...with a wide plain at our left and high mountains at our right and being within sight of the...Salt Lake Route which road intersects our trail seven miles further on. - Emigrant journal entry (Lewis), circa 1850, describing their camp near here before entering City of Rocks.
Mentally remove the buildings, roads, and vehicles, and picture this landscape around July 1850.
In the morning or afternoon California-bound wagon trains would be passing from left to right. At midday a train might be stopped to "noon." pausing for relief from the sun, In the evening you would see the activity of trains stopping for the night - preparing meals, herding livestock to pasture, discussing plans for tomorrow. Darkness would bring flickering campfires.
Good water provided by springs and streams flowing from the mountains behind you induced many emigrant trains to camp here before heading into the City of Rocks.
In the distance to the right you might also have seen dust rising from other wagon trains plodding westward on the Salt Lake Alternate. This route via Salt Lake City joined the main trail a few miles southwest of here.
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