San Juan County, Utah: People, Resources, and History edited by Allan Kent Powell

Introduction For several centuries Utah sat on the fringe of penetration by Spanish explorers and traders pushing north out of New Mexico. In the sixteenth century Cortes, Coronado, and other Spanish conquistadores heard Indian accounts of the fabulous lands of Lake Copala and El Gran Teguayo to the north, which historians identify as in the vicinity of Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries plans were formulated and expeditions launched to find these "mysterious kingdoms of the north." Apparently, some came close to their objective. Brigham Young University history professor Ted J. Warner writes that documents in the Spanish archives of New Mexico, National Archives in Mexico City, and the archives in Seville, Spain, contain ". . . numerous suggestions . . . that Spaniards on authorized as well as unauthorized expeditions penetrated southern Utah before 1776."1 One of these expeditions about which information has recently come to light is the 1765 trip of Juan Maria Antonio Rivera and four others who, according to historian Donald C. Cutter, ". . . became the first known white men to enter Utah when they crossed the line somewhere northeast of Monticello [in San Juan County] probably on October 6, 1765." 2 Passing through Dry Valley, across the base of the La Sal Mountains, and traveling down Spanish Valley, the group left San Juan County and traveled on a few miles past present Moab to the Colorado River, their intended goal. Here, before returning to New Mexico, they left a large cross on the meadow of the river, establishing Spain's claim to the region.

Eleven years later, in 1776, the Dominguez-Escalante expedition left Santa Fe to make contact with the natives to the