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As the emigrants left City of Rocks,
they passed through Granite Pass. The gradual slope up
the pass gave little warning to the rugged descent they
faced on the other side down to Goose Creek. Granite
Pass separates the drainage of the Raft River from that
of Goose Creek, with both streams flowing north into the
Snake River. Flat table mountains characterized the
Goose Creek Valley.
John Steel, 1850:
"We beheld, far below, a chaotic
mass like the remains of a wrecked world. The wheels
were locked, and the wagons slid tremulously down the
gravelly steep to the first bench, or table land, where
we halted by a little brook, under a shady fringe of
birch. Passing thus down several banks, our road
[descended] on the opposite side." |
Not far from Goose Creek, the
emigrants entered the low hills that separate the
Great Basin from the Snake River drainage. Now they
had entered the land that would challenge and test
them for the next five hundred miles.
Platt
and Slater Guide, 1852
As you enter Goose Creek valley, you
will be delighted with its beauty. It contains several
table bluffs, mountain-high, with their smooth, level
tops, breaking off square at their edges, then
gradually and smoothly sloping down to the level of
the valley. |
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Alonzo Delano, 1849
July 24... After our noon halt we
ascended a hill and drove on to the wild, strange valley
of Goose Creek. From the summit of the hill, a fine and
peculiarly interesting view was afforded. It had
evidently been the scene of some violent commotion,
appearing as if there had been a breaking up of the
world. Far as the eye could reach, cones, tables, and
nebulae, peculiar to the country, extended in a confused
mass, with many hills apparently white with lime and
melted quartz -- some of them of a combination of lime
and sandstone -- perhaps it might be called volcanic
grit; while others exhibited, in great regularity, the
varied colors of the rainbow. I have seen the broken
hills exhibit, in parallel lines, white, red, brown,
pink, green and yellow, and sometimes a blending of
various colors. It is an interesting field for the
geologist, as well as for the lover of the works of
nature. |
Jane Gould, 1862
Monday, August 18: We passed a chalk
bed, likewise some very singular looking rocks on the
right hand side of the road. They wer all sorts of
shaped holes and men had written their names in and
under them. The swallows had built numerous nests in
them.
The trail enters what is now Nevada at
that state's northeastern corner. From there, it angles
southwest towards the Humboldt River -- or, as many
emigrants called it, "the Humbug." But first
the emigrants had to travel through the fantastic
Thousand Springs Valley. |
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Elisha
Perkins, 1849:
"There was a spring hotter than
could be borne, and a stream running out of it of
considerable size which two hundred yards from its
source was hot enough for Thomosian uses."
The "Thomosian uses" to which
Perkins referred is a reference to a medical fad
prevalent in the 1840s and 1850s in which ailments were
said to be cured by immersing the victim in painfully
hot water. Unfortunately this, like many of the
"cures" of the 19th century, often caused more
harm than good for the poor afflicted. |
In the Thousand Springs Valley, the
dry, soft earth yielded easily under the heavy wagon
wheels. The resulting ruts were deepened by the flash
floods that often swept through the region following
the infrequent rainstorms. Farther along, ice cold
springs bubbled up only a few feet from springs of
boiling water. Today, the valley is one of the Bureau
of Land Management's "backcountry byways." |
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