The Salt Spring Hills are a low mountain range in the

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located pr ...

, in northern

San Bernardino County San Bernardino County ( ), officially the County of San Bernardino and sometimes abbreviated as S.B. County, is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California, and is located within the Inland Empire area. As of th ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. They are just outside the southeastern corner of

Death Valley National Park Death Valley National Park is a national park of the United States that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern sect ...

, southeast of the Saddle Peak Hills. The road between

Shoshone The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ), also known by the endonym Newe, are an Native Americans in the United States, Indigenous people of the United States with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshon ...

and

Baker A baker is a tradesperson who baking, bakes and sometimes Sales, sells breads and other products made of flour by using an oven or other concentrated heat source. The place where a baker works is called a bakery. History Ancient histo ...

passes through the hills.

History

From 1831 to 1848, the Old Spanish Trail passed from

Salt Spring A brine spring or salt spring is a saltwater spring. Brine springs are not necessarily associated with halite deposits in the immediate vicinity. They may occur at valley bottoms made of clay and gravel which became soggy with brine seeped down ...

on Salt Creek east of the Salt Spring Hills near its confluence with the Amargosa River through the hills near Amargosa Spring.Edward Leo Lyman, Overland Journey from Utah to California: Wagon Travel from the City of Saints to the City of Angels, University of Nevada Press, 2008. In 1849, when

Jefferson Hunt Jefferson Hunt (January 20, 1803 – May 11, 1879) was a U.S. western pioneer, soldier, and politician. He was a captain in the Mormon Battalion, brigadier general in the California State Militia, a California State Assemblyman, and a represent ...

led a Mormon party of several wagons along the Old Spanish Trail to Los Angeles, they camped at Salt Spring east of the Salt Spring Hills. Some of the party discovered gold in the creek and traced it to a quartz vein in the nearby hills near Amargosa Spring. The Salt Spring Hills were named for Salt Spring, on the

Mormon Road Mormon Road, also known to the 49ers as the Southern Route, of the California Trail in the Western United States, was a seasonal wagon road pioneered by a Mormon party from Salt Lake City, Utah led by Jefferson Hunt, that followed the route of S ...

that passed just west of the hills, where the gold was first found. This discovery which became known once the party reached the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino, set off the first gold rush in the

. Several mining companies attempted to mine in the hills from the early 1850s. Mrs. Rousseau and her doctor husband traveled the Mohave Desert in the final months of 1864 with a wagon train from Utah bound for San Bernardino. That train passed the Salt Spring Hills, where Mrs. Rousseau mentioned in her diary, dated December 4, that there were four houses and a quartz mill there, and that three men who had been serving as caretakers for a mine located there had been killed by Indians eight weeks earlier.Richard D. and Kathryn L. Thompson, Pioneer of the Mojave: The Life and Times of Aaron G. Lane, Page 7, RIDING OUT THE CIVIL WAR
from empirenet.com, accessed July 5, 2019.

References

Mountain ranges of the Mojave Desert Mountain ranges of San Bernardino County, California Hills of California Old Spanish Trail (trade route) Mormon Road {{SanBernardinoCountyCA-geo-stub

History

See also

Further reading

References