CHAPTER
12
SKULL VALLEY AND ENVIRONS Exploration and
Settlement
Skull Valley is about fifty miles long and fifteen miles wide. As mentioned earlier, it was traversed by many early explorers and travelers including ledediah Smith and John C. Fremont. It was a welcome sight to travelers crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert. Captain Howard Stansbury and his survey party, traveling east in October 1849 north of Wendover, had to ration a pint of water a day to their mules, "several o f . . . them giving out in crossing the m u d plain," he wrote in his report entry of 29 October. Continuing on after camping at the base of Hasting's Pass in the Cedar Mountains on 4 November, the party found water at Redlum Springs on the other side of the Cedar M o u n t a i n s a n d viewed the Stansbury M o u n t a i n s a n d the "broad green intervening valley," to which they gave the n a m e "Spring Valley"1 In 1854 William H e n r y H o o p e r and his brother-in-law John Quincy Knowlton used Spring Valley as a winter herding ground. Knowlton built a cabin at Burnt Spring, and by 1870 a b r a n c h (known as Quincy) of the LDS church had been established at the 271
