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 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 ...

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 North America that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon Territory. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail crossed what ...

s in the United States. It led northwest out of

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in the state. The city is the core of the Salt Lake Ci ...

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

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, partic ...

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 par ...

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 United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

, Utah,

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain states, Mountain West subregions of the Western United States. It borders Montana and Wyoming to the east, Nevada and Utah to the south, and Washington (state), ...

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

or Washington.

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,

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

, 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 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. 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, 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 United States Census ...

where they crossed the

Weber River The Weber River ( ) (Shoshone: Ho-o-pah) 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 Henr ...

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. Thousands more followed every year before 1869 and the

Transcontinental Railroad A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous rail transport, railroad trackage that crosses a continent, continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks may be via the Ra ...

completion.

History

References

Further reading