Location:
Sweetwater River
Distance: 964 miles from Nauvoo

It was a high, dry, and difficult 50-mile overland journey from the North Platte to the Sweetwater. Emigrants traveling to Salt Lake followed the Sweetwater for some distance towards South Pass.

Abner Blackburn

Summer, 1847

"The Sweetwatter River rippeled along in its course from the lofty sumit of Fremonts Peaks [in] the Rocky Mountains. . . . All the companyes lay over to rest a few days in this lovely place [with] the hunters after game and sight seers on the mountains. Continued our journey up this stream with a gradual asscent untill we reached the summit or the South Pass."

(Will Bagley, ed., Frontiersman: Abner Blackburn's Narrative [Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, 1992], 60.)

Samuel Gifford

"The horror that reigned in camps ahead of us cannot be described. Sometimes for miles could be seen, feather beds, blankets, quilts, and clothing of every kind strewed over the plains, also wagon tires and irons of every description, gun barrels, stoves, etc. etc. The botom of the Sweetwater was also lined with wagon tires, chains and other irons. And fresh graves could be seen in every direction. We met some missionaries going east who said they met companies of the gold emigration that were driving twelve abreast, hurrying to get away from the Cholera."

(Samuel Kendall Gifford, Reminiscences, 1864, typescript, HDC.)

Journal photographs courtesy of Infobases, Inc. [an error occurred while processing this directive]