William Sublette is believed to have named Independence Rock during an Independence Day celebration there on July 4, 1830, while leading a fur-trapping expedition to the Wind River to trap furbearers and trade with Native Americans. When pioneer priest Pierre-Jean De Smet saw the rock in 1841, he wrote that the names of travelers who had passed by could be read there in coarse characters, and after seeing the multitude of inscriptions he christened it the Great Register of the Desert. For emigrants, Independence Rock was a celebrated milestone because arriving on or by the Fourth of July indicated that the western mountains could likely be crossed before winter snowfall. Early travelers also compared its imposing granite form to familiar shapes: in 1832 John Ball thought it looked like a big bowl turned upside down, Civil War soldier Harvey Johnson said it looked like a big elephant up to its sides in the mud, and J. Goldborough Bruff wrote that from a distance it looked like a huge whale.