Dominguez Escalante Journal: Their Expedition Through Colorado Utah AZ & N Mex 1776

Even if this book sucked, I couldn't rate it lower than five stars, if for no other reason than that this book is IT. It's the only record of this particular part part of the Southwest from before the area was overrun by Spanish and Anglo settlers. It's the book that guided decades of explorers and missionaries, and that has mercifully survived to offer us hints of what life in the West could be like BACK THEN. It's the story of Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, two Spanish friars, who were tasked in 1776 with the goal of forging a route from a mission in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to a mission in Monterrey, California, and of locating sites for new missions along the way-to convert Indian "heathens," "barbarians," and "infidels." Domínguez was in his mid-thirties, but Escalante was only about twenty-five years old. The two, with a small group of others, decided to avoid a northern route--out of fear of an Indian tribe rumored to eat light-skinned travelers--and as a result were among the very first to make maps and to record details of the Southwest's rivers and mesas. Their group started late in the year though, a sudden blizzard soon made progress impossible, and when they reached north-central Utah, they decided to head south and work their way back to New Mexico. They ran out of food, lived by eating their horses, and suffered unbearable cold, rebellious group members, and severe, frequent thirst. They reached the Colorado River around present-day Lees Ferry, southwest of where Glen Canyon Dam is now, and worked their way north along the river, looking for a way across. They passed the often-photographed Castle Rock and Gunsight Butte, chipped steps into the slickrock to allow their pack animals to get down to the shore, lowered their belongings over a cliff with ropes, and after some scouting, found an ancient Ute Indian river crossing, where the water was slow and shallow enough to ride across. That place became known as the Crossing of the Fathers, and is right around where Lake Powell's Padre Bay is now. Their trip made an approximately two thousand-mile-long circle through mostly unexplored terrain, took nearly six-and-a-half months, and explored more undocumented, unknown land than Lewis and Clark would later in their over two-year-long journey. When the fathers got back to Santa Fe, however, only their failure to reach California mattered much to anyone, along with their apparent waste of funds, horses, and supplies. Escalante was practically exiled, and died within five years as the result of bad health obtained from his trials in the desert. Domínguez was demoted, his possibilities of advancement destroyed, and he died anonymously as an old man, never recognized for what he'd done. If you are interested in the West, or the Colorado Plateau, or Glen Canyon, you need to read this. There's just no way around that. It contains information you will find nowhere else, and it's actually a fairly enjoyable

In all practical aspects, the Dominguez and Escalante expedition was a failure. The two Spanish fathers were unable to locate an overland route between the Spanish colonies of Santa Fe, New Mexico and Monterrey, California, and in 1776 it seemed that all the two men had done was wander aimlessly in the north for six months. The lasting impact these two men have had on history (and particularly Utah's history), however, are far greater than they could have known. The expedition made a map, but it is basically worthless in its inaccuracy. Still, the description they left of their route, and most notably that of Utah Valley, was later a great resource for subsequent explorers of Utah, especially John C. Fremont. Their expedition, failed though it was, nevertheless is important as the first written record of the territory that would later become Utah. In addition, the journal did not outlive its usefulness in 1844, when the second of Fremont's expeditions was completed, or even later when Stansbury, Gunnison, and others surveyed the territory. This journal is important even today, because it provides us with a natural look at the Native Americans of the area, before they were disturbed and corrupted by hordes of encroaching whites. This journal is a great document in Utah's history, both as the first written account and as a fascinating look at Utah more than 75 years before it would be settled by the whites.