The South Fork River canyon marked the western end of the Hastings Cutoff, an alternative route that rejoined the main California Trail nearby. Lansford W. Hastings, an early entrepreneur, promoted it as a shorter road to California that would save emigrants 400 miles and several days of travel, even though he had not actually traveled the route himself. In 1846, he persuaded emigrants to leave the established California Trail at Fort Bridger, Wyoming, but the route quickly proved difficult. Travelers had to work west through the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, cross 80 miles without water over the desert and salt flats west of the Great Salt Lake, continue through the high desert of eastern Nevada, make a long detour around the Ruby Mountains, and then pass through South Fork Canyon with 14 crossings of the river before rejoining the California Trail. The Donner-Reed party also followed this route in 1846 and, after losing livestock, furniture, and wagons on the Salt Flats, discovered that the cutoff had added 125 miles and three additional weeks to their journey. Only days before reaching the Sierra Nevada pass later named for them, they were trapped by an early snowstorm and suffered tragic consequences during the winter of 1846-47. Their fate ended travel on the Hastings Cutoff.