Hastings Cutoff

Route of the California Trail and Hastings Cutoff in the western United States

The Hastings Cutoff was an alternate route for emigrants to travel to California, as proposed by Lansford Hastings.

In 1845, Hastings published a guide entitled The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California. A sentence in the book briefly describes the cutoff:

The most direct route, for the California emigrants, would be to leave the Oregon route, about two hundred miles east from Fort Hall; thence bearing West Southwest, to the Salt Lake; and thence continuing down to the bay of St. Francisco, by the route just described.

The cutoff left the California Trail at Fort Bridger in Wyoming, passed through the Wasatch Mountains, across the Great Salt Lake Desert, looped around the Ruby Mountains, and rejoined the California Trail about seven miles west of modern Elko, Nevada.

The west end of the cutoff is marked as Nevada Historical Marker 4.

Trail use

Hastings led a small party overland late in 1845 and spent the winter in California. Significantly, his stay at Sutter's Fort coincided with a visit by John C. Fremont, who had just explored the desert around the Great Salt Lake and whose letter describing a new route to California would be widely published in Eastern newspapers. In April, Hastings set out with a few companions to meet the emigration of 1846. He stayed in the vicinity of the Sweetwater River while an eastbound traveler carried his open letter inviting emigrants on the California Trail to meet him at Fort Bridger. Between 60 and 75 wagons did so and traveled with Hastings on his cutoff. They endured a difficult descent down Weber Canyon, a waterless drive of 80 miles across the Great Salt Lake Desert, and a lengthy detour around the Ruby Mountains. Despite the usual trials of overland travel, they arrived safely in California.

The Donner Party, following in the wake of this initial party in 1846, had an unsuccessful experience with the Hastings Cutoff. They had arrived a few days too late to travel with Hasting's party, and on his suggestion pioneered an alternate route to avoid Weber Canyon. The roadbuilding required through the Wasatch Mountains and the grueling dry drive delayed them. The party arrived at the pass into California just as an early winter storm closed it. After becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada, many died and some of the emigrants resorted to eating their animals, and the deceased members of the group.

In July 1847, Mormon leader Brigham Young led a vanguard company of emigrants from Winter Quarters (Omaha), Nebraska to the future site of Salt Lake City, Utah. The company chose to use the Hastings Cutoff passing though modern-day Emigration Canyon. Young's group made remarkable improvements to some parts of the cutoff on their journey so subsequent Mormon companies could more easily make it through to the Salt Lake valley. William Clayton, the company's scribe, stated in his journals that the company tried to follow the route left by the Donner Party the previous year, yet only occasionally could identify the tracks. A few years later, Mormon emigration companies abandoned the majority of the cutoff route for a new section which today is Parley's Canyon, passing near Park City, Utah.

The California gold rush created an enormous increase in westward traffic and several parties of 1849 and 1850 used Hastings Cutoff. The year 1850 saw the development of a new route around the northern end of the Great Salt Lake (Hensley's Salt Lake Cutoff) that avoided the waterless drive across the desert south of the lake. Subsequently, the Hastings route was abandoned, except for portions east of Salt Lake City, where it remained as the end of the Mormon Trail.

External links

• Oregon-California Trails Association
• Roy Tea's Hastings Cutoff Page

References

• Hastings, Lansford W. The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California. Bedford, Mass.: Applewood Books, 1994. (Facsimile of the 1845 ed.)
• Korns, J. Roderic, and Dale L. Morgan, eds. West from Fort Bridger: The Pioneering of Immigrant Trails Across Utah, 1846–1850. Revised and updated by Will Bagley and Harold Schindler. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1994.
• Dale L. Morgan, Overland in 1846: Diaries and Letters of the California-Oregon Trail. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. 2 vols. Reprint; originally published by Talisman Press in 1963. ISBN 0-8032-8202-8.
• Knight, Hal, 111 Days to Zion. Deseret Press, 1978.
• DeLafosse, Peter H., ed. Trailing the Pioneers: A Guide to Utah’s Emigrant Trails, 1829–1869. Utah State University Press, 1994.
• Spedden, H. Rush., The Fearful Long Drive: The 1846 Hastings Cutoff Overland Journal, Oregon-California Trails Association, Vol. 12, No. 2, Summer 1994.
• Tea, Roy D., ed. The Hastings Cutoff: Grantsville to Donner Springs, May 1996. Salt Lake City, UT: [Utah Crossroads Chapter, Oregon-California Trails Association], 1996.
• Kelly, Charles. Salt Desert Trails. Hastings Cutoff Sesquicentennial ed. Edited by Peter H. DeLafosse. Salt Lake City: Western Epics, 1996.
• Tea, Roy D., ed. Hastings Longtripp: A Hastings Cutoff Trail Guide from Donner Spring to the Humboldt River. Salt Lake City, UT: Utah Crossroads, Oregon-California Trails Association, 1996.
• Tea, Roy D., ed. The Hastings Cutoff: A Tragic Decision: The Weber Canyon Route. Salt Lake City, UT: Utah Crossroads, Oregon-California Trails Association, 2004.
• Spedden, H. Rush., Hastings Cutoff: Bryant's Trail to Skull Valley Overland Journal, Oregon-California Trails Association, Vol. 23, No. 2, Summer 2005.
• Spedden, H. Rush., The Donner Trail Across the Salt Lake Valley Overland Journal, Oregon-California Trails Association, Vol. 26, No. 1, Summer 2008.