Salt Lake Saga

The riders returned from Fort Hall, overtaking the main group including Joe B in what is today northern Utah, bringing second-hand information from trappers at the fort who had only heard about the country that lay in front of them.  The advice was, don't go too far south before turning west toward California because there was an immense desert with no water and no feed for livestock.  They were further warned not to turn too far north because they would get lost in a maze of streams and canyons where they would wander, confused and starving.  But if they would head west at the right place, they would eventually strike the Mary's River [later named the Humboldt] which would they could follow to the heart of the Great Basin between the mountain ranges and eventually to the rivers flowing west.  As the party continued down the Bear River looking down for the place to turn west toward the Mary's River, they noticed that the stream was growing increasingly salty.

The far side of the Salt Lake riding on a mirage of water

They toiled in the August temperatures; the oxen and horses could not eat the grass which was covered in salt.  The heat waves shimmered, turning clumps of bushes into well-watered groves of trees.  Confused, the company followed mirages across the mud flats north of the Great Salt Lake.

John Bidwell recalled, '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.'  

Try driving a wagon through this stuff

They looped around, crossed their own tracks, struggling through sagebrush so dense that it tipped some of the lighter wagons over.  In their blundering along the north end of the lake, they at last found a source of good water and sent out scouts to try and find the Mary's River.  They sat in camp for over a week waiting for them to return, which they did with the news that the river was about five days march ahead.  They toiled onward with their wagons, until near the present western border, one of the more forceful characters in the company had had enough.  Ben Kelsey unyoked his oxen, emptied his wagon and loaded what belongings he could on their backs.  On their horses he put his 18-year-old wife Nancy and their toddler daughter.  The wagon would stay where it was and they would pack to California driving their oxen.  Within a few days, the rest of the party had copied their example.

With this, they were no longer a wagon train, but a starving group of  increasingly fractious stragglers with the dream of California in their minds.  If it could be anywhere along the line of our pursuit of our ancestor, this was the place where my brothers and I would be able to see exactly where he had gone and what he had faced.  The road was unpaved and the dust billowed up behind the car as we rumbled over the gravel toward the town of Lucin Utah.  The thermometer in the car showed that the outside temperature was topping 90 degrees.  It was a good day to be together--three brothers whose relative had done challenging things--in an air-conditioned car.

The road

So we were able to accomplish one of our goals--to walk in Joe B's footsteps, in the shadow of one of the landmarks that guided Joe B and the other emigrants who came this way, Pilot Peak.

 And along the way, quite by chance, in a tiny town that vanished into the landscape, we came upon another relic of more recent times--an establishment that referenced the overland trail, on our little bit of it, though so far off the beaten track of the interstate that it never had a chance.

Brother John, is he welcoming us, or warning us off?