Salt River

“ To the northwest, in the well-irrigated valley of Salt River, is Phœnix, the capital of Arizona, with fifteen thousand population, the irrigation systems having produced great fertility in the adjacent region. The Salt River is a tributary of the Gila, the latter flowing out westward to the Colorado. In these Arizona valleys have been disclosed the remains of several prehistoric cities, chiefly located on a broad and sloping plain beginning at the confluence of the Salt with the Gila, and stretching down to the Mexican boundary. ”

“ On the ensuing day, the voyagers reached the mouth of Salt river, a considerable stream, which, at high water, is navigable for at least two hundred miles. From the Illinois to this river, the western shore is either immediately bordered by beautiful cedar-cliffs, or the ridges of these cliffs may be seen at a distance. On the east the land is low, and the soil rich. ”

“ The garden of Arizona, so far as agricultural facilities are, concerned, is on Salt River, after it emerges from the mountains and where our people are locating, at Mesa City and Jonesville. The country along Salt River is being occupied by people from various parts of the world, who are not of us These two settlements of our people are doing very well, so I understand and there are facilities for many more in the same region. The climate is warm; the summer is long, scarcely any winter at all, and scarcely any frosts. ”

“ At Parowan, two hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, we encountered a scene that I shall never forget. I remember distinctly, the "Exodus," as it was called, from Nauvoo, when sixteen thousand souls left their homes and commenced that marvelous journey of fourteen hundred miles to the unknown valley of the Salt Lake. But that exodus was like a small rivulet by the side of a mighty river when compared with the seventy-five thousand men, women, and children that we now met in one continuous line of travel.
Horses, oxen, and cows were harnessed or yoked to wagons and carts ”

“ The scenery of the upper Platte is constantly changing, the river presenting more the appearance of a genuine mountain stream. Its banks are here and there heavily fringed with timber, rich grass grows luxuriantly in the flat bottoms, and the dark bluffs which bound them form a beautiful background, interspersed occasionally by snow-capped peaks. ”

“ This is, perhaps, the most rugged, desert, and dreary country, between the Western borders of the United States, and the shores of the Pacific. It is nothing else, than a wild, rocky, barren wilderness, of wrecked and ruined Nature; a vast field of volcanic desolation. Beyond the Mountains, which rise on the South of this point, is the great Salt Lake. Eighty-eight miles below the crossing of Snake River, we crossed two small branches of hot water. ”

“ All the first day we ride through brisk Mormon villages, prosperous in their waving cornfields and their heavy trade with the mines. At a distance is the Great Salt Lake,—properly an inland sea, like the Caspian and Sea of Aral,—having a large tributary, the Bear River, and no outlet. ”

“ In Nevada, at the sink of the Carson River, is an area of five square miles which was once the bed of a salt lake. The famous Great Salt Lake, between the Wahsatch Mountains and the Nevadas in America, is the remains of a large inland sea which once covered the district, and should the climate become drier than it is now, the shrinkage, which went on for ages, will be resumed, and a huge salt deposit will be formed. ”

“ They killed Salt River improvements, and Salt River has killed them. Their ghosts went up the river on a ghostly steamboat.”
It is possible that this comment, which was widely repeated and traveled far, was the origin of the term “Going up Salt River,” as applied to defeated political candidates.— [The dictionaries give this phrase as probably traceable to a small, difficult stream in Kentucky; but it seems more reasonable to believe that it originated in Quarles's witty comment.] ”

“ Salt Lake City—Canada—Vancouver—Hawaii—Fiji—Australia—New Zealand—Tasmania—Summer at Home.
The fall of 1908 saw me off on a tour which finally took me round the world. Space will only permit of its itinerary and a few of my impressions and experiences. From Amarillo I trained north to Salt Lake City, passing through the wonderful gorge of the Arkansas River and the cañon of the Grand; scenery extremely wild and impressive. At Salt Lake found a large, busy, up-to-date city. Visited the tabernacle, and heard the great organ, the largest in the world ”

“ Communication between one lake and the other, and between the cities, and the other towns round about, is by means of canoes, with no need of going by land. The large salt lake rises and falls in its tides like the sea; its waters, whenever it rises, falling into the fresh-water lake as rapidly as though it were a great river; and when it ebbs, the fresh water then runs into the salt lake.
This great city of Temixtitan is built on the salt lake, and from the mainland to the city is a distance of two leagues, from any side from which you enter. ”

“ A few miles westward, beyond Grand Island, is Wood River, a noted landmark and camping-place for those who followed the tide of immigration to Utah, and to the gold fields of California, in 1849. It was always a pleasant spot, and is now a station on the Union Pacific Railway. As the tourist crosses the bridge over the stream in a palace car, he may look down from his window, and meditate on the brilliancy of the present, and the misty past, with all its adventures and suffering. The march of civilization has made wonderful changes in fifty years. ”

“ This lake was, in former times, of much greater extent than at present, covering a large proportion of the Great Basin, as is shown by the pebbly lines marking its former beach, more than seven hundred feet above its present level, and which stretch for hundreds of miles unbroken along the bases of the mountains. Mr. Clarence King, in his explorations during the year 1869, discovered and traced the former outlet of this vast inland sea, which was through the Snake, or Shoshone River, to the Pacific Ocean. Few places can vie with Salt Lake City in natural beauty of location. ”

“ For seventy-five miles or more out of Salt Lake we had to pass through the Mormon settlements and we had great difficulty in keeping the cattle out of the fields and gardens. We crossed Bear River just above the point where it empties into Salt Lake and, after crossing a range of mountains, found Hedgepeth's cut-off, a road I had traveled in 1854. A short distance farther on, and from the top of a high divide, I could see Snake River valley near Fort Hall, my old trail in 1849. ”

“ To Jim Bridger, the famous mountaineer and scout, must be accorded the honour of having been the first white man to look upon its brackish waters. He discovered it in the winter of 1824-25, accidentally, in deciding a bet. The story of this visit to the Great Salt Lake comes down to us by the most reliable testimony. It appears that a party of trappers, under the command of William H. Ashley, one day found themselves on Bear River, in what is known as Willow Valley, and while lying in camp a discussion arose in relation to the probable course of the river. ”

“ The water here was too salt to quench thirst; our animals would scarcely taste it, yet we had no other.” The green fresh-looking grass was stiffened with salt. Mr Belden says: “After separating from the missionaries we followed Bear River down nearly to where it enters Salt Lake, about where Corinne is now. We had some knowledge of the lake from some of the trappers who had been there. We turned off more to the west and went round the northerly end of Salt Lake. There we found a great difficulty in getting water for several days, all the water near the lake being very brackish. ”

“ Fresh water and green turf are unknown through an extent of one hundred miles, while a coating of solid salt incrusts the earth, upon which the mules pass as upon ice. This lake never freezes. The river Utah, or the Jordan as it is called by the Mormons, is a small river of fresh water which unites Lake Utah to the Great Salt Lake. ”

“ Crossing the Rocky Mountains, the party entered the fertile and picturesque valley of the Bear or Utah River, the chief tributary of the Great Salt Lake, first alluded to by Baron La Hontan in 1689, but never before visited by any white man except wandering trappers, whose eyes had been blind to the wonderful nature of the phenomenon now to be examined. ”

“ They found themselves encamped ten miles from the mouth of the river. Thence next day, Sunday, they took a north-west course, crossing their track of the Thursday previous; on the 23d they were in full view of Salt Lake. Men and animals were almost dying of thirst, and “in our trouble,” says Bidwell, “we turned directly north toward some high mountains, and in the afternoon of the next day found springs of good water and plenty of grass.” ”

“ The river is very shallow, and for that reason was called by the Otoes, whose country embraced the region at its mouth, the Ne-bras-ka, and re-christened the Platte by the French trappers, a term synonymous to that given by the Indians.
The Platte River, nearly three-quarters of a century ago, was called
by Washington Irving,
The most magnificent and most useless of streams. Abstraction
made of its defects, nothing can be more pleasing than the
perspective which it presents to the eye. ”

“ Salt Lake cannot be called a very beautiful town, neither is there anything ugly or repulsive about it. From the slopes of the Wahsatch foothills, or old lake benches, toward Fort Douglas it is seen to occupy the sloping gravelly delta of City Creek, a fine, hearty stream that comes pouring from the snows of the mountains through a majestic glacial canyon; and it is just where this stream comes forth into the light on the edge of the valley of the Jordan that the Mormons have built their new Jerusalem. ”

“ As we{157} approach the “Great Dead Sea” of America we see that gathering salt is the chief industry, and we pass many basins or dams where hundreds of tons of this useful commodity are procured through the process of evaporation. Arriving at our destination we find Saltair is a magnificent mammoth pavilion built on the waters of Great Salt Lake, 4000 feet from shore. A track resting upon piles connects the pavilion with the mainland, and over this our train is run. ”

“ CHAPTER X. SCENERY ON THE TRAIL. Scenery and Historical Localities on the Route of the Old Trail—Loup Fork—De Smet's Account of a Waterspout—Wood River—Brady's Island—Ash Hollow—Johnson's Creek— Scott's Bluff—Independence Rock and its Legend—Chimney Rock— Crazy Woman's Creek—Laramie Plains—Legends and Traditions about the Great Salt Lake—Early Surveys. CHAPTER XI. INDIAN TRIBES ON THE TRAIL. The Indian Tribes of the Salt Lake Trail—The Otoes—I-e-tan—Blue-Eyes shot by I-e-tan— The Pawnees—Their Tribal Mark—Legends and Traditions—Human Sacrifices—Folk-lore. ”

“ They held a meeting at which they dedicated the land with religious ceremonies, and at once set to work to lay off fields and start plowing and planting. Some of them visited the lake, which they called the Great Salt Lake, and bathed in its buoyant waters. Day by day more of the pioneers arrived, and by the end of August they had chosen the site of their great temple, built log cabins and adobe huts, and christened the place the "City of the Great Salt Lake." ”

“ The soil is black and loamy, the foothills green and studded with blooming farms and homesteads, the lowlands lush with long grass and willow thickets. Westward, the scene might be a replica of, say, the coast of North Carolina, for now the Great Salt Lake is in full view, and the mist which hides the mountainous islands and western shore, leaves its expanse as limitless as that of the open ocean, whence no salter breeze could blow than this morning air. ”

“ When the north wind blows, bathing in Salt Lake is a glorious baptism, for then it is all wildly awake with waves, blooming like a prairie in snowy crystal foam. Plunging confidently into the midst of the grand uproar you are hugged and welcomed, and swim without effort, rocking and heaving up and down, in delightful rhythm, while the winds sing in chorus and the cool, fragrant brine searches every fiber of your body ”

“ Your Great Father who lives across the Great Salt Lake is your guardian and protector, and he only. He has relinquished his claim to this large and beautiful island, on which we are assembled, in order that you may have a home of your own quite separate from his white children. The soil is good, and the waters which surround the shores of this island are abundantly supplied with the finest fish. ”

“ Turning south from this point and quitting the travelled road Frémont visited the Great Salt Lake, of which he says: “Hitherto this lake had been seen only by trappers, who were wandering through the country in search of new beaver streams, caring very little for geography; its lands had never been visited, and none were to be found who had 220 entirely made the circuit of its shores, and no instrumental observations or geographical survey of any description had ever been made anywhere in the neighboring region. ”

“ There is a reckless joy, too, in the descent on a wet and stormy afternoon, when, after facing rain and wind for hours on the ridges, we return home drenched and weather-beaten, with the exhilaration that arises in the mind which has nothing to hope or to fear. Indeed, the foul day has its proper place, no less than the fair day, in the economy of the hills, when the rain-curtain is drawn visibly across the valley, and scores of white runnels are coursing down the slopes, and the voice of the swollen [Pg 81] river sounds hoarser every hour, while it rises as only a mountain river can rise. ”