GREAT BASIN

GREAT BASIN. On his first expedition to the 189,000-square-mile region that he named the Great Basin, 1843–1844, John Charles Frémont explored the rim of that area, which lies between the Wasatch Mountains on the east and the Sierra Nevada on the west, including most of Nevada and the western third of Utah. Frémont was in search of the mythical Buenaventura River.

The second expedition, 1845–1846, was organized for the purpose of exploring the Great Basin more fully. Frémont and his party set out south and west of the Great Salt Lake and crossed the Great Salt Desert into central Nevada. There he divided his party. Edward Kern went southwest, while Frémont and his group went northwest to California. The expeditions collected scientific data, made sketches of the scenery, and noted unusual physical features. Frémont named many rivers, lakes, springs, mountains, passes, and deserts in the Great Basin, generally after the members of his expeditions.

The early emigrant trails and cutoffs across the Great Basin branched off the Oregon Trail at South Pass, Wyoming. The Salt Lake–Los Angeles road turned southwest at Salt Lake, continued to the Virgin River, and extended southwest over the Old Spanish Trail. At the Virgin River, William's short route, or light-hand road, turned west across Nevada to Death Valley. Another important offshoot, the Humboldt Trail, crossed the Forty-Mile desert to the Carson River and from there followed mountain passes into California. The Great Basin was threaded with ramifications of these trails and cutoffs and was heavily traveled by early emigrants.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Coy, Owen Cochran. The Great Trek. Los Angeles: Powell Publishing, 1931.

Faragher, John Mack. Women and Men on the Overland Trail. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979.

Unruh, John D. The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–60. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979.

Effie MonaMack/a. r.

See alsoFrémont Explorations ; Gold Rush, California .