Captain Stansbury’s report begins at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on the thirty-first day of May, 1849. His party consisted of eighteen men, five wagons, and forty-six horses and mules. One of his men, Lieutenant Gunnison, was carried in a large spring wagon, too ill to mount a horse. Stansbury’s men had spent the best part of their lives among the wilds of the Rocky Mountains. The plan was to follow the emigrant trail, already as broad and well-beaten as any turnpike of his time. Before reaching the trail, the men descended a steep and somewhat dangerous road to the valley of a small and beautiful stream fringed by black walnut, white-oak, and hickory trees. They quickly passed a traveling train consisting of twenty-five yoke of oxen headed for the gold fields of California. Mr. Allen’s train had been detained in the same spot for several days due to the ravages of cholera.

The general course was northwest, over an expansive, rolling prairie. Grass and water were abundant with fine, clear water springs. Some areas had rich deposits of coal. On their third afternoon on the trail they met a small band of Sauk Indians requesting remuneration for passing through their country. They were offered biscuits and tobacco which satisfied the natives.

Two days later, they entered the emigration road from Kansas and found the country entirely destitute of trees–it was a bald, naked prairie with sweeping undulations of the surface, reminding Stansbury of the ocean. Prairie hens were seen frequently.

The men encountered returning emigrants who had lost heart, sold all they had, and were slowly and sadly returning to their homes.

On the seventh of June, a French trader from Fort Laramie with a large train of wagons laden with buffalo robes visited camp. Mr. Brulet had been on the road for forty days and claimed to have met no less than four thousand wagons, averaging four persons per wagon. There was a lot of two-way traffic along the trail.

The first week of June, the expedition met a single wagon returning to St. Louis. The travelers had become discouraged by what they saw on the trail: wagons could be bought for ten to fifteen dollars a piece and provisions for almost nothing. Standbury writes: So much for arduous enterprises rashly undertaken, and prosecuted without previous knowledge or suitable preparation. The expedition traveled anywhere from ten to twenty-five miles each day, passing trees and stumps carved with many names of hundreds of emigrants who had gone before them.

On the tenth, the men awoke to find three of their very best horses had been stolen during the night. The animals had been picketed in the center of the camp, within a few feet of where the men slept. In response to the loss, men were sent out to find the thieves, ammunition chests were opened, additional cartridges served out, arms examined and reloaded, and every preparation was made to guard against a repetition of the outrage. The guide was an experienced hunter and mountaineer, but he returned to camp without the horses. Once the Indians crossed the Blue, and then recrossed, all trace of the perpetrators was lost. That evening, the men caught several large catfish and soft-shelled turtles. Towards the rear of the camp, they found strawberries. The men gathered them by the handfuls.

On the twenty-seventh, the men killed their first buffalo. Captain Stansbury writes: It is a well-attested fact, that when the immigration first commenced, traveling trains were frequently detained for hours by immense herds crossing the track, and in such numbers that it was impossible to drive through them. The French voyageurs backtracked several miles and passed behind the bluffs before they found their targets. The meat was divided and the camp became active with the roasting, boiling, and the making of a sausage dish the French called boudin. The following day, the hunters returned with three fat cows.

On the morning of the fourth of July, a salute was fired in remembrance of the national holiday. That evening, the men were issued a measure of grog. They had plenty of buffalo-meat, a day’s rest, and were quite happy.

The next day they crossed the river to explore signs they had seen of an Indian camp. They found five lodges with the decomposed bodies of nine Sioux, wrapped in buffalo skin, with their saddles, spears, camp kettles, and all their accouterments piled up around them. One of the bodies, a young girl of sixteen or eighteen years, was richly dressed in fine scarlet cloth and wrapped in superb buffalo robes. She wore new moccasins, elaborately ornamented with porcupine quills. Captain Stansbury wrote: I subsequently learned that they had all died of cholera. The young girl had been enclosed in the lodge while alive and abandoned to her fate.

On July 7th, the camp caught their first sight of Chimney Rock. It was interesting to consider this monument from the geologist’s perspective. Paraphrased: This singular conformation has been, undoubtedly, at one time a portion of the main chain of bluffs bounding the valley of the Platte and had been separated by the action of water…The cone, has, I think, been formed by the disintegration of the softer portion of the bluff arranging itself at its natural angle in a conical form, while the remainder of the earth has been carried away…The Chimney being composed of more tenacious materials has been left standing in a vertical position….worn into its present circular form by the gradual action of the elements.

By the middle of the month, the camp arrived at Ft. Laramie. They rested, shod their animals, repaired the wagons, and made the necessary arrangements for the rest of the journey. The fort had been established by the American Fur Company in the 1830’s and had recently been sold to the United States Government. The troops were preparing for its extension and the erection of additional quarters. The men left the fort with supplies and fifteen additional mules.

A few days after leaving the fort, the men passed fragments of a dozen wagons broken up and buried by their owners. Nearby, piled up in one heap, they found six to eight hundred pounds of bacon thrown on the trail. There were also boxes, bonnets, trunks, wagon wheels, whole wagon bodies, cooking utensils, and almost every article of household furniture. In the evening, Captain Duncan, from Fort Laramie, rode into camp in hot pursuit of four deserters.

Three days later, the trail was once again strewn with fragments of broken and burnt wagons. Trunks and immense quantities of white beans had been tossed aside by the sackful. At every step were stoves, gridirons, and carpenter’s tools of every kind.

On July 24th, the road passed over rolling country, spurs of the Black HIlls. They crossed dry beds of several small streams, skirted with willow, box-elder, wild-cherry bushes, and some large cottonwoods. The mules had water only as it was impossible to procure a blade of grass all day. The trek continued another four miles where a scanty supply of grass was found. That day their barometer, which determines altitude and forecasted weather, broke.

They found a large quantity of trail trash on the twenty-fifth and two days later they passed eleven broken wagons, the spokes of the wheels taken to make pack saddles and the rest burned or otherwise destroyed. The road was strewn with articles thrown away along with the carcasses of eight oxen lying in one heap by the roadside. In the course of one day, the relics of seventeen wagons and the carcasses of twenty-seven oxen had been seen.

On July 28th, they met nature’s fury in the form of a strong wind from the southwest. It tore up the sand and gravel, which dashed into the faces of the men making it impossible to look up as their eyes immediately became filled with sand. The men fastened kerchiefs over their faces and pushed forward. Respiration was difficult, the throats and faces became dry, lips clammy and parched, and the eyes inflamed from drifting dust.

On the last day of July, the expedition passed Independence Rock, a large, rounded mass of granite, covered with the names of passing emigrants. A short distance beyond was a range of granite hills stretching entirely across the valley. The Sweetwater River passed in a narrow gorge called Devil’s Gate, leaving behind a lovely, cool, and refreshing retreat. Beyond the canyon, a dozen burnt wagons and nineteen dead oxen were found.

Captain Duncan came into camp on the third of August. He had been on the trail of deserters from Fort Laramie and had followed them to within fifty miles of Fort Bridger. He found them sleeping, disarmed them, secured their horses, and was returning to the fort with the culprits.

On the eleventh, they reached Fort Bridger, an Indian trading post, situated on the stream of Black’s Fork. They met Major James Bridger, one of the oldest mountain men in the entire region. Bridger joined the expedition party as they followed the Mormon Trail leading to the southern part of the Salt Lake Valley. Several miles later, they took a cut-off and camped along Bear River. Here, they found an abundance of speckled trout and an ox in such good condition that he was shot for food. The portions of the meat the men felt they could not carry were delivered to a small encampment of grateful Shoshonee Indians.

The end of August brought very cold nights and provisions were nearly exhausted. Before entering Cache Valley, they saw the smoke of numerous Indian fires, telling all that strangers were in the territory.

Half-way between the canyon of Ogden’s Creek (also known as Ogden’s Hole) and the north end of the valley, they found a crossing into the Salt Lake Valley. They explored it on foot and determined it would require a good deal of grading to allow wagons to go through. The brush would need to be cut away, but it offered hopes of a quicker entry into the area. They returned to camp and continued with their wagons, descending the pass through dense thickets of small oak trees where they caught their first glimpse of the shimmering lake. It was a distant sight, but all were glad to have reached the point where their work would begin in earnest.

Days later, emerging from this pass, they entered the valley and struck the road to the Mormon settlements. When they found a shallow space with good footing, they crossed the Bear River. They came to a settlement of many log buildings, picketed, stockaded and surrounded by out-buildings and cattle yards. They requested food and lodging for the night but were told they could not be accommodated. Could they buy some eggs? No. A cup of milk? No. They remounted and made camp under some willow trees. Before bedding down they visited a neighboring plantation where they learned the surly proprietor had been a quartermaster in Colonel Cook’s Mormon Battalion in California. He left that state with some unsettled public accounts and dreaded a visit from the civil officers of the United States Army. The following day, they reached Salt Lake City.

Word was the Mormon community would never permit any survey of their country. When the Mormons entered the valley in July of 1847, it was foreign territory. That all changed with the signing of the Treaty of HIdalgo Gudalupe in February, 1848 which ceded to the United States Upper California and nearly all the present American Southwest. Mormons had left Nauvoo, Illinois looking for a place outside of the United States where they would be free from molestation. They thought they had found the place, but seven months later, they were back in the States again.

Captain Stansbury called on Brigham Young and explained the views of the government and the reasons for the exploration and survey. President Young confessed he had been surprised and disturbed when he heard the government was sending a party into his country so soon after settlement. It appeared a newly appointed Indian Agent for California, General Wilson, had visited the city and spoken with Young. He declared he had come clothed with authority from the President of the United States to expel the Mormons from their lands. Captain Stansbury knew something of the Mormon’s trials and history and quickly undeceived the governor. Young was the civil governor and the president of the whole church, and Stansbury fully understood the power of the man. Once the true object of the expedition was understood, the man so many called President Young, laid the subject matter before the council. In the end, the authorities were pleased exploration was to be made and offered any assistance they could render.

Captain Stansbury and his men continued to explore the Wasatch Mountains and the areas around the Great Salt Lake. That year brought a severe winter and the party spent much of its time inside looking out. On the arrival of spring, they found a new pass through the Rocky Mountains which promised to shorten the trail of the emigrants significantly. They ended their expedition on the Mormon route to San Diego, the route from Salt Lake to the Humboldt, finally returning to their starting point at Fort Leavenworth. During the year-long expedition, Captain Stansbury gathered pages of valuable information informing the government and parties interested in laying the tracks of the Transcontinental Railroad. What had been unknown now was known. Knowledge often brings change and great changes were on the horizon.