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Exploring the West After 1847

Vivian Linford Talbot and Fred R. Gowans

After 1847, most of the exploration of the Great Basin was carried out by U.S. military personnel, especially members of the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. They located and surveyed geographical features, studied the native flora and fauna, and made ethnological observations. The resulting maps, road locations, and other data were invaluable to local Latter-day Saints who could not have afforded such studies. Moreover, reports generated by the surveyors were of interest to an eastern public eager to learn more about the American West. These explorers became a link between earlier exploration by Indians and fur trappers on the one hand, and later civilian scientists on the other.

Army Corps member Howard Stansbury received orders in early spring of 1849 to make a reconnaissance of the Platte River Trail, proceeding west across the Wasatch Mountains to Salt Lake City. Stansbury's assignments included a survey of the Great Salt Lake Valley, a study of the resident Indian tribes and the Mormons, the location of a supply route from the valley north to the Oregon-California emigrant trail, and the study of the natural resources in the area. Stansbury was the first explorer known to circumnavigate the Great Salt Lake by land; his expedition completed surveys of the Jordan River and Utah Lake. On his return East in the fall of 1850, Stansbury located a new route crossing present-day Wyoming, which would later be utilized by the Overland Stage, the Pony Express, and the Union Pacific Railroad.

John Gunnison was second in command of the Stansbury expedition and supervised much of the surveying in Salt Lake Valley. He assisted Stansbury in preparing an excellent report with accompanying maps He also wrote a well-circulated book that presented an objective view of the Mormons based on his year's stay in the valley. Commissioned to lead the survey of a possible transcontinental railroad route along the 38th parallel, Gunnison and seven of his men were killed by Pahvant Indians on the Sevier River in central Utah in 1853.

Edward Beckwith completed Gunnison's railroad survey in 1853 and 1854 and then took his party north to winter in the Salt Lake Valley. He then explored the Stansbury trails between Salt Lake Valley and Fort Bridger and proceeded west across Nevada into California along the 41st parallel. The first transcontinental railroad followed much of this route. Lt. Colossians Edward J. Steptoe, after completing a government investigation of Gunnison's death in 1854 and 1855, supervised some of the improvements of the Mormon Corridor road between Cedar City and the headwaters of the Santa Clara River.

Corpsman James H. Simpson, as chief topographical engineer for Genesis Albert Sidney Johnston's Army of Utah, established a wagon road connecting Camp Floyd in Cedar Valley, Utah, with the supply depot at Fort Bridger in 1858. Two years later he began locating a similar route to Denver. During the interim period he plotted two wagon roads to California leading west from Camp Floyd but south of the existing Humboldt River route. These routes were later used by the Pony Express and Overland Stage.