Overview of the East Meets West, Pony Express & Sublette Cut-Off Site ~ Larson, Wyoming
After crossing Big Sandy, Sublette Cutoff travelers faced the Colorado Desert, 40 miles with neither water nor grass. Travelers bound for Fort Bridger and Salt Lake had an easier time. They stayed close to Big Sandy after crossing it, because that trail more or less followed the creek. Still, the way was long and difficult.
“This is a flat running stream over a sand bottom,” wrote former mountain man James Clyman on June 15, 1846. “[W]e found its Bank full from the thawing of the snow on the wind river mountains in which it rises.”
The next year, after crossing Big Sandy on the Fort Bridger route, Orson Pratt with the first party of Mormon pioneers wrote on June 29, 1847, “We travelled 17 miles this afternoon without grass or water, although in about 12 miles water might have been obtained from the Big Sandy, which runs about half a mile to the left of our road.”
Isaac Wistar, whose party took the Sublette Cutoff in 1849, wrote on July 2 of that year, “We camped here to rest the stock and prepare to cross the ‘Jornada del Muerte,’ a waterless desert extending fifty miles or more to the Green River of the Colorado.”
Knowing they could not allow themselves to be caught without food or water on this trek, emigrants prepared carefully. “Repacked wagons,” Wistar’s diary entry continues, “[and] filled every vessel that would hold water and overhauled the mules’ shoes and harness.”
The California Gold Rush brought hordes of travelers in 1849 and 1850. H.C. St. Clair traveled on the Sublette Cutoff. On July 8, 1849, he noted “100 wagons camped here [at Big Sandy] and as many more a few miles below, all awaiting to cross the cutoff [desert] tomorrow night.”
Though travelers could not cross the whole desert in a single night, the dark hours brought cooler temperatures and, at dawn, possibly some dew for thirsty livestock.
Despite difficult conditions and fatigue, diarists found time to describe their surroundings. “The soil, hereabouts, is curious,” wrote Joseph Sedgley July 17, 1849, on the Sublette Cutoff. “In some places it is red, in others yellow, and in still others, green.”
Israel Lord, also traveling on the Sublette, wrote on July 22, 1849, “A few trees are left standing (i.e., if any more ever stood there) alone in their glory just above the [Big Sandy] crossing, which here is six or eight rods wide [a rod is 5.5 yards], and two feet deep—a fine stream. The whole country is one vast sand bed, poorly covered with sage and bunch grass.”
WyoHistory.org
Overview of the East Meets West, Pony Express & Sublette Cut-Off Site ~ Larson, Wyoming
After crossing Big Sandy, Sublette Cutoff travelers faced the Colorado Desert, 40 miles with neither water nor grass. Travelers bound for Fort Bridger and Salt Lake had an easier time. They stayed close to Big Sandy after crossing it, because that trail more or less followed the creek. Still, the way was long and difficult.
“This is a flat running stream over a sand bottom,” wrote former mountain man James Clyman on June 15, 1846. “[W]e found its Bank full from the thawing of the snow on the wind river mountains in which it rises.”
The next year, after crossing Big Sandy on the Fort Bridger route, Orson Pratt with the first party of Mormon pioneers wrote on June 29, 1847, “We travelled 17 miles this afternoon without grass or water, although in about 12 miles water might have been obtained from the Big Sandy, which runs about half a mile to the left of our road.”
Isaac Wistar, whose party took the Sublette Cutoff in 1849, wrote on July 2 of that year, “We camped here to rest the stock and prepare to cross the ‘Jornada del Muerte,’ a waterless desert extending fifty miles or more to the Green River of the Colorado.”
Knowing they could not allow themselves to be caught without food or water on this trek, emigrants prepared carefully. “Repacked wagons,” Wistar’s diary entry continues, “[and] filled every vessel that would hold water and overhauled the mules’ shoes and harness.”
The California Gold Rush brought hordes of travelers in 1849 and 1850. H.C. St. Clair traveled on the Sublette Cutoff. On July 8, 1849, he noted “100 wagons camped here [at Big Sandy] and as many more a few miles below, all awaiting to cross the cutoff [desert] tomorrow night.”
Though travelers could not cross the whole desert in a single night, the dark hours brought cooler temperatures and, at dawn, possibly some dew for thirsty livestock.
Despite difficult conditions and fatigue, diarists found time to describe their surroundings. “The soil, hereabouts, is curious,” wrote Joseph Sedgley July 17, 1849, on the Sublette Cutoff. “In some places it is red, in others yellow, and in still others, green.”
Israel Lord, also traveling on the Sublette, wrote on July 22, 1849, “A few trees are left standing (i.e., if any more ever stood there) alone in their glory just above the [Big Sandy] crossing, which here is six or eight rods wide [a rod is 5.5 yards], and two feet deep—a fine stream. The whole country is one vast sand bed, poorly covered with sage and bunch grass.”
WyoHistory.org