Over Almost Impassable Terrain

In late July 1776, Fray Francisco Atanacio Dominguez, Fray Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, and their party of horsemen left Santa Fe hoping to find a new route to Monterey, California, and seeking sites for future missions along the way. In western Colorado they met a Ute Indian they named Silvestre, who guided them toward his homeland on the shore of Utah Lake, and an 11-year-old Ute boy they named Joaquin also traveled with them. Suspicious of their guide as he led them farther west into unknown country, they struggled through the canyon of the Strawberry River by a route of deep ravines and brush gullies, possibly to avoid hostile Indians. In his diary entry for September 19, 1776, Escalante wrote of descending to the Strawberry River by making several turns over almost impassable terrain of rock and cliff precipices, injuring one horse, backtracking about a mile, crossing through a bosque of osier and tall bamboo-reed, then swinging northwest up an arroyo channel and ascending the sierra, leaving the river behind. The arroyo by which they left the canyon is Rabbit Gulch, across Starvation Lake to the north of the bridge. Later, the expedition found their friendly Indians in Utah Valley, but on their return to Santa Fe they faced a desperate journey through canyon country.

Utah · United States