H I S T O R Y OF D A V I S C O U N T Y
Platte River as they crossed the Great Plains, then glided through the Rockies at South Pass and headed northwest through the Snake and Columbia river basins to Oregon City. The California Trail diverged at Fort Hall in present-day Idaho and followed the Humboldt River toward Fort Sutter. It was an attempt to find alternate routes that brought California immigrants through what would a few years later become Utah's Davis County. A wagon party of thirty-four California-bound settlers led by John Bidwell and John Bartleson stayed north of the Great Salt Lake in 1841 as they drove the first wagons through what would become Utah. Other migrating westerners deviated from the established route only after p r o m o t e r Lansford W. Hastings proposed a p e r m a n e n t shortcut. Hastings and John C. F r e m o n t wanted to encourage California settlement to further their political ambitions. In 1845 Hastings published an Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California. The following spring he marked out a route a r o u n d the southern edge of the Great Salt Lake. Five emigrant parties that year followed the new shortcut. Leading these groups were Edwin Bryant, George Harlan and Samuel C. Young, James Mather, Heinrich Lienhard, and Jacob Donner and James F. Reed. All but the last of the 1846 emigrant groups passing through Utah pushed down Weber Canyon and along the rocky foothills and fertile lowlands of Davis County to the south end of the Great Salt Lake. The difficulty of getting wagons through the Devils Gate narrows of Weber Canyon prompted the DonnerReed party to blaze a new trail. Brigham Young's party of Mormons followed that shortcut through Emigration Canyon in 1847.1 With their hearts set on a h o m e in California, the westering migrants of 1846 had only a casual interest in the Utah landscape. Several of them recorded their observations in diaries. On a sweltering 29 July, Edwin Bryant, whose party traveled on mules, rode southward from a campsite at the mouth of Weber Canyon. The party followed a route along the low hills lying close against the mountains. They traveled eighteen miles and struck camp "on a small spring branch" near what would later be the site of Farmington. Bryant descibed the sunset that evening as splendid. "The surface of the lake," he wrote, "appeared like a sheet of fire, varying in tint from crimson to a pale scarlet." This Kentucky newspaper editor was equally impressed by the sunrise the
