CHAPTER
4
INTO THE FAR WEST
Ashley, Fremont, the Manly party of Forty-niners, Henry Adams, Clarence King and his helpers Hague and Emmons, Powell himself—a curiously diverse history would casually brush that littleknown [Uinta] range. From the mountain man's uncomplicated and ferocious dynamism to Adams' dynamo and second law of thermo-dynamics, ideas significant to the continent's knowledge and use of itself passed here. —WALLACE STEGNER
t
.n the years following the Civil War, America turned westward. T h e advancing iron of the U n i o n Pacific Railroad signalled the nation's intent to explore and occupy the frontier. It was the age of steam and of science, and these would be the potent tools with which the United States would accomplish its mission. Into the Far West went great explorers and scientists. They were more than m a p m a k ers; they included geologists, paleontologists, naturalists, and ethnologists. In the late 1860s and the 1870s, some of the finest minds in the country were set to the task of surveying and studying the west57
