Canyon/Little Emigration Canyon on the next page. 

For hike planning, preview the Little Emigration Recreation Trail 

entry on page 67 and the Big Mountain Pass to Little Dell Recreation 

Trail entry on page 69.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

East Canyon Pony Express station. 

Photograph is courtesy of the Utah State 

Historical Society.

65

OPTIONAL BACKCOUNTRY ROUTE: East 

Canyon/Little Emigration Canyon 

Asign for Large Spring and Mormon Flat marks the junction of Jeremy Ranch Road with UT-65. Reset your 

trip odometer here. Now enjoy a leisurely drive along East 

Canyon Creek. The first emigrants, in contrast, had to ford the 

creek 13 times in 8 miles while clearing passage through dense 

stands of willow, brambles, and aspen that choked the valley 

floor. Many emigrants considered this stretch of road to be 

the worst on the entire overland journey.

Sites of interest in East Canyon are:

Bauchmann’s/East Canyon Pony Express and Stage Station. 

After turning onto Jeremy 

Ranch Road, continue south 

on the main road. At odometer 

mile 0.2, look east (left) to see a 

log cabin that was the original 

Bauchmann’s Pony Express 

Station. The building has been 

moved and remodeled, and 

does not retain its historic 

appearance. Its original 

location was about a half-mile 

south of here. The cabin is 

private property; please view it 

from the road. 

Trail Ruts. On the right at odometer mile 2.6 is a driveway 

turnout with an interpretive wayside exhibit about the Mormon 

Trail. Enter the pedestrian gate to the left (do not enter the private 

gate on the right) and walk south to follow original remnants of 

the combined Mormon Pioneer, California, and Pony Express 

Trail through the sagebrush toward Large Springs Camp, just 

ahead. Caution: ticks are particularly abundant here in the spring 

and early summer.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Just below the skyline of the 

upper right corner are the militia 

fortifications developed in 1857.

66

Large Spring Camp Overlook and Site. At odometer mile 

2.8, pause for a view of Large Spring and the associated camping 

area, on the right. The main party of Latter-Day Saints, 

traveling between the scouting group a few miles ahead 

and Brigham Young’s sick-wagons to the rear, camped on 

the sagebrush flat above the spring on July 20, 1847. (The 

Donner-Reed Party drove past the spring and camped 1.5 

miles up the Little Emigration Canyon trail, ahead.) Continue 

about 0.1 mile and turn into the driveway on the right to view 

the site and a wayside exhibit. Enter a pedestrian gate at the 

fence to follow the white trail markers down the hill to the left 

to the Large Spring group camp, managed by East Canyon 

State Park. To drive to the campground, continue ahead 

another 0.1 mile to the vehicle entrance. Day use of the site 

is free, but there is a fee for camping. To reserve the site for 

overnight use, call the Utah State Parks Reservation Center at 

(800) 322-3770. 

Mormon Flat. At odometer 

mile 3.3, turn right into 

Mormon Flat, another 

state-operated group 

camp. Wayside exhibits 

here tell of the DonnerReed and Mormon pioneer 

experiences in this area. 

Brigham Young’s small 

rear-guard party camped 

here on July 22. At the top 

of the low bluff to the west 

is a low stone breastwork built by the Mormon militia in 1857 for 

defense against federal troops. Also here is the trailhead for the 

Little Emigration Canyon Recreation Trail (see next entry). Park 

to explore the area. Day use at Mormon Flat is free but there is a 

fee for camping. To reserve the site for overnight use, call the Utah 

State Parks Reservation Center at (800) 322-3770. This facility has 

public toilets but no drinking water.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

67

Mormon Flat to Big Mountain Pass: The Little Emigration 

Canyon Recreation Trail. From Mormon Flat, the trail 

corridor turns northwest up Little Emigration Canyon 

toward Big Mountain Pass. Today this intact segment is a 

hike-and-bike trail managed by East Canyon State Park, but 

once it bustled with heavier traffic: the Donner-Reed Party, 

later California pioneers, the 1847 Brigham Young company, 

Mormon handcart emigrants, stagecoaches and freight 

wagons, the U.S. Army, and the Pony Express all went this 

way. Wagon swales and deeply eroded ruts still mark their 

passage. The Donner-Reed Party camped for 4 nights near 

beaver ponds about 1.5 miles up Little Emigration Canyon 

while clearing the trail up to Big Mountain Pass. 

The narrow canyon was also fortified for defense. Cross 

the footbridge and follow the trail to the mouth of Little 

Emigration Canyon. Mormon breastworks are visible on 

bluffs overlooking both sides of the creek. Visitors may hike 

up to and explore the fortifications. Please tread lightly and 

protect these historic features, which are unique within the 

Utah State Parks system.

Parking and trail access are free. Bicycles are permitted but 

motor vehicles are prohibited on the trail. Carry water and be 

prepared for changing weather conditions. 

The 4.5-mile sustained climb from Mormon Flat to Big 

Mountain Pass takes 2.5 to 5 hours to hike and can be 

strenuous for those unaccustomed to high altitude. The 

trail starts at about 6,100 feet in elevation and ends at 7,420 

feet, a gain of more than 1,300 feet. Total slope is about a 

5.5% grade, but the last half-mile is roughly 12.7% grade. 

Visitors who bike or hike to the summit must make private 

arrangements (there is no public shuttle) for a vehicle to meet 

them at the rest area there. Some visitors hike or bike up and 

back, but others prefer just to explore the local area around 

Mormon Flat. Westbound emigrants started at Mormon 

Flat and hiked up the mountain — imagine hauling a loaded 

handcart up this trail! From Big Mountain Pass, a second 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

View from the summit of Big 

Mountain looking west toward the 

Salt Lake Valley.

68

segment of hiking and biking trail along the historic wagon 

route continues westward another 5 miles down Mountain 

Dell Canyon to Little Dell Reservoir. That trail is described in 

entry A-18.

When leaving Mormon Flat, you can:

Retrace the drive up Jeremy Ranch Road to UT-65 and resume the 

driving tour. At the junction, reset your trip odometer and turn left 

onto the highway. Drive 5.4 miles to the Big Mountain rest area, 

entry A-17.

OR,

Continue south on Jeremy Ranch Road for approximately 4 miles 

to I-80. Enter the westbound lanes and drive to Salt Lake City, the 

western terminus of the Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail. 

See further options and directions on page 85. This freeway route 

bypasses nearly 15 miles of the Hastings Cutoff and numerous 

significant sites related to the Donner-Reed Party, the Mormon 

emigration, and the Pony Express.

A-17. Big Mountain Pass 

provided emigrants their first 

happy glimpse of the Valley 

of the Great Salt Lake. But 

reaching the valley required 

a hair-raising descent: 

wagons, with high centers of 

gravity, could not switchback 

down unimproved side-hill 

slopes for fear of toppling 

over and crashing down the 

mountainside. Also, oxen cannot balance nor wagons brake 

effectively when traveling “sidling” along a hill. Most emigrants 

locked their wheels with chains and skidded their wagons straight 

down the mountainside.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

A sign marks the beginning of the 

hiking trail down the west side of Big 

Mountain.

69

Walk to the edge of the parking area and look west to see the 

grand view once shared by emigrants on the Hastings Cutoff 

and Mormon Pioneer Trail. Now look at the ground beyond the 

edge of the parking area. The deep scars that dive straight down 

the mountain are wagon ruts, gouged into the earth by skidding, 

iron-sheathed wheels and deepened by years of erosion. Today’s 

UT-65 twists and turns down the mountain, crossing and recrossing the old trail scar. Watch for those crossings, marked with 

signs, as you continue along the highway. 

Directions: The Big Mountain Pass rest area is on the left side 

of the road 5.4 miles past the turnoff for Jeremy Ranch Road. 

Hikers and bikers on the Little Emigration Canyon recreation 

trail will enter from the north side of the rest area.

To hike and bike the emigrant trail another 2.7 to 5 miles, see entry 

A-18 below. To continue the drive along UT-65, skip to entry A-19. 

During the drive, look back up the mountainside to see trail swales 

intersecting the highway switchbacks.

A-18. Big Mountain to 

Little Dell Recreation Trail.

A second segment of the 

hike-and-bike trail begins 

on the south side of the Big 

Mountain Pass parking area 

west of the restroom. This 

trail approximates the pioneer 

route down the mountain 

for about 2.7 miles to Affleck 

Park and then continues 

another 2.7 miles to the north 

end of Little Dell Reservoir. 

Hikers and bikers can make private arrangements for pick-up at 

either location. Along the way, the trail intersects UT-65 at an 

uncontrolled crossing on a hairpin curve with limited visibility; 

use caution when crossing the highway.

Directions: Hike or bike the well-defined trail to Affleck 

Park. At the south end of the park, either follow the access 

road up the hill and out to UT-65 to meet your ride at the 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

A historic marker identifies the 

location where Young’s scouts 

camped.

70

entrance (park rules prohibit vehicles from entering without 

a campsite reservation) or cross the creek and continue south 

on the hiking trail. Beyond Affleck Park, the trail crosses to 

the east side of UT-65 and continues south. The trail forks as 

it approaches an RV parking area near the water at Little Dell 

Reservoir. Follow the right fork up the hill to the reservoir fee 

entrance to meet your pre-arranged ride.

Emigrants crossed Mountain Dell Creek 12 times in 5 miles.

A-19. At Quaking Asp 

Grove near the foot of Big 

Mountain, Brigham Young’s 

advance scouts camped 

on July 20, 1847, while the 

main emigrant group spent 

the night at Large Spring. 

A wayside exhibit tells the 

story; the historic wagon 

road is west of the turnout.

Directions: Continue down 

the mountain on UT-65. At 

mile 6.0, look ahead up the mountain for a view of the slope that 

the wagons descended. The wagon trail crosses UT-65 at mile 

7.5, and the interpretive turnout is on the right side of UT-65 at 

odometer mile 8.5.

Drivers, to pick up hikers at Affleck Park continue south on the 

highway for about 0.1 mile and turn right at the entrance to the 

campground. Do not enter the park unless you have a campsite 

reservation, but wait near the highway for hikers to arrive. To 

reserve a group campsite, call (801) 483-6705. 

A-20. Little Dell Reservoir (northeast of Salt Lake City) has 

submerged this segment of the original emigrant trail. The DonnerReed Party, discovering that the terrain farther down the canyon 

was unsuitable for wagon passage, camped a few miles south of here 

in Mountain Dell Canyon for several days while cutting a road over 

Little Mountain to the west. Later emigrants camped throughout 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Little Dell Reservoir.

71

the area now occupied by 

the reservoir. The Mountain 

Dell Pony Express Station,

a contract mail and stage 

station operated by Mormon 

proprietor Ephraim Hanks, was 

located near the head of the 

reservoir, but its exact location 

is unknown. An overlook and 

interpretive wayside exhibits are 

located at the reservoir entrance. 

Admission is $5/car; ask at the gate for permission to enter just to 

visit the interpretive exhibits at the overlook. At Little Dell Reservoir 

visitors will find a picnic area and restrooms but no campground or 

drinking water. Little Dell is open to pedestrian access year-round 

during daylight hours. The entrance for motor vehicles is open 8 

a.m.–dusk from Memorial Day weekend–Oct. 31.

Directions: Continue down the mountain on UT-65. The reservoir 

fee station is on the left at about odometer reading 10.8 miles.

Continue southwest down the mountain. At odometer mile 11.4 

the highway splits.

To follow the combined Hastings Cutoff, Mormon Pioneer, and Pony 

Express Trail down Emigration Canyon to Salt Lake City, turn right 

onto Emigration Canyon Road and proceed to stop A-21.

OR,

To connect to I-80 and follow the route of the old Golden Pass toll 

road into Salt Lake City, continue straight on UT-65 along the 

reservoir. Watch on the right for a trail crossing sign and deep wagon 

swale. On the left farther down the road is a turnout with a stone 

monument commemorating the Donner-Reed Party and the 1847 

Mormon pioneers. Continue to the I-80 interchange and enter the 

westbound lanes. Upon approaching Salt Lake City, consult page 75 

for more options.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

The view from Little Mountain 

Summit looking southeast toward 

Little Dell Reservoir.

A historical marker identifies the 

location of the “Last Camp” in 

Emigration Canyon.

72

A-21. Little Mountain 

Summit (Emigration Canyon 

Road) posed another steep 

climb for weary travelers and 

livestock. Here emigrants 

had to double- or triple-team 

their oxen for the ascent, then 

lock their wagon wheels and 

skid down the mountainside 

to Emigration Canyon. A stone 

monument, an interpretive 

wayside exhibit about the 

Mormon Trail, and restrooms are located at a turnout here.

Directions: The turnout is on the left side of Emigration Canyon 

Road at odometer mile 13.0. Look down-slope from the wayside 

exhibit toward a white fiberglass post set between two red sandstone 

blocks, which marks wagon swales approaching the crest of the 

mountain. The trail alignment continues diagonally across the 

highway. Carefully cross to the opposite side of the road and look 

down the hillside to view wagon ruts descending Little Mountain. 

Now look into the distance. Here Brigham Young’s scouts caught 

their second joyful glimpse of the Salt Lake Valley.

Continue down the mountain on Emigration Canyon Road. The 

trail alignment crosses the highway at odometer reading 13.9. 

A-22. Brigham Young’s 

Last Camp (northwest 

of Salt Lake City) before 

entering the Salt Lake Valley 

is commemorated by a granite 

monument at a roadside 

turnout. Here Young’s small 

sick-party, delayed by his 

illness, spent the night of July 

23, 1847. The other members 

of the Mormon pioneer 

company had entered the Salt 

Lake Valley the previous day.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

73

Directions: The turnout and monument are on the right at 

odometer mile 15.5. 

Continue westerly along Emigration Canyon Road. At odometer 

reading 18.3 miles, a small brown sign denotes Last Creek Camp,

the final trailside campsite of the main Mormon pioneer company 

that preceded Brigham Young into the valley. The Donner-Reed 

Party camped here almost a year earlier. 

A-23. Donner Hill (Emigration Canyon Road, Salt Lake City)

hammered yet another nail into the Donner-Reed coffin. For 12 

days the emigrants had gnawed a track through the rugged Wasatch 

wilderness, and now, at the very edge of the Salt Lake Valley, 

limestone outcrops and dense willows blocked their exit from the 

mouth of Emigration Canyon. The discouraged travelers pulled to 

the left out of the creek bottom and up the 200-foot-high ridge that 

thereafter would bear their name. The effort nearly used up the 

strength of their oxen. The next year Brigham Young’s vanguard 

pioneer party, having more men for the labor, opened a road through 

the blockage, avoiding the hill climb, in just 4 hours’ time. The current 

roadbed approximates their route.

Today, Emigration Canyon is widened and the top of Donner Hill 

has been leveled to make room for residential development. But the 

hill is still impressive and Emigration Creek, edged by willow and 

scrub oak, still runs along the south side of Emigration Canyon Road. 

Visitors can easily envision how this spot looked in 1846-47.

Directions: On the right at odometer mile 20 is another small sign 

for Donner Hill. A stone monument commemorating Donner Hill 

is on the left where the road curves to the south. At that location 

the hill is in front of you, easy to see, with a condominium at the 

top. Use caution when crossing the oncoming lane to enter or leave 

the widened road shoulder at the monument. Then continue down 

Emigration Canyon Road around the S-curve. If traffic permits, 

turn left at odometer mile 20.6 into an unmarked entrance for 

Rotary Glen Park. If you miss the entrance, turn left onto the next 

paved road, Crestview Drive, and turn around at a safe location to 

return to the intersection. Turn right and make an immediate right 

turn into Rotary Glen Park. Now go left across the parking lot and 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

The National Pony Express 

Monument is near the entrance to 

This is the Place Heritage Park.

74

follow the dirt access road to the east. End at a gravel parking lot. 

Look across the small reservoir toward Donner Hill, the ridge to the 

northeast. The emigrants ascended the ridge on the north side of 

the condominiums. From this vantage, the steepness of the climb is 

evident. Take the opportunity here or at the picnic area to the west 

to explore Emigration Creek.

The evening of their arrival on July 22, the Donner-Reed Party 

encamped a short distance beyond the hilltop with the broad 

Salt Lake Valley stretched at their feet. A grassy park along the 

ridge, adjacent to Crestview Drive, is named Donner Park in 

commemoration of that campsite. The next day the emigrants 

descended the ridge and traveled across the valley to the Jordan River. 

From there, the Donner-Reed Party continued along the south shore 

of the Great Salt Lake.

A-24. This Is The Place 

Heritage Park (2106 

Sunnyside Avenue, Salt Lake 

City) commemorates the 

arrival of Mormon pioneers 

in the Valley of the Great Salt 

Lake. Mormon tradition holds 

that when Brigham Young 

first gazed on the valley from 

this vicinity on July 24, 1847, 

he experienced a heavenly 

vision that led him to declare, 

“It is enough. This is the right place.” Inside the 450-acre park is 

the National Pony Express Monument with a replica Pony Express 

station, a dramatic Avard Fairbanks sculpture of a relay rider changing 

horses, and several interpretive wayside exhibits.

Statuary Walk east of the Pony Express monument includes other 

sculptures and the 60-foot high This Is The Place Monument, with 

bronze figures of Brigham Young and other early church leaders. 

Around the monument base are bas relief depictions of significant 

figures in Utah history. Beyond the nearby visitor center is Heritage 

Village, a reconstructed village of original pioneer-era buildings 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

75

where costumed docents and historical interpreters share history and 

demonstrate early crafts and trades. Young visitors can ride ponies 

and trains, make crafts, and pet farm animals here. Open daily 9 a.m.–

5 p.m. Admission to the Pony Express monument, Statuary Walk, 

This is the Place Monument, and the visitor center is free. Admission 

to Heritage Village varies seasonally.

Directions: From the Rotary Glen Park exit at Crestview Drive, 

turn west (left) onto Sunnyside Avenue. The entrance to This Is The 

Place Heritage Park is on the right 0.7 mile beyond Crestview Drive 

(odometer mile 22.1). Parking for the Pony Express monument is on 

the right shortly after entering the park. Continue east and up the 

hill to the visitor center and other attractions.

The Latter-day Saints were home at last. This Is The Place Heritage 

Park, near the location where Brigham Young first surveyed the valley, 

is considered the terminus of the Mormon Pioneer National Historic 

Trail. But as the City of the Saints grew from a rustic frontier village to 

a bustling territorial capital, many California-bound travelers paused 

here for a layover to rest, re-supply, or spend the winter — or, as in 

the case of English adventurer Sir Richard Burton, to satisfy their 

curiosity about Brigham Young and the Mormons. The Pony Express 

descended the canyon and went through town, too, carrying mail to a 

home station on Main Street. 

Salt Lake City, a pioneer way-station as well as a destination, is rich in 

the combined history of the three trails. 

Further Options and Directions

To visit museums and trails-era historic localities for the Mormon 

Pioneer, California, and Pony Express Trail in downtown Salt Lake 

City, consult the Salt Lake City Pioneer Tour on page 76. 

To continue the auto tour along the California and Pony Express 

Trails, exit This Is The Place Heritage Park and turn west (right) 

onto Sunnyside Avenue. At the second traffic light, turn south (left) 

onto 2100 East/Foothill Drive. Stay on the Foothill Drive for about 3 

miles and follow the signs to enter westbound I-80.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

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76

About 4 miles ahead is a complex highway interchange where I-80 

turns north and briefly merges with I-15. There you have a choice:

To follow the interstate highway along the designated Auto Tour 

Route for the California and Pony Express National Historic Trails 

to Nevada, follow the signs to stay on westbound I-80 and skip to 

Auto Tour Segment B on page 90. 

To follow the designated Auto Tour Route for the Salt Lake Cutoff 

and join the California Trail at City of Rocks in Idaho, merge onto 

northbound I-15 and consult Auto Tour Segment C, beginning on 

page 105.

To follow the original Pony Express Trail route along mostly unpaved 

roads from Salt Lake City to the Nevada border, merge onto 

southbound I-15 and consult Auto Tour Segment D: Pony Express 

Trail National Back Country Byway on page 110.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

77

SALT LAKE CITY PIONEER TOUR 

(California, Mormon Pioneer, and Pony Express Trails)

Getting Around

Fort Douglas National Historic District is located on the University 

of Utah campus, which occupies the old fort grounds. Downtown 

sites are located between 400 South Street and 300 North Street and 

between West Temple Street and 200 East Street. 

Free maps and walking guides to Salt Lake City are available on-line 

from:

The Utah Heritage Foundation at www.utahheritagefoundation.

org/tours-and-events/self-guided-tours and

The Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau at www.

visitsaltlake.com/includes/media/docs/slcity0608map.pdf and 

www.visitsaltlake.com/includes/media/docs/slvalley0608map.pdf

City maps and brochures also are available free from the Echo 

Welcome Center on westbound I-80 at Echo; from the City & 

County Building at 400 South and State Street in Salt Lake City; and 

from the Utah Visitor Information Center at 100 South and West 

Temple Street downtown. Please consult these maps when visiting 

the downtown historical sites described in this Auto Tour Route 

Interpretive Guide.

Walking

Downtown is pedestrian-friendly and walking tours of the area are 

popular, but distances shown graphically on printed guides can be 

deceptive. Salt Lake City blocks are 1/8 mile in length, nearly twice as 

long as blocks in other cities, and the streets are extra-wide because, 

according to Mormon lore, Brigham Young designed them to allow 

an ox-drawn wagon to make a mid-street U-turn. (However, wide 

streets were characteristic of Mormon-built communities long before 

the Latter-day Saints arrived in Utah under Young’s leadership.) A 

3-block walk in Salt Lake City is equivalent to 5 or 6 blocks in other 

towns and the distance around one block is a half-mile. If walking, 

expect this tour and related museum visits to take a day.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

78

Parking and Public Transportation

Metered curbside parking is available on most streets, and downtown 

Salt Lake City has many pay-to-park lots and garages. A light-rail 

train called TRAX carries passengers free of charge between the 

Salt Lake City Library (which has a parking garage) at 200 East 400 

South Streets and Central Station at 600 West and 200 South Streets. 

Trains run every 15 minutes on weekdays and less frequently on 

weekends. TRAX platforms are located in front of the library on 400 

South Street, along Main Street, and on South Temple Street. When 

taking TRAX back to the library from downtown, be sure to catch the 

University train, not the Sandy train. 

To travel beyond the free fare zone, purchase tickets from vending 

machines at TRAX platforms before boarding the train. Go to www.

rideuta.com/ for route and free-fare zone maps, TRAX schedules, 

and fare information. Maps and schedules also are available at the 

City & County Building at 400 South and State Street, and at the 

Utah Visitor Information Center at 100 South and West Temple 

Street, and are posted at each boarding platform. A TRAX platform 

is located on 100 South Street near the visitor information center.

Sites of Interest

To go downtown from This Is The Place Heritage Park, turn west 

(right) from the park exit onto Sunnyside Avenue. Stay in the right 

lane. Approaching the second stoplight, bear right and merge onto 

Foothill Drive. To begin the tour at Fort Douglas National Historic 

Landmark, Fort Douglas Military Museum, see driving and TRAX 

directions in entry SLC-1 below. Otherwise, continue on Foothill, 

which makes an S-turn and becomes 400 South Street. If walking, 

park anywhere in the downtown area; if driving the tour, consult 

individual site entries for more specific parking suggestions.

Site listings below proceed from south to north.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Entrance to the Fort Douglas 

Cemetery.

79

SLC-1. Fort Douglas 

National Historic Landmark 

and Fort Douglas Military 

Museum (University of 

Utah campus). Fort Douglas 

was established in 1862 by 

Col. Patrick Edward Connor 

largely as a result of Civil 

War tensions. Union Army 

troops were assigned to 

Utah Territory to protect 

the overland mail, telegraph, and emigration routes from the 

Confederacy, from suspected Southern sympathizers among the 

Mormons, and from Indian attack. The flag pole on the east end of 

the parade ground marked the geographical center of the 4-squaremile fort. A self-guided walking tour of the fort’s historic buildings is 

available at http://web.utah.edu/facilities/fd/walking/Booklet.pdf. The 

museum offers exhibits of Fort Douglas and Utah military history. 

Museum hours are Tues.–Sat. noon-5 p.m. Free.

Directions: After merging onto Foothill Drive, continue to the 

second traffic light and turn right onto Mario Capecchi Drive. At 

the first traffic light, turn right onto Hempstead Road, then left onto 

Chase Street and right onto Potter Street. Park on the street in front 

of the museum. 

Following your visit, return to Foothill Drive and turn west (right). 

Foothill makes an S-turn and becomes 400 South. Metered street 

parking and commercial parking lots are available throughout the 

downtown area; consult individual site entries for more specific 

parking suggestions.

Fort Douglas also is easily accessible from downtown via TRAX. 

Purchase a ticket from the vending machine at any downtown TRAX 

platform (Fort Douglas is outside of the free fare zone) and catch an 

eastbound University train. Exit the train at the Fort Douglas platform 

and walk north to cross the Eccles Bridge over Mario Capecchi Drive. 

A short walk across the historic parade grounds will take you to the 

museum.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Salt Lake City and County Building.

80

SLC-2. Emigration Square/

Washington Square Pioneer 

Campground (400 South 

Street and State Street).

For several years, emigrants 

on their way to California 

corralled their cattle and 

camped here during their stay 

in Salt Lake City. Later, the 

livestock pens were moved 

outside of the city. The 1894 

City and County Building occupies the site today, and a monument 

commemorating the Mormon pioneers is located at the northwest 

corner of the square. (The monument is erroneous in stating that 

the vanguard Mormon pioneers camped at this location — see entry 

SLC-3.)

Curbside parking is available on the streets bordering Washington 

Square. A commercial parking lot is located at 400 South and 

State Street, and an underground parking garage (accessible only 

from eastbound 400 South) is located at the city library east of 

Washington Square.

SLC-3. National Historic Trails Office (southwest corner of the 

300 South/Broadway and State Street intersection). Stop by this 

office of the National Park Service for trail brochures, Auto Tour 

Route Interpretive Guides, NPS Passport Cancellation Stamps, and 

information about Utah’s national parks.

The historic trails office is in Suite 200 on the second floor to the left 

of the elevator. Metered curbside parking is available on 300 South/

Broadway. A commercial parking garage on the south side of the 

building is accessible from southbound State Street. Open weekdays 

8 a.m.–4:00 p.m.; closed 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. and holidays.

The 1847 vanguard pioneer company camped on the banks of 

City Creek, southwest of the trails office building near what is 

now Exchange Place, the nights of July 23-25, 1847. The area is 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Pony Express Monument at 163 South 

Main Street.

81

now occupied by buildings and the creek is channeled through an 

underground conduit.

From the trails office, walk east across State Street and then cross 

to the north side of 300 South/Broadway. Walk east on 300 South/

Broadway about 150 feet. A sidewalk monument describes how the 

first company of Latter-day Saints set to work digging irrigation 

ditches and planting crops at that location within hours of arriving 

in the Salt Lake Valley. 

Now go west to Main Street. To ride TRAX in the free-fare zone 

directly to sites on South Temple Street (SLC-6 through 13), board 

any northbound train at the 300 South and Main Street platform. 

Otherwise, walk or drive north on Main Street for about 1 1⁄2 blocks 

to stop SLC-5. Main Street has limited curbside parking.

SLC-5. Pony Express Station 

Monument (east side of 

Main Street between 200 

South and 100 South). A 

curbside monument in front 

of the First National Bank 

Building at 163 South Main 

Street commemorates the 

Great Salt Lake City Pony 

Express Station. A plaque, 

located near the entrance of the 

Tribune Building a few doors north of the monument, lists Utah Pony 

Express riders and superintendents. The Tribune Building stands 

at the former site of Salt Lake House, a historic hotel where many 

notable travelers, including Mark Twain and Sir Richard Burton, 

stayed while visiting Salt Lake City on their way to California. Because 

the daughter of a Pony Express rider stated that her father had slept 

at Salt Lake House, the hotel long was assumed to have been a Pony 

Express home station. However, recent research has determined that 

the mail station originally was directly across the street from the hotel. 

After several months of use, the station was relocated a block north. 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Brigham Young at Temple Square.

82

Continue north along Main Street to South Temple Street. If riding 

TRAX to the Brigham Young Monument and sites to the east (SLC6 through 10), exit the train at the City Center platform and walk 

north to South Temple. Consult individual entries below for further 

directions. If riding TRAX to the Salt Lake Temple and sites to the 

west (SLC-11 through 13), continue one more stop to the Temple 

Square platform.

Entries SLC-6 through SLC-13 are Mormon church-owned 

properties, part of greater Temple Square and the historic 

heart of Salt Lake City.

SLC-6. Brigham Young 

Monument (South Temple and 

Main Street) features a heroicsized statue of Young created for 

the 1893 Worlds Fair in Chicago, 

along with smaller sculptures 

representing the Utah Indians 

and fur trappers who preceded 

the pioneers. A plaque on the 

monument lists the members of 

the original Mormon advance 

company. Curbside parking is 

limited in this area; underground 

parking may be available at the 

Joseph Smith Memorial Building, 

the white building to the right of 

the monument.

Turn right and go east 1 block. If driving, park in the vicinity of the 

intersection of South Temple and State Street.

SLC-7. The Beehive House and the Lion House (South Temple 

Street, west of State Street) were the residences of Brigham 

Young’s large family. The Beehive House, named for the beehive 

structure on its roof, was built in 1854. For several years it served 

as Utah Territory’s executive mansion, where Gov. Young worked 

and received visitors such as Ulysses S. Grant, Horace Greeley, 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Eagle Gate spans State Street at South 

Temple Street.

Beehive and Lion House at Temple 

Square.

83

Mark Twain, and Sir Richard 

Burton. The Beehive House 

is open for free, missionaryled tours Mon.–Sat. 9 a.m. –9 

p.m. The Lion House, named 

for the stone lions at the front 

entrance, was built next door 

in 1856. It was Young’s family 

residence and is where he died 

in 1877. Only its lower level, 

occupied by The Lion House 

Pantry restaurant, is open to the public.

Some California-bound emigrants passing through Salt Lake City 

made a point of driving past Young’s residences, hoping to satisfy 

their curiosity about the legendary Mormon leader. 

SLC-8. The Eagle Gate 

(South Temple and State 

Street) spans State Street 

east of Beehive House. The 

monumental gateway was 

originally erected in 1859 at the 

entrance to Brigham Young’s 

private family compound. 

Today a bronze eagle perches 

atop the gateway. The original 

wooden eagle is exhibited at the 

nearby Pioneer Memorial Museum (see entry SLC-14).

Cross to the east side of State Street. Near the corner at the foot of the 

Eagle Gate is a plaque that recounts the history of the gate. A nearby 

small monument commemorates a private schoolhouse Brigham 

Young built there for his many children. Now continue north on 

State Street, passing under the Eagle Gate. Turn east (right) at the 

next street, 1st Avenue. Go about 3/4 block and park curbside. On 

the right, a red sandstone retaining wall with a wrought-iron fence 

identifies the Brigham Young Cemetery.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Brigham Young, Mormon Pioneer 

Memorial.

Brigham Young Historic Park.

84

SLC-9. Brigham Young 

Cemetery (150 East on the 

south side of 1st Avenue)

is a place of reverence and 

contemplation for Mormon 

visitors. In the outer garden 

stand sculptures of Mormon 

emigrants and monuments 

commemorating pioneers 

William Clayton and Eliza Rocxy 

Snow. Clayton wrote a detailed 

traveler’s guide to the Mormon Trail and composed the motivational 

hymn Come, Come, Ye Saints during his own 1846-47 trek from 

Nauvoo. Snow was a wife of church founder Joseph Smith and, after 

his death, of Brigham Young. She became a poet and songwriter of 

renown among the Mormon pioneers. Her grave, in the inner garden, 

is near that of Brigham Young and other members of his family. 

Return to State Street and walk north to the park entrance at 2nd

Avenue.

SLC-10 Brigham Young 

Historic Park (State Street 

and 2nd Avenue) once was 

part of Brigham Young’s 

family farm. Today it includes 

a water wheel with a wooden 

flume and lifelike sculptures of 

pioneers at work and play. Free 

evening lectures and concerts 

are offered here June through 

August.

If continuing on foot, exit the park at 2nd Avenue and walk west on 

North Temple Street for two blocks. Cross West Temple and turn 

south to the entrance of the Church History Museum. If driving, 

go north on State Street and turn left (west) on North Temple. The 

commercial parking lot at the corner of North Temple and West 

Temple is accessible only from the southbound lanes of West Temple, 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

LDS Church History Museum.

Duel Pioneer Log Cabin.

85

so continue to the next street, 200 West. Turn north (right) and go 

around the block to the lot entrance. Park and walk across North 

Temple Street to the Church History Museum.

If riding TRAX along South Temple Street, exit the train at the Temple 

Square platform and cross to the north side of the street. To visit site 

SLC-11, turn west (left), cross West Temple Street, and turn right. The 

Church History Museum is on the left near the end of the block. To 

go directly to the Salt Lake Temple and related sites, walk east to the 

north gate of Temple Square and skip to entry SLC-13.

SLC-11. The Church History 

Museum (45 North and West 

Temple Street) exhibits many 

important artifacts associated 

with the Mormon exodus 

to Utah, including objects 

related to the assassination 

of church founder Joseph 

Smith at Carthage, Ill.; Joseph 

Smith’s death mask; a wagon 

with an odometer invented 

by Mormon pioneers during the 1847 trek west; a cannon hauled 

west from Nauvoo by the advance company; and many personal 

belongings carried to Utah by the emigrants. Original paintings and 

artwork depict historical events and experiences. Free. Open Mon.–

Fri. 9 a.m.–9 p.m.; Sat.–Sun. and most holidays 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Closed 

New Year’s Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas. 

SLC-12. Deuel Pioneer Log 

Cabin (next to the Church 

History Museum) is an 

original pioneer home that 

was built in 1847 at a cost of 

$60. Only one other Salt Lake 

home built that year still exists; 

it is located at This is the Place 

Heritage Park. Lumber was 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

One of several walkways through the 

Temple Square gardens.

86

scarce in the largely treeless valley, and most homes built after 1847 

were constructed of adobe brick. Free. The cabin is located between 

the museum and the Family History Library.

Following your visit, cross West Temple at the midblock crosswalk in 

front of the Family History Library and enter the west gate of Temple 

Square. Guides greet visitors at the gates and can provide directions 

to the nearest visitor center and other places of interest at Temple 

Square. 

SLC-13. Temple Square 

(between South Temple 

and North Temple Streets)

includes an extensive, enclosed 

formal garden area where 

the Salt Lake Temple and 

famous Mormon Tabernacle 

are located. Many passing 

emigrants, curious to hear 

Brigham Young speak, attended 

open-air Mormon church 

services here and described the construction of the temple and 

tabernacle in their journals. All are welcome to visit the square, but 

entrance to the temple itself is restricted. 

Directions: Gateways to the enclosed square are on North Temple 

Street, Main Street, and South Temple Street. Admission is free. 

Open daily 9 a.m.–9 p.m.

For information about buildings, monuments, gardens, and other 

features within the enclosed portion of Temple Square, go to 

www.lds.org. Click on “About the Church” and then on “Places 

to Visit.” Maps and brochures are also available at on-site visitor 

centers.

The Pioneer Memorial Museum is located two long blocks uphill 

from Temple Square. Exit the north gate of Temple Square and 

go north on Main Street toward a large, cream-colored building 

— the museum — at the top of the hill. At a 5-way intersection in 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Daughters of the Utah Pioneers 

Pioneer Memorial Museum.

On a clear day Ensign Peak offers a 

spectacular view of the city and Salt 

Lake Valley.

87

front of the museum, Main Street splits. Follow the right branch 

and turn left into a parking lot at the rear of the museum. 

SLC-14. Pioneer Memorial 

Museum (300 North Street 

and Main Street) is operated 

by the Daughters of the Utah 

Pioneers, which proudly 

proclaims it as “the world’s 

largest collection of artifacts 

on one particular subject.” 

The claim is easy to believe: 

this museum is packed with 

thousands of objects both 

mundane and fascinating, all part of Mormon history. Allow at least 

a couple hours to visit. Objects of particular note include an Army 

supply wagon captured from Albert Sidney Johnston’s troops by the 

Mormon militia during the 1857 Utah War; and three feathers from 

the “Miracle of the Quail,” when a flock of quail fluttered into an 

encampment of starving Mormon refugees on the Mississippi River 

in 1846. Donations accepted. Open Mon.–Sat. 9 a.m.–5 p.m. In June–

Aug., also open Sun. 1 p.m.–5 p.m.

Upon leaving the museum, walk out to the sidewalk and look north 

up Main Street for a view of Ensign Peak, the last stop on the Salt 

Lake City Pioneer Tour.

Valley overlooks are located 

at the foot of Ensign Peak, 

where visitors can enter a 

maintained trail that winds 

0.86 mile to the summit at 

5,400 feet elevation. Due 

to its distance from the 

museum, driving to the 

overlooks and trailhead is 

recommended. Directions: 

To do so, turn south (right) 

from the museum parking lot. 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Ensign Peak Nature Park.

88

At the traffic light, turn east (left) on 300 North Street. Follow the 

road as it curves left around the east side of the state capitol and 

becomes East Capitol Boulevard. Where the road forks, stay left 

and continue up the hill on East Capitol. Turn west (left) at Ensign 

Vista Drive The trailhead is on the north side of the street west of 

Chartwell Drive. On the south side of the street across from the 

trailhead is Ensign Park Memorial Garden, where non-hikers can 

enjoy a magnificent view of the valley.

SLC-15. Ensign Peak Memorial 

Garden and Ensign Peak Nature 

Park (Ensign Vista Drive). Two 

days after arriving in the valley, 

Brigham Young and 7 other 

pioneers climbed this hill to view 

the valley and begin planning 

their new city. Today the hilltop 

provides a stunning view straight 

down State Street, across the city 

the pioneers planned, to the south end of the Salt Lake Valley. Ensign 

Peak Memorial Garden trailhead includes plaques that explain the 

history and significance of the site. Another overlook is an easy walk 

about 0.3 mile up the trail at 5,060 feet elevation; an interpretive sign 

there identifies major landmarks and key buildings across the valley. 

Continue up the trail to the top of the peak for the best view. The sight 

is particularly beautiful at dusk as the sun sets and city streets begin 

to sparkle with lights. Allow at least an hour for a leisurely hike, and 

carry water.

This is the end of the Salt Lake City Pioneer Tour. Options from 

here are:

To follow interstate highway along the designated Auto Tour Route 

for the California and Pony Express National Historic Trails to 

Nevada, return to downtown. Turn west (right) on 500 South Street 

and follow signs to westbound I-80. Skip to Auto Tour Segment B 

Salt Lake City To West Wendover, NV on page 90.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

89

To follow the designated Auto Tour Route for the Salt Lake Cutoff 

and join the California Trail at City of Rocks in Idaho, return to 

downtown. Turn west (right) on 500 South Street and follow signs to 

northbound I-15. Consult Auto Tour Segment C on page 105.

To follow the original Pony Express Trail route along mostly 

unpaved roads from Salt Lake City to the Nevada border, return to 

downtown. Either turn west (right) on 500 South Street and follow 

signs to southbound I-15; OR drive south down State Street. Consult 

Auto Tour Segment D: Pony Express Byway on page 110.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

90

AUTO TOUR SEGMENT B: Salt Lake City To West 

Wendover, NV— (Hastings Cutoff Of The California 

Trail)

Auto Tour Segment B follows the designated Auto Tour Route for the California and Pony Express National Historic Trails along 

I-80 from Salt Lake City to the Nevada state line between Wendover, 

Utah, and West Wendover, Nevada.

The Hastings Cutoff intersects I-80 three times between Salt Lake 

City and Wendover; otherwise, highway and trail generally are 10 to 

20 miles apart. This tour offer opportunities to leave the freeway and 

visit trail-related sites along local roads. (One recommended stop, the 

Donner-Reed Museum at Grantsville, requires visitors to call ahead: 

see entry B-3 for details.) Also described is a 46-mile backcountry 

detour on mostly unpaved roads along the original route of the 

Hastings Cutoff (see Optional Backcountry Route: Skull Valley and 

Hastings Pass). 

The Pony Express Trail lies some 50 miles south of the freeway. There 

are no Pony Express stops along I-80, but from the freeway at West 

Wendover, Nev., Pony Express visitors can turn south onto U.S.-93A 

and follow Nevada highways along the route. It is about 25 miles from 

here to McGill, Nevada where fuel can be purchased. (Consult the 

Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide Across Nevada for directions.) To 

follow the historic trail itself along unpaved roads through Utah, go to

Auto Tour Segment D: Pony Express Byway.

Begin the Hastings Cutoff tour on westbound I-80 at Salt Lake 

City. The Hastings Cutoff corridor lies mostly south of the freeway, 

hugging higher ground at the foot of the mountains in order to avoid 

mud flats and marshes nearer the lake’s edge.

From Exit 104 visitors can leave the freeway and access the Great 

Salt Lake at the state marina (nominal admission charged), which 

has picnic facilities and restrooms. Alternatively, a free roadside 

viewing area is just ahead. Approaching milepost 102, note the large 
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Utah

In the distance to the upper right 

of this scene is the “black rock” 

described by Reed.

91

rock near the lakeshore on the right. This is Black Rock, a minor 

landmark along the emigrant trail.

B-1. Great Salt Lake Viewing 

Area (I-80 west of Salt Lake 

City). From this roadside 

turnout, look across the 

lake to the west (left) to see 

Stansbury Island. Black Rock 

is near the edge of the lake to 

the far right. Some researchers 

believe this is the “black rock” 

where James Reed overtook 

Lansford Hastings. A historical 

marker tells about the trail 

and a marker commemorates 

mountain man and explorer Jedediah Smith. This is a viewing area 

only; there is no authorized lake access here.

Directions: Blue highway signs denote this turnout at I-80 milepost 

101, about 17 miles west of Salt Lake City.

Continue west. As you approach Exit 99 (Stansbury Park) just 

ahead, you face a choice:

To continue west along the interstate, skip to entry B-4. Consider 

refueling at Exit 99, however; other opportunities to purchase fuel or 

food between here and Wendover are at Grantsville and Delle.

OR,

To leave the freeway and visit sites along the original trail and the 

Donner-Reed Museum at Grantsville, take Exit 99 to westbound UT36 and set your odometer as you cross over the freeway. 

Driving west along UT-36, note how the landscape has changed 

over the past 160 years. Dry land in this area was wet and marshy 

during the trails era, forcing wagons along higher ground ahead to 

the left. At about odometer reading 2.0, observe the rock outcrop 

on the left. This minor landmark is Adobe Rock, so called because 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Benson’s Grist Mill and some of the 

outbuildings on the property.

Donner-Reed Museum open by 

appointment only.

92

an adobe building stood nearby during the emigration period. Some 

researchers believe this is the “black rock” where James Reed caught 

up with Lansford Hastings and persuaded him to ride back to point 

out a wagon route through the Wasatch Mountains.

At the traffic light, about mile 3.0, turn right onto UT-138 and follow 

signs to Ezra T. Benson Grist Mill.

B-2. Ezra T. Benson 

Grist Mill (325 Hwy 138, 

Stansbury Park, UT), built 

by Mormon settlers in 1854, 

received occasional mention 

in the journals of passing 

emigrants. Today it is listed 

on the National Register of 

Historic Places. In addition to 

the original gristmill, the site 

includes a sawmill, a newly 

constructed operating gristmill, a country story, several historic 

cabins and barns, a blacksmith shop, and picnic facilities. Open May 

1–Nov. 1, Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Free.

Directions: After turning right onto UT-138, turn right again at the 

next street - about one-half mile ahead. Park on the left in front of 

the mill park. 

From Ezra T. Benson Grist Mill, either return to westbound I-80 and 

skip to options 1 and 2 on pages 92 & 106; or, to follow the Hastings 

Cutoff of the California Trail 

more closely, turn west (right) 

on UT-138 and continue 10 

miles to Grantsville. 

B-3. The Donner-Reed 

Museum (90 N. Cooley Street, 

Grantsville, UT) displays items 

left by emigrants — possibly 

including the DonnerReed Party — along the 
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93

Hastings Cutoff across the Great Salt Lake Desert. This is an eclectic 

“Grandma’s attic” of relics, including ox yokes and wagon parts, 

American Indian artifacts, fossils, pioneer household items, photos, 

and even the foot of an Egyptian mummy. Outside are interpretive 

wayside exhibits and a commemorative monument, wagon and 

equipment exhibits, an 1853 cabin, and an unusual cage-like jail that 

dates to 1863. This Daughters of the Utah Pioneers museum is open 

by appointment only. To arrange a visit, call ahead at (435) 884-3767 

or (435) 884-3411. Donations accepted.

Directions: Enter Grantsville on UT-138/Main Street and turn 

north (right) on Cooley Street, near the west end of town. A brown 

highway sign denotes the turn. Drive 1 block. The Donner-Reed 

Museum is a white 1861 adobe schoolhouse on the left.

Return to UT-138/Main Street and turn west (right).

Upon leaving Grantsville, look out across the open fields to the 

right. Emigrants on the Hastings Cutoff knew this area as Twenty 

Wells, named for the abundant freshwater springs that occurred 

here. Nearby Willow Creek also provided fresh water, and the 

grass grew thickly, making it an ideal rest stop for travelers and 

livestock on the Hastings Cutoff. A member of one of the lead 

1846 wagon parties escorted by Hastings was buried in this 

vicinity. The Donner-Reed Party buried one of its members, a 

young man who died of tuberculosis, beside the first grave. The 

double gravesite has never been definitively identified, though 

some evidence suggests it may have been destroyed during road 

construction decades ago. White fiberglass posts mark parallel 

wagon swales in the distant fields.

Follow UT-138 as it curves sharply to the right across the mud 

flats and toward the freeway. Enter westbound I-80. Back at 

the curve, the wagon trail continues northwest, keeping to high 

ground along the foot of the Stansbury Mountains. Trail and 

freeway briefly merge again 5 miles ahead at Timpie Point, where 

the Stansbury range dips its toe into the muddy margin of the 

Great Salt Lake. Here, where freeway traffic now whizzes past at 

speeds that would defy 19th century imaginations, plodding oxen 

once towed wagons along at about two miles per hour. 
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Utah

Emigrant Party On The Road To California - 1850. Courtesy of the Library of 

Congress.

94

West of Timpie Point is Skull Valley, a vast mud flat that is part 

of the Goshute Indian homeland. To avoid the mud, wagons 

rounded Timpie Point and went south for about 15 miles along 

the western skirts of the Stansbury Mountains. 

To explore the Hastings Cutoff of the California Trail through Skull 

Valley and over Hastings Pass, prepare to leave I-80 at Exit 77. 

This route follows paved highway to several trails sites on the way 

to Iosepa and from there continues on graded backcountry roads. 

Consult the Optional Backcountry Route: Skull Valley and 

Hastings Pass, on the next page, for further directions.

OR,

To continue the auto tour along I-80, skip to entry B-4 on page 101.
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Utah

Skull Valley southwest of the Great 

Salt Lake.

95

OPTIONAL BACKCOUNTRY ROUTE: Skull Valley 

and Hastings Pass

This 46-mile backcountry route follows pavement south along the trail corridor for about 17 miles to Iosepa. Beyond Iosepa, the 

route follows 29 miles of unpaved road, normally passable when dry 

for high-clearance 2-wheel-drive vehicles, along the original route 

of the Hastings Cutoff through the Cedar Mountains at Hastings 

Pass. The backcountry route rejoins I-80 at Aragonite (Exit 56). If 

continuing on unpaved roads, carry a fully inflated spare tire in good 

condition. There is no opportunity to buy gas, water, or food along 

the way, and most of the route is out of cell phone range. Consider 

traveling with a second vehicle in case of breakdown. This is open 

range country: watch for livestock and wildlife along the highways 

and back roads.

Call the BLM Salt Lake Field 

Office at (801) 977-4300 to 

inquire about conditions on 

the unpaved roads beyond 

Iosepa.

Directions: Take Exit 

77 to begin the optional 

backcountry tour from I-80. 

Zero your trip odometer at the 

stop sign at the end of the exit 

ramp and turn south (left) onto UT-196, following the directional 

sign for the California Trail. Now the Stansbury Mountains and 

the Hastings Cutoff trail are to the left; the Cedar Mountains and 

Hastings Pass are across Skull Valley to the right.

As you start your drive south, look left toward Timpie Point. A few 

willows show the location of Big Springs, a source of brackish water 

that was used by some travelers along the Hastings Cutoff. Many 

emigrants, though, bypassed Big Springs and headed directly to 

Horseshoe Springs or Hope Wells. The trail runs along the higher 

ground to the left, but crosses to the right side of the highway about 4 

miles south of Big Springs.
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Utah

BLM’s Wildlife Management Area 

at Horseshoe Springs in Skull Valley 

once provided the pioneers with a 

place to stop and refresh.

96

Horseshoe Springs and other 

waterholes along the margins 

of Skull Valley were important 

resources for the Goshute 

Indians long before the arrival 

of emigrants. Wildlife and trail 

ruts are abundant around the 

springs today, and interpretive 

wayside exhibits are in 

development. The Bureau of 

Land Management manages 

this area for protection of 

wildlife and wetlands. Please 

keep vehicles on designated roads.

Directions: At odometer reading 9.6 miles (south of milepost 28) 

is a sign for Horseshoe Springs. Turn right onto the gravel entrance 

road. Just ahead, look to the left for a white fiberglass trail post 

marking wagon swale. Nearby, a brown T-shaped marker made of 

railroad rail provides an emigrant’s observations concerning a fork 

in the trail there. Pause here to explore wagon swales on both sides 

of the road; then continue to parking at the springs.

Return to UT-196 and turn south (right). Zero your trip odometer 

upon re-entering the highway. The main trail corridor continues 

along the right side of UT-196.

Also of Interest: Iosepa Polynesian Settlement. The ghost town of 

Iosepa (1889-1917) post-dates the emigrant trail by 20 years but is a 

fascinating part of Utah history. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints established this settlement for Polynesian converts from 

Hawaii, Samoa, Tahiti, and New Zealand who wished to immigrate 

to Utah to be near the Mormon temple at Salt Lake City. A historical 

marker tells the story. A small cemetery remains. The site has a 

picnic pavilion and restrooms (closed winters). Each Memorial Day 

weekend, the Iosepa Historical Association sponsors a luau there for 

Utah Polynesians and others who are interested in Polynesian history. 

Visitors are welcome.

Directions: On the left side of the highway at highway milepost 23, 

about 4.5 miles south of Horseshoe Springs, is a blue directional 
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97

sign on the left for Iosepa. Turn left onto the entrance drive, 

crossover the cattle guard, and following the road to the right for 

about a mile to the picnic pavilion.

Return to UT-196 heading south.

On private land south of Iosepa is Hope Wells, where the DonnerReed Party discovered the shredded remains of a note left by 

Lansford Hastings. “2 days – 2 nights – hard driving – cross – desert 

– reach water,” the beleaguered emigrants read. One more brackish 

waterhole, Redlum Spring, lies ahead; from there the trail continues 

west 65 miles through the Cedar Mountains and across the salt flats 

to Donner Springs, at the foot of Pilot Peak.

Travelers unequipped for off-pavement backcountry travel now 

should turn around and resume the tour along I-80 to stop B-4.

Directions: From Hope Wells the Hastings Cutoff turns northwest, 

but today’s backcountry traveler continues south on UT-196. At 

highway milepost 20, about 7.5 miles south of Horseshoe Springs, 

watch for a brown sign for 8-Mile Spring and Rydahl Canyon. 

There, turn right, reset your trip odometer, and cross a cattle guard 

onto a gravel road. Proceed only if the road is dry. (Be aware that 

odometer mileage readings may vary slightly from one vehicle to 

another.

Drive due west 1.3 miles to a road junction. Stay on the main road 

as it angles about 45 degrees to the right — do not continue straight 

toward the Cedar Mountains. Continue along the main road, 

disregarding minor offshoot roads.

At odometer reading 2.8 miles is a cattle guard and a Bureau of 

Land Management entrance sign with advisories concerning the 

Cedar Mountains area. About another one and three-quarters 

of a mile ahead the road veers left across a drainage, angles 

northwestward again, and approaches some white clay mounds on 

the right. There the road forks. Bear right, leaving the gravel road 

and entering a secondary bladed clay road that passes northwest 

around the clay mounds. Often the road here is moist at the junction 
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Utah

Today, Redlum spring is used heavily 

by grazing livestock and has little 

water during the summer months.

98

but dry beyond the mounds. DO NOT PROCEED if the road 

beyond the mounds is wet.

From here the Hastings Cutoff lies about 2.5 miles to the 

northwest, making a beeline toward Hastings Pass.

Continue northwest to a 4-way intersection at odometer mile 11.3. 

Turn north (right). The road next makes several broad, sweeping 

curves over the next 1.5 mile stretch, gradually converging with 

the Hastings Cutoff trail. The wagon trail and the road intersect at 

odometer reading 12.7 miles. Stop near a white fiberglass trail post 

on the right and get out to explore the ruts on foot. Do not drive on 

the ruts.

Follow the trail ruts on foot to the right for a short distance and 

stand facing east toward the Stansbury Mountains. At the north (left) 

end of the range lies Timpie Point, where this tour segment began. 

Between here and there stretches a 10-mile expanse of impassable 

wetlands and mud flats — the light-colored, barren ground in the 

middle distance. Look back down the trail swales to the southeast to 

see where the wagons finally started across Skull Valley. Then turn 

around and look up the trail to the northwest, toward the Cedar 

Mountains. Hastings Pass is at the lowest point in the range ahead. 

Now the road merges with the 

trail. About a mile ahead the 

road curves sharply west (left), 

narrows to one lane, and enters 

a dry wash. At this location, the 

wagon trail crosses the wash: 

look for a white fiberglass trail 

post on the opposite bank. 

After a mile the road leaves the 

wash and comes to a junction. 

On private land in this vicinity 

is Redlum Spring. It was briny 

and, some emigrants believed, unsuitable for livestock, but it was the 

last water on the Hastings Cutoff for nearly 65 miles.
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Utah

An historical marker identifies the 

summit of Hastings Pass — a short 

walk from the pullout parking area.

99

Zero your trip odometer at the road junction and turn north (right). 

Now the trail is on the right side of the modern road. Look on the 

right for a white fiberglass post marking its passage.

At odometer mile 0.7, a white fiberglass trail post on the right marks 

wagon ruts near the road. At mile 1.5, stop and look ahead to the 

left. In the distant sagebrush, a series of white fiberglass posts shows 

the trail route turning northwest past a large outcrop of basalt. The 

modern road continues northeast to a three-way intersection about 

one and a half miles further. A Bureau of Land Management sign for 

the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area stands at the junction. Turn left 

(northwest) and begin the climb toward Hastings Pass.

About a mile ahead, the road enters a ravine through a burned area 

bristling with dead junipers. Here the wagon trail merges briefly 

with the road. The ravine grows deeper and narrower, increasingly 

difficult terrain for wagons. On the left at odometer mile 4.9, trail 

ruts (marked with a white fiberglass post) leave the roadway and 

climb a steep hogsback ridge to Hastings Pass. Do not park here, but 

pause to drop off any hikers who wish to follow the wagon ruts up 

to the pass. From the pass hikers can walk down a spur-road that 

leads back to the main road. The hike is about 0.8 mile. Meanwhile, 

drivers continue ahead for a half-mile to the spur road on the left. 

Follow the spur road up the first rise to the south and park at the 

exhibit turnout to await the hikers. Driving the spur road to the trail 

marker is not recommended, as the road is steep and rocky, and 

there is almost no room to turn around.

The summit of Hastings Pass,

on top of the ridge, is marked 

by a brown T-rail post. From 

this height emigrants could 

look back across Skull Valley, 

but the view to the west is 

blocked by nearby hills. Once 

here on top of the hogsback, 

wagons turned sharply to the 

right and then descended a 

rough “dugway” or road cut, 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Dugout made by pioneers to begin the 

descent on the west side of Hastings 

Pass

Watch for traces of the trail, typically 

on the right side of the drive as you 

descend the Hastings Pass area.

100

still visible, into the deep wash on the left. They followed the wash 

back down to the main canyon. Hikers can follow the trail down to 

the main road and turn right to meet their vehicle back at roadside 

turnout, or they can descend via the gravel spur-road.

From the pullout, continue 

west. Just ahead, at a hairpin 

turn in the road (odometer 

5.5 miles), look left to see 

the ravine where the wagon 

trail down from Hastings 

Pass re-enters the roadway.

Two miles farther, road and 

trail emerge from the Cedar 

Mountains and travelers get 

their first look at the bleak 

expanse ahead. Pull over to 

take in the view. Imagine the dismay and dread emigrants felt, their 

thirsty oxen already bellowing for water, as they gazed out across 

the shining desert. Pilot Peak, rising on the opposite side of the salt 

flats, shimmers pale blue on the northwestern horizon. Next water, 

Donner Springs, lies at its foot.

As the modern road descends 

to the flats, watch on the right 

and the left for white fiberglass 

posts that mark the trail. The 

gravel road continues straight 

ahead past an industrial 

incinerator and intersects 

paved road at odometer mile 

9.9. Turn north (right), leaving 

the wagon trail, and drive 2.3 

miles. Enter westbound I-80 

and consult entry B-4.
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101

B-4. Grassy Mountain Rest Area (I-80 milepost 55) offers views 

of the Cedar Mountains to the southeast and the Grayback Hills to 

the northwest. On clear days Pilot Peak is visible, as well. Look back 

toward Hastings Pass, about 4.25 miles southeast of the rest area. The 

trail crosses I-80 about a mile west of here and crawls over the steep 

saddle of the Grayback Hills. An orientation panel at the rest area 

shows the location of the California and Pony Express Trails relative 

to the highway.

Directions: Enter the rest area west of Exit 56.

West of the rest area an Auto Tour Route highway sign marks where 

the Hasting Cutoff crosses the freeway on the approach to the 

Grayback Hills, which are ahead and slightly to the right. Beyond 

the hills, the trail is about 6 miles north of I-80, where the sun glares 

off the white salt crust and daytime temperatures can exceed 100 

degrees. Some years, out on the salt flats, emigrant wagons bogged 

down in the mucky clay and salt beds. James Reed’s (Donner-Reed 

Wagon Train) thirst-crazed oxen bolted into the desert and emigrants 

miserably stumbled along, desperate to reach water.

On the right at about milepost 22 stands the distinctive hooked peak 

of Floating Island, so named because atmospheric conditions often 

make it appear to float on hot air above the flats. The Hastings Cutoff 

crosses north of Floating Island and continues across the next basin 

toward Silver Island peak. From the Tree of Life sculpture along the 

freeway, the trail lies about 11 miles to the north.

B-5. Salt Flats Rest Area (I-80 milepost 10) has another trails 

orientation map and information about the nearby Bonneville Salt 

Flats. Visitors can walk out onto the flats from this rest area.

Directions: Enter the rest area at about milepost 10.

Approaching the Nevada border, visitors can leave the freeway at 

the Bonneville Speedway exit, drive onto the salt flats, and take a 

side-trip on bladed roads to Donner Springs.
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Salt flats of the Great Salt Lake 

Desert border both sides of I-80.

102

B-6. Bonneville Salt Flats 

Recreation Area (I-80 mile 

4). Here visitors can drive onto 

the salt flats when the ground 

is dry. At the access, the Bureau 

of Land Management plans to 

install a kiosk with interpretive 

exhibits about the historic trail, 

the natural history of the flats, 

and the famous speedway.

Directions: Leave I-80 at 

Exit 4 for the Bonneville Salt 

Flats International Speedway. (A service station and a small café 

are located off this exit.) At the end of the exit ramp, reset your 

trip odometer and turn north (right) onto the paved Pilot Peak 

Road. Past a sign for the Bonneville Salt Flats Recreation Area, at 

odometer reading 1.3 miles, the road forks: bear right (east) and 

continue to the turnaround area at odometer mile 5.2. Before 

venturing onto the flats, test the ground to make sure it is dry 

beneath the salt crust. Do not enter the flats when they are moist 

and avoid areas that appear dark in color, or your vehicle may mire 

to its axles just as some pioneer wagons did.

To visit Donner Springs, see entry B-7. The historic springs are about 

23 miles from the salt flats recreation area, and nearly 17 miles of 

the distance is unpaved. Under dry conditions, the road is passable 

to 2-wheel drive passenger vehicles, though it may be washboard in 

places. 

To skip that side-trip and continue to the Nevada border, return to 

westbound I-80 and drive on to West Wendover. Consult the Auto 

Tour Route Guide Across Nevada for further directions.

B-7. Donner Springs (north of Wendover, UT) was the first water 

encountered by travelers on the Hastings Cutoff beyond Redlum 

Springs. (Other water sources are available onward to the southwest.) 

The site, located on a working ranch, is open to visitors by permission 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Donner Springs and several other 

area springs are fed from rain and 

snowmelt from Pilot Peak Range.

103

of the landowners. Please stay 

on designated roads, respect 

the owners’ privacy, and do 

not disturb livestock. There 

is no restroom at Donner 

Springs.

Directions: From the salt 

flats recreation area, return 

3.9 miles to the main road 

and reset your trip odometer 

at the junction. Turn right 

onto Leppy Pass Road (a sign 

denotes the TLBar ranch about 

23 miles ahead) and follow it northwestward. At odometer mile 

0.7, the road forks. Stay on the paved road, which curves to the left. 

Pilot Peak is visible ahead and slightly to the left. At odometer mile 

3.1, there is a concrete building to the left.

At odometer mile 6.5, the road crosses the Nevada state line (marked 

by a fence) and becomes gravel. Drive slowly on any washboard 

areas to avoid losing traction. At odometer mile 12.6 is a California 

Trail and Hastings Cutoff sign. An interpretive wayside exhibit with 

information about Bidwell Pass is on the left. Be aware of possible 

tire hazards if you are going to park on the road shoulder. North of 

the exhibit area and on the left, a white fiberglass trail post shows 

where the historic trail crosses from the right on its way toward 

Bidwell Pass.

Continue along the main road, which gradually curves to the 

northeast and re-enters Utah. A sign denoting the historic Munsee 

Cabin is on the right at about odometer reading 20.2, and a sign for 

Box Elder County is at mile 21.

As you approach the ranch entrance, look for an orchard on the 

right and another gravel road branching off to the left. The ranch 

entrance is just ahead at odometer mile 22.5. Turn right into the TL 

Bar Ranch and drive past the cattle pens. Continue slowly through 

the equipment yard past a fence made of road signs and bear to the 
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104

right until you are heading south. The road passes through a gate 

and comes to a T-intersection, with the right branch going to a cabin 

up the hill and the left branch going downhill toward a second cabin. 

Turn left toward the second log cabin. Stop at the hitching rail where 

a sign designates visitor parking, and walk — do not drive — to the 

interpretive kiosk at the spring. Enjoy the spring and interpretive 

facilities, and leave the site tidy.

After your visit, retrace the drive back to I-80 and drive to West 

Wendover, Nevada. Consult the Auto Tour Route Interpretive 

Guide Across Nevada for further directions.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Exhibits explain some of the natural 

history of the Warm Springs.

105

AUTO TOUR SEGMENT C: Salt Lake City To City 

Of Rocks National Reserve, ID (Salt Lake Cutoff of 

the California Trail)

Auto Tour Segment C follows the designated Auto Tour Route for the 

Salt Lake Cutoff of the California National Historic Trail from Salt 

Lake City to the City of Rocks National Reserve in southern Idaho. 

The tour route mostly follows interstate freeway, with some travel 

on state and local roads. Much of the trail corridor is occupied by 

modern highways and other developments.

Begin the tour on northbound I-15 north in Salt Lake City, Utah.

C-1. Wasatch Warm Springs 

Park (900 North Street 300 

West Street, Salt Lake City) 

is the southernmost of a series 

of four warm and hot springs. 

Pioneers found the features 

on their second day in the Salt 

Lake Valley and built the first 

bath house there 3 years later. 

California-bound emigrants on 

the Salt Lake Cutoff enjoyed the 

bath, too, and many noted it in 

their journals. Today the spring is part of a city park, but bathing there 

is not permitted. Interpretive plaques at the site tell the story and also 

tell of American Indian use of the area.

Directions: Take Exit 309 and bear right (eastbound) onto 600 

North Street. Cross over the Union Pacific railroad track and drive 

3 blocks. Turn north (left) onto 300 West and continue to 900 North 

Street. On the right is Warm Springs Park and a large, white Spanish 

mission-style building, a 1920s-era bath house (now closed). Park 

on the north side of the building and follow the paved walking path 

to the hot springs.

From the park, visitors can return to northbound I-15 and continue 

to Bountiful; or for a more leisurely drive, continue north on 300 
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Utah

The refuge education center provides 

opportunities for visitors and area 

school children to learn about bird 

migration.

106

West, which becomes Beck Street/U.S.-89. U.S.-89 becomes 500 West 

at Woods Cross and merges with northbound I-15 at West Bountiful.

C-2. Fort Buenaventura (2450 A Avenue, Ogden, UT) was the first 

permanent Euro-American settlement in the Great Basin: an 1845 

trading post established at the Weber River by mountain man Miles 

Goodyear and his Indian wife, Pomona. Goodyear built the post as a 

“halfway house” for trade with emigrants to Oregon and California, 

but sold out to the newly arrived Mormons in 1847. The stockade and 

cabins have been reconstructed based on historical and archeological 

evidence. The 88-acre county park also has a visitor center with 

artifact exhibits, a canoeing pond, group camping and day-use areas, 

concession service, and restrooms. Trappers’ Rendezvous are held on 

Easter and Labor Day weekends, and other events are offered during 

the summer. Open April– Nov.; hours vary. Nominal admission 

charged. Consult the park website at http://www.co.weber.ut.us/

parks/fortb/ or call (801) 399-8491 for more information.

Directions: Take I-15 Exit 342 and turn east (right) on UT-53/

Pennsylvania Avenue. The road turns east and becomes 24th Street. 

Continue east for 0 .9 mile, about 7 blocks, and turn right on A 

Avenue. The park entrance is ahead on the left.

Also of Interest: Bear River 

Migratory Bird Refuge (2155 

West Forest Street, Brigham 

City, UT). This 75,000-acre 

marshland refuge, where the 

Bear River empties into the 

Great Salt Lake, hosts millions 

of migrant and resident birds 

each year. Such areas were 

important resources for the 

native peoples of the Great 

Basin. The refuge, managed 

by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife 

Service, allows today’s visitors 

to experience the natural environment encountered by emigrants on 

the Salt Lake Cutoff. Facilities include a wildlife education center, 

a half-mile walking trail, and a 12-mile driving tour, which is open 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

1855 Pioneer cabin stands in a 

Brigham City park near the historic 

Box Elder Tabernacle.

107

dawn to dusk year-round, weather permitting. Refuge grounds are 

open year-round during daylight hours, weather permitting. The 

education center is open Mon.–Fri. 8 a.m.–5 p.m. and Sat. 10 a.m.– 4 

p.m. Closed Sundays and federal holidays. Free.

Directions: Leave northbound I-15 at Exit 363. Turn left at the 

end of the exit ramp. The refuge is on the left, 1 block west of the 

freeway.

Also of Interest: Brigham 

City, Utah. Mormon pioneers 

established Brigham City in 

1851, but such settlements 

competed with native people 

for water, grass, and firewood. 

By 1853, residents were living 

within an adobe fort, in the 

heart of today’s Brigham 

City, for protection from the 

Shoshone Indians. A stone 

monument at 300 North and 

200 West commemorates these 

events and an 1855 cabin stands nearby. The Salt Lake Cutoff lay west 

of the fort. Passing emigrants occasionally entered the settlement to 

purchase supplies.

Directions: From I-15, take Exit 363 and turn east (right) onto 

Forest Street; or from the bird refuge, turn east (right) and cross the 

freeway on Forest Street. The monument and a cabin are at Brigham 

Young Park, on the left between 300 West and 200 West. To visit 

historic Box Elder Tabernacle, which dates to the trails era, continue 

2 blocks east to Main Street and turn south (right) to 200 South 

Street.

From Brigham City, there are several options for continuing the tour 

into Idaho:

Return to northbound I-15. From Tremonton, near the Idaho 

border, take either I-15 or I-84 to I-86/I-84, which approximates the 

route of the Oregon Trail west across Idaho. Consult the Auto Tour 

Route Interpretive Guide Across Idaho for further directions.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Replica historic steam locomotives 

participate in the daily reinactment of 

the Golden Spike ceremony.

108

To take a more leisurely scenic route, visit the site of the Bear 

River Massacre, and join the Oregon Trail at Pocatello, take 

Brigham City’s Main Street south to 200 South Street and turn east 

(left). Merge onto eastbound U.S.-89/U.S.-91 and continue north on 

U.S.-91 through Logan and into Idaho. At the road junction north 

of Preston, stay on U.S.-91 as it jogs west and then north. A roadside 

turnout for the Bear River Massacre site is on the right at milepost 

13. Continue across the valley and up the hill to an interpretive 

overlook on the right at milepost 14. From there, drive north on 

U.S.-91 and merge onto I-15 to Pocatello. Turn west on I-86 toward 

American Falls and consult the Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide 

Across Idaho for further directions.

To stay on the Salt Lake Cutoff, return to northbound I-15 from 

Brigham City and follow directions below.

C-3. Golden Spike National 

Historic Site (northwest of 

Brigham City) figures in the 

very beginning of the westward 

emigration movement — and 

in its demise. The BidwellBartleson Party, picking a 

way around the north end of 

the Great Salt Lake, crossed 

the Promontory Mountains 

in 1841. Theirs were the first 

wheeled vehicles to enter this 

country. Almost 3 decades 

later, dignitaries gathered here 

at Promontory Summit to pound a “golden spike” ceremoniously 

marking completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Travelers 

understandably preferred a fast, safe, and comfortable train ride 

instead of a dangerous and exhausting 5-month wagon trek, so the 

joining of the rails ushered an end to covered wagon travel over the 

Oregon and California Trails. Golden Spike National Historic Site has 

2 operating steam engines and weekly reenactments of the Golden 

Spike Ceremony are performed during the summer. Also available are 

a visitor center, a 1.5-mile walking trail, a 14-mile driving tour, and 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

109

a 2-mile driving tour. Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except New Year’s, 

Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Admission is $5/vehicle in winter, $7/

vehicle in summer. Limited services, including fuel and dining, are 

available in nearby Corinne. The park has no food concessions.

Directions: Golden Spike National Historic Site is 32 miles west of 

I-15. Take I-15 Exit 365 and turn west (right) on UT-13 to UT-83. 

Follow signs to Golden Spike National Historic Site.

At Tremonton, merge onto westbound I-84. 

1) To most closely approximate the route of the Salt Lake 

Cutoff, leave I-84 at Exit 5 west of Snowville. Turn west (left) 

onto UT-30 and drive 2.9 miles. A brown T-post marker with an 

emigrant quote about this area is on the south side of the road, and 

trails are visible there. Continue west on UT-30. Where the highway 

forks, continue west (straight ahead) onto UT-42. At the Idaho 

border, the highway becomes ID-91. Continue to Malta, Idaho, and 

consult further directions printed beneath alternative 2, below.

2) To stay on the officially designated Auto Tour Route, 

continue westbound on I-84 and cross into Idaho. Take Exit 245, 

turn west (left) onto Sublette Road, and continue to Malta. 

At Malta, turn left onto ID-81 and then right onto ID-77. At Connor, 

where ID-77 turns north, continue straight ahead and follow the 

Elba-to-Almo Highway for 16 miles to Almo. The City of Rocks 

National Reserve visitor center is on the south side of town, and 

copies of the Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide Across Idaho are 

available there. From the visitor center, continue south to the next 

intersection; turn right and follow signs to City of Rocks National 

Preserve. The drive through the reserve is unpaved. 

After your visit, follow the unpaved road to Oakley and turn north 

on ID-27 to Burley. Join the auto tour for the Oregon Trail along 

westbound I-86 and consult the Interpretive Guide Across Idaho.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

110

AUTO TOUR SEGMENT D: Pony Express Trail 

National Back Country Byway 

The Pony Express Trail National Back Country Byway, designated 

and managed by the Bureau of Land Management, follows 123 miles 

of unpaved roads along the original Pony Express route in western 

Utah. The byway crosses remote sagebrush rangeland that is little 

changed since the 1860s, with interpretive stops at Pony Express 

station sites along the way. When dry, the roads are suitable for 

2-wheel-drive vehicles. High clearance is recommended.

This byway tour, which ends in Nevada, typically takes 10 to 12 

hours to complete. The route begins on I-15 at Salt Lake City, enters 

unpaved back roads west of Fairfield, and joins the pavement again at 

Ibapah, near the Utah/Nevada border. It then follows local roads to 

U.S.-93A (paved) in Nevada. From there, visitors can follow U.S.-93A 

north to West Wendover and join the auto tour for the California Trail 

along I-80 across Nevada, or turn south to Ely and continue along 

the Pony Express Trail on U.S.-50. No services are available along 

the road from Bluffdale, Utah, to West Wendover or Schellbourne, 

northeast of Ely, Nev. Start out with a full tank of gas and a fully 

inflated spare tire, and carry food and water. Do not enter unpaved 

roads when they are wet or when inclement weather threatens. Cell 

phone service is not available along much of this route, but the road 

receives moderate recreational traffic.

More information about the Pony Express Trail National Back 

Country Byway is available at: www.byways.org/explore/

byways/68993/ and from the Bureau of Land Management at www.

blm.gov/ut/st/en/fo/salt_lake/recreation/back_country_byways/

pony_express_trail.html. Telephone the Bureau’s Salt Lake Field 

Office at (801)977-4300 to inquire about road conditions along the 

byway.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

The location of Trader’s Rest Pony 

Express station is identified with a 

granite marker.

111

Begin this tour on southbound 

I-15 at Salt Lake City; or 

drive south on State Street, 

the original route of the 

Pony Express, to 12300 

South Street. On the State 

Street route, note the granite 

monument commemorating 

the Traders Rest Pony Express 

Station, located near the 

sidewalk on the right (west 

side), north of 7200 South 

Street. At 12300 South, turn right and immediately go to the left lane 

to enter southbound I-15.

Also of Interest: Ancient Lake Bonneville. While driving south, 

observe the narrow terraces along the mountainsides. These are 

ancient shorelines of Lake Bonneville, a huge freshwater sea that 

sprawled across western Utah between 32,000 and 12,000 years ago. 

At its largest, Lake Bonneville stretched 325 miles long and 135 miles 

wide, and was 1,000 feet deep at the future site of Salt Lake City. But 

around 15,000 years ago, as the water lapped at its highest terrace, 

the lake breached the north edge of its basin in southern Idaho and 

released a catastrophic flood into the Snake River Valley. The lake 

level plummeted some 375 feet within days, and then remained 

stable for more than a thousand years while waves gradually nipped 

a second major terrace into the mountainsides. As the climate began 

warming around 12,000 years ago, increased evaporation caused 

Lake Bonneville to shrink further. Dissolved mineral salts from the 

diminishing pool became concentrated in its lowest basin, forming 

the Great Salt Lake. Vast expanses of mucky lake-bottom clay dried 

up into featureless desert and the remaining shallow, saline playas 

evaporated and left behind a five-foot-thick salt pan known today as 

the Bonneville Salt Flats. Meanwhile, four rivers continue to deposit 

minerals in the Great Salt Lake, which has no outlet to flush them 

away and so grows slowly saltier. 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

A large stone monument is located 

near the site of the former Rockwell’s 

Station.

112

D-1. Rockwell’s Station 

(14600 S Street, Bluffdale, UT)

was a Pony Express contract 

mail station within a hotel and 

brewery operated by legendary 

Mormon frontiersman Orrin 

Porter Rockwell. Rockwell 

was widely believed to be a 

“Destroying Angel” and his 

fearsome reputation fascinated 

the public. Rockwell’s Station 

is commemorated by a stone 

monument located near the Utah State Prison.

Directions: Leave southbound I-15 at Exit 288 near Bluffdale. At 

the end of the exit, turn west (right) onto 14600 South Street. Turn 

right at the first paved street, Pony Express Street. The monument 

is among the grove of trees in the small park to the left. Park at the 

Bluffdale free park-and-ride lot just ahead on the right and walk 

over to the monument. Rockwell’s Station was about 160 yards 

west-southwest of the monument and south of 14600 South. 

From here, visitors can:

Make a short detour to Lehi to visit the John Hutchings Museum

of Natural History and the Eagle Mountain Pony Express Trail 

segment. Museum opens at 11 a.m. Consult entries D-2 and D-3.

OR,

Continue directly to Camp Floyd and the Pony Express National 

Back Country Byway. From the park-and-ride lot, return to 14600 

South and turn west (right). Continue west across the Union Pacific 

Railroad tracks and over the Jordan River. Beyond the river the 

road jogs north (right) and becomes South Redwood Road, and then 

turns west. Turn left onto Camp Williams Road/UT-68 at the traffic 

light. At 7.3 miles, past Camp Williams Military Reservation, turn 

west (right) onto UT-73. Skip to entry D-4.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Entrance to the Hutchings Museum.

113

Top off your vehicle’s fuel tank at either Lehi or Eagle Mountain if 

you plan to continue along the Pony Express National Backcountry 

Byway. No services are available for the next 190 miles.

D-2. John Hutchings 

Museum of Natural History 

(55 North Center Street, 

Lehi, UT) offers exhibits on 

the Pony Express, Mormon 

pioneers, and native peoples 

of the area. Featured natural 

history exhibits include bird 

eggs and minerals. Open Tue.–

Sat. 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Admission 

$4/adults, $3/children, or $12/

family. For more information go to www.hutchingsmuseum.org.

Directions: From Rockwell’s Station, return to southbound I-15. 

Take Exit 279 (Lehi Main Street) and turn west (right) at the end 

of the exit ramp onto Main Street. Drive 0.7 mile to Center Street 

and turn right. Museum parking is on the left side of the street. A 

dramatic and romanticized statue of Orrin Porter Rockwell, erected 

by his descendants, stands on city property north of the museum.

D-3. Eagle Mountain Pony Express Trail Segment (6100 North 

Pony Express Parkway) offers pedestrian, biking, and equestrian 

trails along the original alignment of the Pony Express Trail. Visitor 

enhancements and interpretive wayside exhibits are scheduled to be 

completed in 2010-2011.

Directions: From the John Hutchings Museum of Natural History, 

drive west on Main Street. At the roundabout at 500 West Street, 

take the second exit and continue west on Main Street/UT-73 for 

about 8 miles to the first traffic light, located at Ranches Parkway. 

Turn south (left) onto Ranches Parkway. In 1.3 miles turn west 

(right) at the 4-way stop onto Pony Express Parkway and continue 

for about 2 miles as the road curves left, then right, and left again 

and over Unity Pass. Trailhead parking and interpretive wayside 

exhibits are on the right at 6100 North. A second trailhead with 

more interpretive wayside exhibits is located a short distance 

farther south at 5600 North Pony Express Parkway.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Fairfield’s Stagecoach Inn.

114

Following your visit, continue southwest on Pony Express Parkway, 

which curves south and becomes Sweetwater Road. Follow the road 

into a residential area. At the roundabout, take the first exit (first 

right) onto Eagle Mountain Boulevard, which gradually turns north 

and intersects UT-73. Turn southwest (left) onto the highway.

D-4. Camp Floyd/Stagecoach 

Inn State Park (18035 W 

1540 N, Fairfield, UT) is 

the site of an 1858 Army post 

established by General Albert 

Sydney Johnston, whose 

command came to Utah to 

quash the rumored Mormon 

rebellion known as the Utah 

War. Nearby is Stagecoach 

Inn, an adobe hotel that served 

travelers such as Mark Twain and English adventurer Sir Richard 

Burton. Researchers disagree on the precise location of the Pony 

Express station: some believe it was at the inn, with stables located a 

few blocks east, and others believe it stood in what is now a pasture 

about a block northeast of the inn. Today, the park museums house 

artifacts and exhibits from this historic site. Visitors also can tour 

nearby Camp Floyd Cemetery (ask for directions at the park) and an 

1896 schoolhouse. Picnic grounds surround the historic structures; 

restrooms, an orientation sign for the Pony Express Trail National 

Back Country Byway, and markers commemorating Camp Floyd 

are nearby. The state park is open daily April 1–Oct. 14, 9 a.m.–5 

p.m.; closed Sundays from Oct. 15–Mar. 31 and on Thanksgiving, 

Christmas, and New Year’s Day. Nominal admission charged.

Directions: Drive west on UT-73 through Cedar Fort to Fairfield 

and follow signs to Camp Floyd/Stagecoach Inn State Park.

Return to UT-73 and reset your trip odometer. Turn left, drive west 

for 5 miles, and look for a brown Bureau of Land Management sign 

for the Old Pony Express Route. Turn left (southwest) there onto 

Faust Road. Watch for concrete Pony Express Trail markers along 

the left side of the road.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

A highway pullout provides access 

to the interpretive exhibits at Faust 

Station monument.

The National Back Country Byway 

is marked by a BLM “portal” sign at 

either end.

115

At odometer mile 11.1 is a turnout and stone monument for East 

Rush Valley Station. Today’s trail historians doubt this was ever a 

Pony Express station. Continue southwestward past Faust, a siding 

on the Union Pacific track, for another 8 miles to UT-36.

D-5. Faust’s Station (Faust, 

UT) was the first Pony Express 

home station, where riders ate 

and slept after completing their 

relay, west of Salt Lake City. 

The site, also called Rush Valley 

Station, is commemorated by 

a 1939 Civilian Conservation 

Corps monument, an 

interpretive wayside exhibit 

with a map of the entire trail, 

and a historical summary. The 

original location was about a 

mile south of the monument.

Directions: At the UT-36 junction, cross to the west side of the 

highway and enter the roadside turnout. The station was about a 

mile south of the monument.

D-6. The Pony Express 

National Back Country Byway 

Visitor Information Site marks 

the beginning of the byway. 

Signs provide orientation and 

travel advisories.

Directions: From the Faust’s 

Station turnout on UT-36, 

turn south. About a half-mile 

south is a Bureau of Land 

Management sign for the 

byway. Turn west (right) there 

onto a road with broken, patchy pavement. Ahead and to the left, 

a modern barn stands on the original site of Faust’s Station. About 

two miles ahead, turn right onto an unpaved road leading to a byway 

information site on a nearby hilltop. 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Simpson’s Springs Pony Express 

station.

116

Return to the Back Country Byway (not UT-36) and reset your trip 

odometer. Turn right to continue southwestward. About 5 miles 

ahead the patchy pavement ends altogether and the road bends to 

the right and climbs over Lookout Pass in the Onaqui Mountains. 

A turnout for a scenic overlook is located at odometer reading 6.7 

miles.

D-7. Point Lookout Station was damaged during an Indian attack 

in 1860, but reopened the following year. A stone monument 

commemorates the station. Across the road is an old homestead 

site where, in the mid-1860s, a brother of Orrin Porter Rockwell 

resided with his wife in a small cabin. Libby Rockwell, childless and 

lonely, kept pet dogs for company. The small enclosure marks and 

protects their graves. Several emigrants are thought to rest outside the 

enclosure, as well.

Directions: The monument is west of Lookout Pass at odometer 

reading 7.4 miles, on the right side of the road. The Rockwell 

farmstead and pet cemetery are on the left, across the road from the 

monument. 

Continue west to the crest of the ridge and pause to view the 

landscape to the west. This formidable country was called, grimly, 

“Paiute Hell.”

D-8. Simpson Springs Station 

is located at a reliable waterhole 

that was frequented by Indian 

desert-dwellers until the site 

was developed for commercial 

use in 1858. The stone building 

there is a replica built by Toole 

High School students in 1975. 

Interpretive wayside exhibits 

tell the story.

Directions: Continue 

northwestward from Point 

Lookout, keeping to the main road. At odometer mile 10.6, the road 

splits. Take the left fork to the southwest. Some 3.4 miles beyond 

the split, at odometer mile 14.0, another road intersects the byway. 
Gateway exhibits at Fish Springs 

NWR help visitors to learn about the 

significance of the springs.

Disregard it and continue straight (southwest) on the main road. In 

another two miles the road rounds a knob and turns west, and at 

odometer mile 20.4 the road forks again: bear left. The road makes a 

broad curve to the south. Simpson Springs Station is on the right at 

odometer reading 23.8 miles.

Upon leaving Simpson Springs, reset your trip odometer and 

continue southwestward along the byway. Beyond the station on 

the left is a 14-site public campground with picnic tables and toilets. 

At odometer mile 8.2 is a stone monument for Riverbed Station. 

However, the site was occupied by a commercial stage station built 

in 1861 — it never was a Pony Express property. Trail lore holds 

that several stage station employees abruptly quit after frightening 

encounters with entities they described as “desert fairies.” 

Dugway Station, about eight miles beyond the Riverbed monument, 

is at a distance from the modern road and is not a stop in this guide. 

Now the road passes between the Dugway Range to the north and 

the Thomas Range to the south and becomes steep and winding. At 

odometer mile 32.6, another stone monument commemorates Black 

Rock Station. Researchers have no information confirming this as a 

Pony Express station.

About 4 miles beyond the Black Rock Station monument is a U.S. 

Fish & Wildlife Service sign for Fish Springs National Wildlife 

Refuge, a lush wetland in thirsty country. Follow the main road as it 

crosses the south end of the refuge and swings north.

D-9. Fish Springs Station was 

(and is) a remote outpost at a 

large oasis in the West Desert. 

The 10,000-acre marsh has 

attracted people and wildlife 

for more than 10,000 years. 

The first way-station was 

built there in the 1850s to 

accommodate commercial 

mail, freight, and passenger 

wagons traveling between 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Interpretive exhibits provide 

information about the pony express 

and the experiences of the riders and 

station keepers.

118

Salt Lake City and Sacramento. It later became a stop on the Central 

Overland Stage route and briefly served as a Pony Express home 

station. Today the whole area is managed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife 

Service as the Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge. The original 

trail-era buildings are gone, but a glass scatter and a few foundation 

stones reveal the location of the original station, and the area looks 

much the same as it did when the Pony passed through.

Directions: At odometer mile 42.4, turn right onto the entrance 

road to the Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge headquarters. 

Here at the entrance station are refuge brochures and a pay phone. 

Nearby, the headquarters building has drinking water and a public 

restroom. Continue north on the refuge road to a grove of trees 

about a half-mile past headquarters. A kiosk there provides some 

informational displays. Walk across the road and look for a silvercolored Pony Express marker post, which shows the site location 

about 20 feet west of the road. Please do not collect mementos or 

otherwise disturb the site.

Return to the Back Country Byway, reset your trip odometer, 

and turn west (right). At odometer mile 0.8, a stone monument 

commemorates Fish Springs Pony Express Station. The station site is 

visible in the distance from the monument. Continue along the main 

road as it leaves the refuge and bends around the north end of the 

Fish Springs Range.

D-10. Boyd’s Station (also 

called Butte Station) boasts 

the best-preserved Pony 

Express ruins in Utah. Owner 

and station-keeper William 

“Bid” Boyd enjoyed his solitude 

so much that he continued to 

reside here until the early 1900s. 

The stabilized ruins of a stone 

building remain, and wayside 

exhibits tell the story.

Directions: The road forks 

13.9 miles beyond the Fish 

Springs National Wildlife 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

The Round, or Canyon Station, also 

had gun ports allowing the station 

keepers some degree of defense. 

119

Refuge headquarters. Bear right. Boyd Station ruins are on the right 

just beyond the fork, at odometer reading 14.0 miles.

From the Boyd Station turnout, return to the right fork of the road 

and continue along the byway for about 9 miles to Callao (no 

services). The road makes several jogs through the community. 

Beyond the school at odometer mile 23.7, the road reaches an 

intersection. Turn northwest (right), staying on the main road. A 

stone monument commemorating Willow Springs Station stands at 

a ranch entrance at odometer reading 24.0 miles. Adjacent land is 

private property; please do not trespass.

At the monument, the road curves sharply to the left. At odometer 

mile 24.6, the road forks: bear right, following the signs northwest 

toward Gold Hill and Ibapah. At odometer mile 28.7, a road enters 

from the left and a large handmade mailbox sits on a stone pedestal 

at the intersection. Turn west (left) onto that road. About a mile 

ahead, follow the road as it curves to the right, as the left fork is 

a ranch entrance. About 8 miles ahead is Overland Canyon, an 

ominous, narrow defile where an Overland Stage employee and 

four soldiers died in an Indian attack in July 1863. 

D-11. Canyon Station, 

consisting of a simple dugout 

and corral, was built at the 

mouth (northwest end) of 

Overland Canyon in 1861 to 

serve the Pony Express and 

Central Overland stage. Indian 

fighters attacked that station 

in July 1863, destroying the 

facilities and killing a stage 

company employee and 

four soldiers who had been 

patrolling the road. A stone 

monument commemorates this site, also known as Burnt Station. 

After that attack, the stage company rebuilt at the head (southeast 

end) of the canyon, this time including a circular stone fortification 

with gun ports for defense. Today this later site, also called Round 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

Exhibits near the site of the Deep 

Creek station.

120

Station, includes the stabilized ruins of the defensive structure and 

the coral; the station itself is gone. An interpretive wayside exhibit 

tells the story.

Directions: At odometer mile 37.0, turn left onto an entrance road 

to the historic Round Station site. After your visit, continue through 

the canyon. At odometer mile 40.7 look across the ravine to the 

west to see the stone monument that commemorates Canyon/Burnt 

Station and the men who died there. No station remains are visible.

Continue westbound through the canyon. At odometer reading 

41.7 miles, the road forks: bear left, staying on the main road. At 

odometer mile 43.1 is a triangle intersection. Bear left, following 

the directional sign for the Pony Express Trail. At mile 45.1, observe 

the two-track road on the flat to the left: it is probably the original 

Central Overland road.

At odometer reading 49.3 miles, the dirt road intersects a paved 

road and the Pony Express Back Country Byway ends. Here visitors 

have a choice:

For a down-and-back 

side-trip into Ibapah, turn 

left. On the right at odometer 

mile 52.3 is a turnout with 

historical information about 

the Goshute Indians, early 

settlers of Ibapah, Deep Creek 

Pony Express Station, and the 

Lincoln Highway. Ahead at 

Ibapah, a community trading 

post sells snack foods, but no 

other services are available. 

To view a monument commemorating Howard Egan’s Deep 

Creek Station, continue through Ibapah. At the south edge of the 

community where the paved road angles to the southwest, continue 

straight (south) onto a gravel road. The gravel road jogs right, left, 

and right. The monument is on private land on the left side of the 

road at about odometer reading 53.0. Please do not trespass. After 
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

121

your visit, turn north and retrace your drive along the paved road 

and continue 30 miles to U.S.-93A. Consult further directions below.

OR,

To continue directly to Nevada, turn north (right) and drive 30 

miles to U.S.-93A. Turn left (south) to continue the auto tour along 

the Pony Express National Historic Trail to Ely, Nev.; or turn right 

(north) to West Wendover, Nev. Services are available in both towns. 

At West Wendover, enter westbound I-80 to continue the auto tour 

for the California National Historic Trail. Consult the Auto Tour 

Route Interpretive Guide Across Nevada for further directions to the 

Pony Express and California National Historic Trails.

This ends the Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide for Utah.
Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide

Utah

122

CREDITS:

Research & Story Text: Lee Kreutzer, Cultural Resources 

Specialist

Layout/Design, Photography, Editing & Graphics: Chuck 

Milliken, Lead Interpretive Specialist

Graphic Images: All photo images used throughout this 

document are from the National Trails System Office except for 

the following: cover art & pages 19, & 20, - paintings by William 

Henry Jackson, courtesy of Scotts Bluff NM; pages 25, 26, 33, 35, 

46, & 94 - the Library of Congress; pages 9, 11, 12, 15, 16, & 65 - Utah 

State Historical Society; inside the front cover - Joe Nardone, 

Pony Express History Association; page 24, Cory Maylett (via the 

Wikipedia website).

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

National Park Service

National Trails System Office

324 South State Street

Suite 200

Salt Lake City, UT 84111

Email:

ntsl_interpretation@nps.gov

Mormon Pioneer NHT

www.nps.gov/mopi

California NHT

www.nps.gov/cali

Pony Express NHT

www.nps.gov/poex

Utah Tourism

www.utah.gov/visiting/travel.

html

National Pony Express 

Association (NPEA)

www.xphomestation.com

Oregon-California Trails 

Association (OCTA)

www.octa-trails.org
National Trails System

National Park Service

U.S. Department of the Interior

For Free Distribution