There can be little more than speculation concerning the extent of the
use of the old Spanish Trail, through southern Utah, by the Spaniards. It
is known, however, that considerable travel passed over it between Santa
Fe and the California missions and settlements. In winter there was the
disadvantage of snow in the Rockies and in summer were the aridity and
heat of the Mohave desert. In Utah was danger from the Utes and farther
westward from the Paiutes, but expeditions went well armed and exercised
incessant watchfulness.
The much more direct route across Arizona on the 35th parallel was used
by few Spaniards, though assuredly easier than that northward around the
Canyon of the Colorado River. This direct route was traversed in 1598 by
Juan de Onate, New Mexico's first Spanish governor, and, in 1776, Father
Garces went from the Colorado eastward to the Hopi villages. There was
travel over what became known as the "Road of the Bishop" from Santa Fe
to the Zuni and Hopi towns, but not beyond. Possibly the preference for
the San Juan-Virgin route lay in the fact that it had practicable river
fords.
This old Spanish Trail from Santa Fe to Los Angeles, undoubtedly was over
a succession of aboriginal highways. The first Europeans to follow it
were the Franciscan friars Escalante and Dominguez, in 1776. They took a
route running northwest from Taos, New Mexico, through the San Juan
country into Utah as far as Utah Lake, not reaching Great Salt Lake, and
thence to the southwest through the Sevier Valley to the upper waters of
the Virgin hoping to work through to California. They had an intelligent
idea concerning the extent of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado and knew
there could be no crossing for several hundred miles. After traveling
down the Santa Clara and Virgin to about where the Arizona line now is,
they turned eastward again, probably because of lack of supplies and fear
of the desert. Their travel eastward was not far from the 37th parallel
on either side and their Indian guides finally led them, by way of the
mouth of the Paria, to the Ute ford of the Colorado, now known as the
Crossing of the Fathers. Thence, crossing the river November 8, 1776,
they made their way to the Hopi villages and back to the Rio Grande,
finishing one of the most notable exploring trips ever known in the west.
It is interesting to consider how, nearly a century later, the
"Pathfinder," John C. Fremont, thought himself on a new line of discovery
when he took much the same road westward through the passes of the
Rockies.
This Spanish Trail is outlined on a fur-trade map in the Bancroft
Library, covering the period from 1807 to 1843. No road is marked across
the present area of Arizona. The Spanish Trail seems to have been
considered as the western extension of the Santa Fe Trail.
The famous old traveler, Jedediah Smith, in 1826 and 1827, journeyed by
the Sevier and Virgin River route to the Colorado River, though he
appears to have made his own way, paralleling the aboriginal highway. In
August of 1827, a number of his party were killed by Mohave Indians on
the Colorado River.