The Salt Lake Cutoff is one of the many shortcuts (or cutoffs) that branched from the

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

Mormon Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several ...

and

Oregon Trail The Oregon Trail was a east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and Westward Expansion Trails, emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what ...

s in the United States. It led northwest out of

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

and north of the

Great Salt Lake The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. It lies in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah and has a substantial impact upon the local climate, particula ...

for about before rejoining the California trail near the City of Rocks, Idaho. From there Oregon Trail travelers could easily travel down the

Raft River The Raft River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed May 4, 2011 tributary of the Snake River located in northern Utah and southern Idaho in the United States. It is part ...

valley portion of the California Trail to return to the Oregon Trail. It provided a way to stop in Salt Lake City (the only significant city on the trail then) for repairs, fresh supplies, fresh livestock, etc. In later years it was used by tens of thousands of pioneers and miners going east and west on their way to or from the future states of

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

, Utah,

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyom ...

Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbi ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

History

Samuel J. Hensley, returning to California in the summer of 1848, led a pack train of ten men on a quest to get back to the California Trail. After trying Hastings Route south of the Great Salt Lake and finding the salt flats too soft (heavy rains that year) for passage he returned to Salt Lake City and discovered a route, north of the Great Salt Lake. His newly blazed trail (cutoff) went from Salt Lake City back to the Oregon Trail and/or California Trail, rejoining it near the City of Rocks, Idaho—about north of today's Utah–Idaho border. This became known as the Salt Lake Cutoff and was about the same distance as the

Fort Hall Fort Hall was a fort in the western United States that was built in 1834 as a fur trading post by Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth. It was located on the Snake River in the eastern Oregon Country, now part of present-day Bannock County in southeastern Ida ...

Snake River The Snake River is a major river of the greater Pacific Northwest region in the United States. At long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, in turn, the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Snake ...

, City of Rocks route which it bypassed. On the Humboldt River portion of the California Trail route, Hensley met and talked with a party of former

Mormon Battalion The Mormon Battalion was the only religious unit in United States military history in federal service, recruited solely from one religious body and having a religious title as the unit designation. The volunteers served from July 1846 to July ...

personnel consisting of 45 men and one woman under Samuel Thompson driving wagons east on the California Trail to rejoin their families in Utah. On September 15, 1848 they found the junction of Hensley's pack trail near the rock formation called the Twin Sisters. Thompson's group with wagons followed Hensley's pack trail back to Salt Lake City—converting it into a passable wagon road. Thompson's company traveled southeast into northern Utah, crossing Deep Creek near present-day

Snowville, Utah Snowville is a town in Box Elder County, Utah, United States. The population was 167 at the 2010 census. Geography Snowville is located at an elevation of . According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , all land. ...

. They found plentiful water and grass on the route just as Hensley had told them. With some difficulty they crossed the Malad River and the Bear River still traveling south east. They then went to the tiny community of

Ogden, Utah Ogden is a city in and the county seat of Weber County, Utah, United States, approximately east of the Great Salt Lake and north of Salt Lake City. The population was 87,321 in 2020, according to the US Census Bureau, making it Utah's eighth ...

where they crossed the

Weber River The Weber River ( ) is a long river of northern Utah, United States. It begins in the northwest of the Uinta Mountains and empties into the Great Salt Lake. The Weber River was named for American fur trapper John Henry Weber. The Weber River ...

before traveling on to Salt Lake City. Ebenezer Brown, leading a party from the 1846 Mormon ship ''Brooklyn'', followed them three weeks later and helped to further define the trail. Word spread quickly that a good road with good grass and water was known out of Salt Lake City back to the California or Oregon Trail. When the gold-crazy emigrants of 1849 heard of this new route to the California gold fields, many thousands detoured to Salt Lake City to get new supplies and livestock. In Utah, ferries charging a few dollars per wagon were established at the Weber, Bear River and the Malad River in 1849 and later. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 California- or Oregon-bound immigrants a year passed through Salt Lake City between 1849 and 1852. Salt Lake Cutoff
/ref> Thousands more followed every year before 1869 and the

Transcontinental Railroad A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous railroad trackage, that crosses a continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single ...

completion.

History

References

Further reading