The Bear River crossing near the lush river bottom served Indians, fur traders, explorers, and emigrants as a natural resting place. In 1843, topographical engineer John C. Fremont crossed Bear River near here while traveling to survey the Great Salt Lake and called it "a natural resting and recruiting station for travelers, now and in all time to come." In the summer of 1848, mountaineer Samuel J. Hensley led a pack train north from Great Salt Lake City and discovered the route that became the Salt Lake Cutoff. On the Humboldt River, he met 45 men and one woman, Melissa Burton Coray, who had marched to California with the Mormon Battalion during the Mexican War and were returning to Salt Lake to rejoin their families. Following Hensley's directions, these Mormon veterans brought the first wagons over the trail and camped at a spring near here on September 23, 1848. During the gold rush, the Salt Lake Cutoff crossed the Bear River here before rejoining the California Trail at City of Rocks, and some 25,000 overlanders used the route during the peak years of 1849 and 1850. In the early 1850s, Mormon pioneers William Empey and Abraham Hunsaker operated a ferry at this site.