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cultural history |
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native americans |
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Shoshone-Bannock tribes hunted the buffalo that once roamed in the City of Rocks area and gathered the nuts of the pinyon pine trees. The return of horses to the Americas in the 16th century and swelling European immigration disrupted the Shoshone-Bannock homelands and way of life. They grew to resent the intruders but could do little to stop them. Most emigrants on the California Trail saw no Native Americans, but some of their journals record smoke signals rising from high hills and the surrounding mountains.
In 1826, Peter Skene Ogden and his Snake River brigade of beaver trappers were the
first non-Native Americans to note the City of Rocks. Having few beaver, the area
was ignored until 1843, when growing summer streams of wagons began flowing through
the area.
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the california trail |
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Early emigrant groups were guided by experienced mountain men such as Joseph B. Chiles and Joseph R. Walker. Later wagon parties followed the trails themselves, perhaps with the help of diary accounts of previous emigrants. The City of Rocks marked progress west for the emigrants and, for their loaded wagons, a mountain passage over nearby Granite Pass. By 1846, emigrants headed for Oregon's Willamette Valley also used this route as part of the Applegate Trail. In 1848 the Mormon Battalion opened the trail from Granite Pass via emigrant Canyon to Salt Lake. In 1852, some 52,000 people passed through the City of Rocks on their way to the California goldfields. When the trails opened in the 1840's, Granite Pass was in Mexico and less than a mile from Oregon Territory, which included the City of Rocks. After 1850 the area became part of Utah Territory, and in 1872 the Idaho-Utah boundary survey placed the City of Rocks in Idaho Territory. With completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the overland wagon routes began to pass into history. However, wagons saw continued use on regional supply routes that spread out from the railroad lines.
John Halley's stage route connected the railroad at Kelton, Utah with Idaho's mining hub of Boise and supplied the early economic developmnt of Idaho, which won statehood in 1890. The Kelton stage route passed through the City of Rocks, with a stage station set up near the junction of the old California Trail and the Salt Lake Alternate. Settlers began to homestead the City of Rocks area in the late 1800s. Dryland farming declined during the drought years of the 1920s and 30s, but ranching survived. Livestock grazing began with early wagon use of the area in the mid-1800s and continues today.
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