![]() ![]() ![]() The last major glacial period in North America began about 23, 000 years ago. Its eastern boundary would be the Wasatch Mountains at Salt Lake City and its western boundary the Toano and Goshute Mountains to your left. Imagine Lake Bonneville some 10,000 years ago as a vast lake larger than the present Great Salt Lake. Soon after the 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in California and the 1849 opening of the Salt Lake Cutoff Trail to City of Rocks, tens of thousands of pioneers and gold seekers were following the Humboldt River toward California. Making their way south along these benches they discovered a low pass, seen directly ahead, that afforded them a direct route to the headwaters of the Humboldt. In 1841, the Bartleson-Bidwell wagon party, with only vague directions from fur trappers, turned west along the north shore of the Great Salt Lake toward Pilot Peak, the towering high mountain seen to the north. The Humboldt River, originating in the northeast corner of Nevada, flows west and then suddenly terminates in an area called the Humboldt Sink some 50 miles east of Reno. Within the Great Basin there just happened to be an east-west river corridor that became one of the most significant roads for pioneers, gold seekers, and commercial freight haulers to use on their way to and from California. The Great Basin has a series of north and south oriented mountain ranges and semi-arid valleys that posed major navigation challenges for covered wagon travelers in the 1840s and early 1850s. Stretching between the Wasatch Mountains of Utah and the Sierra Nevada of California is a vast region with no natural water outlet. ![]()
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