|
Lansford W. Hastings
Lansford Warren Hastings (1819–1870) was an American explorer and Confederate_States_of_America, Confederate soldier. He is best remembered as the developer of Hastings Cutoff, a claimed shortcut to California across what is now the state of Utah, a factor in the Donner Party disaster of 1846. He was a Major in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Early life Born to Dr. Waitstill and Lucinda (Wood) Hastings in Mount Vernon, Ohio, Mount Vernon, Ohio, he was a descendant of Thomas Hastings (colonist), Thomas Hastings who came from East Anglia in England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. Hastings was trained as a lawyer. In 1842, he traveled overland to Oregon. While there, he briefly represented Dr. John McLoughlin, preparing his land claim near Willamette Falls and surveying Oregon City, Oregon (which would become the first incorporated city west of the Rocky Mountains). He left in the spring of 1843 for Alta California, a sparsely populated province ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hastings Cutoff
The Hastings Cutoff was an alternative route for westward emigrants to travel to California, as proposed by Lansford Hastings in ''The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California''. The ill-fated Donner Party infamously took the route in 1846. Description A sentence in Hastings' guidebook briefly describes the cutoff: The most direct route, for the California emigrants, would be to leave the Oregon route, about two hundred miles east from Fort Hall; thence bearing West Southwest, to the Salt Lake; and thence continuing down to the bay of St. Francisco, by the route just described. The cutoff left the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger in Wyoming, passed through the Wasatch Range, across the Great Salt Lake Desert, an 80-mile nearly water-less drive, looped around the Ruby Mountains, and rejoined the California Trail about seven miles west of modern Elko (also Emigrant Pass). The west end of the cutoff is marked as Nevada Historical Marker 3. Trail use Hastings led a small party over ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
