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Missionaries Dominguez and Escalante |
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| On July 29, 1776, Fathers Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante led an exploration party of ten horsemen from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to establish an overland route to Monterey, California, while spreading the Catholic faith to the native peoples they hoped to meet along the way. As the party crossed into Spanish lands now called Utah. The group went northward, because their guide wanted to ford the Green River near Jensen, Utah. Unknown to the Spaniards, this was the only suitable place to cross the obstacle. The expedition entered present-day Utah near Jensen where it crossed the Green River on 13 September. The Dominguez-Escalante Trail and the Old Spanish Trail cross near Enoch, Utah. | ||||
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| They then
traveled west on the south slope of Uinta Mountains, crossed over the Wasatch
Mountains following Spanish Fork River, and on 24 September viewed the lake
and wide valley of Utah Lake and Valley, which they described as ". . . the
most pleasing, beautiful, and fertile site in all new Spain." The purpose of
their mission was peaceful, and they were implored by the Indians to return
and teach them. The return journey to Santa Fe was difficult as they crossed
into southwestern Utah and to the edge of the Grand Canyon. They finally
crossed the Colorado River at a place where they hewed steps in the cliff to
facilitate the descent. This site, later named "The Crossing of the
Fathers," is now covered by the waters of Lake Powell.
In early October the party turned back due the onset of winter. On their return, the Spanish suffered from terrible cold and snow and a severe shortage of food, but the Southern Paiute Indians saved them from starvation. The Padres returned to Santa Fe on January 2, 1777. Although the party never reached California, they covered some 2000 miles across the challenging terrain we now call the American Southwest. |
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Escalante and his fellow Spanish were the first Europeans known to travel across the Great Basin. Escalante’s journal maps out the landscape of the west and describes land, the plants, animals, and the missionaries’ encounters with Ute, Paiute, Laguna, and other Indian tribes. While Escalante and Dominguez failed to establish a link between New Mexico and California, the journey opened up an unknown part of the West to Europeans. Sections later became part of the Spanish Trail. www.americanjourneys.org/aj |
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Silvestre Vélez de Escalante (1750-1780), born in Trenceño, Spain, he traveled to Mexico and joined the Catholic order of Franciscans at age seventeen. Before his expedition to Utah, he served as a missionary among the Zuñi and Hopi Indians in present-day New Mexico and Arizona. In 1780, en route to Mexico City, Escalante died before he reached age of thirty. |
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