The discovery of gold in California gave very great added importance to
this southern Utah route. When the Washoe passes were closed by snow,
California travel by the plains route necessarily was diverted, either
around by Oregon or southward through the Virgin River section. The
latter route appears to have been safe enough in winter, save for
occasional attacks by Indians, who were bent more upon plunder than upon
murder. Occasionally, parties sought a shorter cut to the westward and
suffered disaster in the sands of the Amargosa desert or of Death Valley.
Sometimes such men as Jacob Hamblin were detailed to act as guides, but
this seemed to be more needed with respect to dealings with the Indians
than to show the road, as the highway was a plain one through to San
Bernardino and San Gabriel. Of summers, undoubtedly the travel was
much lessened, as the goldseekers chose the much more direct and
better-watered routes passing either north or south of Lake Tahoe, by
Donner Lake and Emigrant Gap or by the Placerville grade.
The western end of the southern Utah-Nevada trail, after the
establishment of the San Bernardino colony, soon became known as the
Mormon road, a name preserved.
Mail service was known over the old Spanish or Mormon Trail, down the
Virgin and to Los Angeles, at different times between 1850 and 1861. This
service seems to have been as an alternative when the passes of the
Sierra Nevadas were closed. The best evidence at hand concerning this
route is contained within a claim made by one Chorpending, for
compensation from the United States for mules and equipment stolen by
Indians in 1854-1856. John Hunt, later of Snowflake, carried mail on the
route in 1856 and 1857. There must be assumption that stage stations were
maintained on the Muddy and at Vegas.
With the Lyman and Rich expedition, in 1851, one of the wagons bore
Apostle Parley P. Pratt who, accompanied by Rufus C. Allen, was starting
upon a mission to the southwest coast of South America. On May 13, there
was note of encampment at "a large spring, usually called Las Vegas,"
after having traveled 200 miles through worthless desert and between
mountains of naked rock.