After Dominguez and Escalante, the next pathbreaker of importance to enter the region was Jedediah Strong Smith, a trapper and trader bent on expanding his fur business. He was probably the first to finish the task started by Escalante, that of finding a route to the coast, which he traversed in 1826 and again in 1827. Smith’s epochal explorations, like Escalante’s a half-century earlier, were circuitous in nature and his first trip covered an area now embraced by four states, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California. The eastern side of his loop overlapped the western side of Escalante’s and probably their trails coincided for short distances where they crossed.
Smith belonged to the firm of Smith, Jackson and Sublette, which had purchased General Ashley’s fur interests and was trapping through the region southward from Montana through Idaho and Wyoming to northern Utah. The summer camp or rendezvous of the firm was at Bear Lake near the Utah-Idaho line and most of the trapping grounds were to the north and east. Knowing nothing about the region lying south and west of the Great Salt Lake, Smith fitted out a party of about sixteen men to explore and trap the unknown region.
He left the shores of the Great Salt Lake, August 22, 1826, and proceeded south and west to Los Angeles, arriving there late in November. His exact course through Utah was long a matter of controversy[10] but with the discovery, by Maurice Sullivan, of an additional letter[11] written by Smith, the controversy was settled. It now seems certain that he followed the route proposed by the author to Maurice Sullivan (ibid.) from Utah Lake Southward to Sevier River in the vicinity of Fayette, followed it up to the mouth of Marysvale Canyon, and mistaking Clear Creek for the head of the river (evidently not recognizing the stream coming through Marysvile Canyon), passed over the divide at the head of Clear Creek and down by Cove Fort, south along the west foot of the mountains to Beaver River (which he called Lost River), on past the present site of Cedar City to the rim of the Great Basin, thence to Ash Creek along the route Escalante had taken to the Virgin River, down the Virgin to the Colorado River and across the Mojave Desert to the Coast.
Sulphur Springs on stream called Sulphur River by Escalante (1776). Adams River by Jed Smith (1826), and Rio Virgin by the Spaniards (1840’s) emerging from canyon near Hurricane. Photo by U. S. National Park Service.
Flood plain of the Virgin River at Grafton. Photo by U. S. National Park Service.
Carvings by prehistoric Indians in Zion Canyon. Photo by U. S. National Park Service.
