The Great Salt Lake and John C. Fremont

The Great Salt Lake and John C. Fremont

The first explorers of the American far West had only brought back sketchy maps. John Charles Fremont retraced the routes of the former explorers. And with his skill as a map maker, his more accurate surveys helped later pioneer American's find their way West. His career as an explorer began when he left the Navy to be a second lieutenant in the United States Topographical Corps, which later became the Army Corps of Engineers.

He established his place in history when on his second expedition he made a massive circle of the least known parts of the West: from the Colorado Rockies north to the South Pass, northwest to the Columbia, south along the Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges into California, and southward before turning east across the desert to the vicinity of Salt Lake and thence east across the Colorado Rockies. He returned to St. Louis in August 1844, after proving the existence of Salt Lake and a vast region of interior drainage (the Great Basin), dispelling the myth of the San Buenaventura River (supposed to flow from the Rockies to California), and demonstrating that the South Pass was the best route across the mountains.

Accompanied by four members of his survey expedition, the following account describes the expedition as they paddled an inflatable rubber boat from the mouth of the Weber River due west to one of the small islands in the Great Salt Lake.

Fremont, along with Christopher "Kit'' Carson, an intrepid hunter and guide; and Charles Preuss, a gifted, literate mapmaker, decided to explore and hunt game while surveying the lake from the island summit.

Two employees, French Canadian engages Baptiste Bernier and Basil Lajeunesse, had served with Fremont before, and constituted what the lieutenant regarded as his "small family."

Before setting out for the island, eight of the party of 17 were sent north to Fort Hall, a Hudson's Bay Co. trading post in present Idaho, for supplies; and four men were assigned to remain ashore to guard the baggage and horses while the survey party did its work.

The decision to land on the smaller island was Fremont's choice because of the food shortage.

After a meal of yampah root, seasoned by "a small fat duck," the expedition was tiring of boiled birds and becoming restless. The men warmed themselves at the campfire on the night of Sept. 8 and wonde red what the new day would hold in store.

Preuss, as usual, was not so enamored of the adventure. He was more interested in how his food tasted. "So close to the Salt Lake and we have to get along without salt!" he confided to his diary.

But Fremont's plans for an early start were soon dashed. In unpacking the India-rubber (guttapercha) boat, they discovered that instead of being strongly sewn like the one used a year earlier in exploring the canyons of the Upper Platte River, this boat's air cylinders had been pasted together -- and poorly at that -- by a manufacturer rushed for time. He had been told to cram two months' work into a week, and this was the result.

At sunrise the rubber raft was inflated, with men alternating on the bellows. When two of the lengthy cylinders leaked and threatened to sink the boat, one man was constantly at the bellows while the othe rs rowed for all their worth.

Midway to their intended landing point, the wind grew stronger and the air cylinders started to collapse. Again the bellows were pumped feverishly. At last, the boat made it to the island beach. It was ab out noon on Sept. 9.

Carson, who was no stranger to danger and hard times as a mountaineer, recalled in his autobiography, "We found nothing of any great importance. There were no [freshwater] springs and the island was perfectly barren."

Preuss was even less charitable in his diary. "We ferried with our miserable rubber boat to the island, which Fremont christened Disappointment Island because he expected game there but did not find it."

Having thus unburdened himself, he turned to exploration. "We found plenty of salt and have boiled down some of it. I believe that three, or certainly four pounds of water make one pound of salt. I have never seen anything like it. We found the salt 15 feet deep near the island."

While Fremont and Preuss set up their instruments to begin the survey, Carson took the opportunity to stroll around the island. On the 800-foot summit, he rested near a schist rock formation and left his mark.

Perhaps it was Bernier or Lajeunesse who stood with him, but in later years, this famous plainsman recalled:

"We ascended the mountain, and under a shelving rock cut a large cross, which is there to this day.''

When Capt. Howard Stansbury took his survey party to the island seven years later, he noticed the cross, but had no clue as to its origin. He passed it off with just a single sentence in his famous report on the Great Salt Lake.

The Mormons, who had settled the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847, were aware that Fremont had named the land mass Disappointment Island, but because of its shape, the Saints renamed it Castle Island.

To Stansbury, however, fell the official responsibility of placing it on a U.S. map. He chose to recognize the adventurous explorer who first set foot upon its shore. He set it down as Fremont Island, and so it remains today.

When Fremont's party departed on the morning of Sept. 10, the lieutenant was dismayed to discover he had left the lens cap to his "spy glass" on the summit, and ruefully observed it would probably remain there undisturbed by Indians, to furnish "matter of speculation" for some future traveler.

(The lens cap was found in the 1860s by Jacob Miller, a Mormon using the island as a sheep range.)

For Fremont, clambering aboard Preuss' "miserable rubber boat" and returning safely to the mouth of the Weber was easier said than done. Carson's recollection was understated:

"We had not gone more than a league, when a storm came up,'' he said. "The boat was leaking wind.''

Fremont urged them to "pull for their lives," Carson remembered, that "if we did not reach shore before the storm, we would surely all perish." Pulling at the oars with all their might, they barely ma de it.

"Within an hour, the waters had risen eight or ten feet," Carson said.

Scrambling through the brushy wetlands, Fremont ordered his men to carry the baggage the quarter-mile to firm ground, while Preuss and Lajeunesse set off on foot to the main camp and the horses, some nine miles distant.

Two years later, in October 1845, Fremont returned with another expedition and again explored islands in the Great Salt Lake, among them the largest, which supplied the party with fresh meat, and which he named Antelope Island.

Compiled from an article by Harold Schindler of the Salt Lake Tribune

1. What river was supposed to flow from the Rockies to California?

Colorado
San Buenaventura
Gunnison
Mississippi

2. Why did Kit Carson decide to explore the smaller island?

The mountains on the island were higher.
There was nowhere to land on the bigger island.
The smaller island was easier to get to.
There was a food shortage.

3. Why did Kit Carson name the island they visited "Dissapointment".

The island was a mirage.
The island had too much quicksand to land the boats safely.
The island had no game to hunt.
A raiding band of Utes attacked the exploration team.

4. What did Fremont lose on the summit of the island?

a lens cap
a shoe
his balance and he fell
his way back to camp

5. On a return trip to the Great Salt Lake, Fremont would give the name ____ to the largest island.

Buenaventura
Fremont
Castle
Antelope

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