Utah Centennial County History Series - Carbon County 1997

THE FRONTIER AND SETTLEMENT PERIOD L he first Europeans into the area of eastern Utah came as part of a Spanish expedition under the direction of Don Juan Maria Antonio de Rivera. They left the Spanish settlements in New Mexico in 1765, journeyed through southwestern Colorado, and reached eastern Utah. Rivera traveled through the area where Moab would later be located, crossed the Colorado River, and went a few mdes farther north before returning to New Mexico.1 In 1776 Franciscan friars Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Sdvestre Velez de Escalante led a group that crossed into the Uinta Basin and traveled as far north as Utah Lake, where they visited the Indian tribes. In 1825 General William H. Ashley, partner in an American fur trading company based in St. Louis, entered the region by sailing down the Green River. He cached his supplies at the mouth of the Duchesne River, which he called the "Tewinty," and then continued on down the river for some distance. He reported: The whole of that distance (below the mouth of the Tewinty) is bounded by lofty mountains heaped together in the greatest disorder, exhibiting a surface as barren as can be imagined. This part of 18