Excerpt from The Latter-Day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 68: August 2, 1906

Beyond lay the broad plains where the savage red men roamed; the immense stretch of unoccupied country out of which Nebraska, Kansas, the Dakotas, Colorado, Wyoming, and other states of the Union have since been formed; the western and greater part of the wide tract known as the Louisiana Pur chase, ceded to the federal government by France in 1803. Farther on were the snow-capped mountains and sun-parched plateaus of the Great American Desert, owned at that time by Mexico, but soon to pass, along with some fertile sections, into the possession of our great and growing republic, which had even then started upon the final stage of its triumphant march to the sea. A few thousand Americans had found their way across these dreary plains and yet more dreary plateaus, and had settled among the Spaniards and Indians along the Pacific coast. Most of these emigrants were in Oregon, which included the present state of Washington, and was claimed by Great Britain; while the remainder were in California, then a Mexican province, comprising not only our sister state of that name, but also Utah, Nevada, and other barren parts. New Mexico, another province of our neighbor nation, took in Arizona.

Up to the year 1847, no white man had made a permanent home in the desolate region reaching for hundreds of miles, leagues upon leagues, in every direction, from the sterile shores of the Great Salt Lake, the Dead sea of America. A few wandering mountaineers, living in lonely log forts with Indian wives, baiting the bear, trapping the beaver, and fur-trading between the Rocky mountains and the military posts on the far-away frontier, were the only civilized dwellers in the midst of these silent solitudes. Just how civilized they were, some of my hearers will be able to remember. The last company of California-bound emigrants for the season of 1846 - the ill-fated Donner party - after passing the Wasatch mountains and crossing the desert south and west of the lake, had perished miserably in the early snows at the eastern base of the Sierras.

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