City of Rocks Historic Resources Study

In 1840, Thomas Farnham and his small party traveled from Peoria, Illinois to the Oregon Territory, initiating a mass migration that would peak at over 100,000 in 1852 but that would not end until completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. Historian John D. Unruh, Jr. wrote that overland migration has been "one of the most fascinating topics for writers, folklorists, and historians of the American West. The overlanders'. . . legendary covered wagons have come to symbolize America's westward movement." [33] The emigrants themselves realized the enormous personal, social, cultural, and political consequences of their journey and left an astonishing array of diaries and letters describing their routes and life along those routes. Chimney Rock, Independence Rock, and the City of Rocks figure prominently in these accounts — they disrupted the monotony of the journey as surely as they broke the level surface of the plains. In varied degrees of eloquence and imagination, emigrants duly described them. The City of Rocks also occasioned comment as a place of heightened Indian menace; a place of final respite, prior to the dreaded crossing of the barren Humboldt plain; and as an important trail junction.

All migrations are a response to both "push" and "pull" factors. Depression hit the vast Mississippi Valley in 1837. Land and opportunity that only twenty years earlier had represented the American frontier were scarce. Wheat sold for ten cents a bushel, corn for nothing, "and bacon was so cheap that steamboats used it for fuel." [34] The push west then, for this "free, enlightened, [but] redundant people," was considerable. [35]

The pull was also compelling: the opportunity to secure the Oregon Country as American territory and unlimited, fertile soil, not only in Oregon but also in Mexico's northern province of California.

The pull had begun decades earlier, in print if not in fact. In 1813, the St. Louis Missouri Gazette reported "no obstruction . . . that any person would dare to call a mountain" between St. Louis and the Columbia River [and] in all probability [no Indians] to interrupt . . . progress." [36] In 1830, trapper William L. Sublette successfully breached the Continental Divide at South Pass (Wyoming) with wagons. He subsequently reported to the Secretary of War that "the ease and safety with which it was done prove the facility of communicating over land with the Pacific ocean." [37]

One year later, Boston's American Society for Encouraging the Settlement of the Oregon Territory published a General Circular to all Persons of Good Character Who Wish to Emigrate to the OREGON TERRITORY. The circular promised an account of "the character and advantages of the country; the right and the means of operations by which it is to be settled and ALL NECESSARY DIRECTIONS FOR BECOMING AN EMIGRANT." [38]

Others urged caution, arguing that while the mountains might be passable (with great difficulty), the "Great American Desert" was not. W. J. Snelling predicted mass starvation in the arid plains, loss of stock to Indian theft, and Indian attack "in retaliation for the pillaging of white hunters." He concluded that the trip could not be made in one season, forcing emigrants to winter in the Rocky Mountains, where they could first eat their horses and then their shoes, before "starving with the wolves." Potential emigrants debated the wisdom of the journey in this carnival of "ignorance, unreality and confusion." [39]

In compelling proof of the journey's possibility, Presbyterian missionaries Samuel Parker, Marcus Whitman, and Henry Spaulding, in the company of women and children, traveled overland to Oregon Territory in 1834. Methodist Missionary Jason Lee followed in 1839, with 51 settlers. These men and women went west as evangelists, not to prosper but to save the souls of the native inhabitants. Yet, western historian Ray Allen Billington writes that "their contribution to history was significant, not as apostles of Christianity, but as promoters of migration. More than any other group they kept alive the spark of interest in Oregon and hurried the westward surge of population into the Willamette Valley." Reports sent from the Whitman mission to eastern religious journals were replete with details of the prospering farms, of abundant resources, and of virgin land. Perhaps as significantly, the Whitman's presence promised shelter and companionship at the end of a long and unfamiliar trail. [40]

California boosters also described a gentle and healthy climate, potential agricultural wealth, an enormous variety of resources, and abundant game. [41] In 1840, Richard H. Dana published Two Years Before the Mast, "probably the most influential single bit of California propaganda." Dana boasted "In the hands of an enterprising people, what a country this might be!" And an enterprising people responded. [42]

The first party to travel overland to California hailed from Platte County, western Missouri. The 69 men, women, and children were encouraged by returned trapper Antoine Robidoux who described a "perfect paradise, a perennial spring." [43] They were led by John Bidwell and John Bartleson and further assisted by trapper Thomas Fitzpatrick and Jesuit priest Father De Smet. (Bidwell recalled years later that "our ignorance of the route was complete. We knew that California lay west, and that was the extent of our knowledge.") [44] Like the parties to follow, they raced the seasons, scouting the Platte River plain for the first sign of sufficient spring grass to sustain their herds, and sprinting across country at an average pace of 15 miles per day in a desperate race to beat the snow to the Sierra Nevada (Figure 6).

Figure 6. The California Trail, Missouri to the Sacramento Valley, USDI, National Park Service, Eligibility/Feasibility Study and Environmental Assessment for National Historic Trail Authorization, Washington, D.C.: United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1987. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

The Bidwell-Bartleson party followed the Oregon Trail as far as Soda Springs (near present day Pocatello, Idaho). Here, half the party opted for Oregon. The remainder abandoned their wagons and proceeded southwest across the tortuous, alkali "Bonneville Flats" north of the Great Salt Lake, along the trail blazed — and dismissed — by Jedediah Smith in 1827 and Joseph Walker in 1833. [45]

Other parties followed by alternative routes: via Santa Fe, via Oregon, and, in 1843, via City of Rocks/Granite Pass, by way of the Oregon Trail to Fort Hall. This later party traveled under the leadership of Walker and of Joseph B. Chiles, a member of the Bidwell-Bartleson party of 1841. At the confluence of the Raft and Snake rivers, Chiles and "a few companions" proceeded west along the Snake, to the Malheur River, and thence south to California. Walker and the remainder of the party proceeded up the Raft River, to the City of Rocks, west to the Goose Creek range, to a (barely) tolerable wagon crossing at Granite Pass — a route destined to become the main overland road to California.

This route met the basic requirements of an overland trail: it possessed a minimum of geographic obstacles (although wagons had to be lowered by rope down Granite Pass and other defiles); water was available at reasonably regular intervals, as was sufficient browse for emigrant stock; and, with the exception of the unfortunate and much-lamented loop to the north between South Pass and the Raft River confluence, the trail formed a direct line between the Mississippi Valley and the promised land. [46]

Subsequent alternatives — the Applegate Trail, the Salt Lake Alternate, Hudspeth's Cutoff — varied the route between South Pass and the Upper Humboldt, but all funneled to City of Rocks and Granite Pass. These alternates promised varied advantages: some were billed as shorter, offering emigrants the advantage of time (winter and the Sierras approached); some offered access to provisions (the barren Forty-Mile Desert, within which both man and beast had starved, approached). The advantages realized did not always comport with those promised: shorter did not always mean faster and provisions were not always available. [47]