CHAPTER
3
Trappers, Surveyors, and Wagon Trains
E,
THE COMING OF EURO-AMERICANS TO TOOELE COUNTY
furopean awareness of Tooele County and the surrounding area began early in the eighteenth century when published maps indicated the reported existence of a large lake in the western part of N o r t h America. 1 The geographical knowledge of the region was expanded in the summer of 1776 when Father Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Father Silvestre Velez de Escalante, two Spanish Catholic churchmen, and their small expedition from Santa Fe visited the Native Americans as far north as Utah Valley on their expedition hoping to find a northern route to the newly established missions and settlements on the Pacific Coast. The two Catholic friars learned of the lake from the Ute Indians living in Utah Valley. The Indians told them that a larger body of water noxious to the taste was within a day's march to the north. The intrepid friars and their party did not visit the lake; however, leaving to other whites the historical distinction of first viewing and setting foot u p o n Tooele County. U p o n the expedition's r e t u r n to New Mexico, a map was prepared by Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, one of the members of the expedition, which indicated a two-armed lake 45
