Ice Slough is a small stream that flows into the Sweetwater River five miles east of here. In front of this point is a slough, a marsh or shallow undrained depression, which gave the stream its name. In the Ice Slough, marsh soils and plants insulated the previous winter's ice so that it melted slowly through the summer, and a thick mat of ice could be found under the marshes late into June or early July. Westward-bound immigrants stopped their wagons here to break out chunks of ice for their drinks and to preserve meat. William Clayton's 1848 Latter-Day Saints' Emigrants' Guide called this the ice spring and said, "This is in a low, swampy spot of land on the right side of the road. Ice may generally be found by digging down about two feet." In 1854, after traveling up the valley of the Sweetwater, Alonzo Delano wrote on June 26th of stopping near a morass perhaps a mile long and half a mile wide, where men digging for water instead struck a beautiful layer of ice five or six inches thick about a foot below the surface. By late summer the ice had often disappeared. Today, because of a number of factors, the slough has nearly dried up and little ice now forms here in winter.