Mormon Road

Mormon Road 1847–1855

The wagon road later called the Mormon Road was first traveled by a Mormon party with pack horses, led by Jefferson Hunt, in the fall and winter of 1847–1848, seeking supplies for the newly founded Salt Lake City. Discharged veterans of the Mormon Battalion, following Hunt's route back to Utah in 1848, took the first wagons over the old pack trail, confirming that a wagon route could be made from Salt Lake City southwest through southwestern Utah to link to the Old Spanish Trail at Parowan.

From there, the route followed the old pack trail southwest to the Virgin River, then used John Fremont's cutoff from the Virgin River at Halfway Wash, crossing southern Nevada over arid country between the Muddy River and Las Vegas Springs, then over the Spring Mountains at Mountain Springs and the Nopah Range through Emigrant Pass to Resting Springs in Southern California. It then followed the Old Spanish Trail southwest along the Amargosa River to Salt Spring, across the Mojave Desert to Bitter Spring and the Mojave River at Fork of the Road with the Mohave Trail, then upstream to the crossing at its lower narrows.

From there it crossed the remaining desert to Cajon Summit on Baldy Mesa, descended past Cajon Pass through Crowder Canyon and the lower Cajon Canyon to the San Bernardino Valley, crossed the valley to the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino, and followed the Sonora Road west to Los Angeles.

Los Angeles – Salt Lake Road 1855–1905

By the middle of 1855, the Mormon Road had been upgraded and realigned into a wagon route serving both military and commercial purposes, linking Salt Lake City, Utah, with Los Angeles, California. In Cajon Pass, California funded a shift from the Coyote Canyon path to the Sanford Cutoff and continued improvements up to the state line. In Utah Territory, a federal engineer designed Leach’s Cutoff between Cedar City and Mountain Meadow, trimming 15 miles off the stretch from Johnson Springs (now Enoch) to the meadow and bypassing the older course through Cedar Spring, Antelope Spring, Pyute Creek, and Road Springs.

Another reroute moved the road between Cove Creek and the Beaver River crossing at modern Beaver, three miles upstream from the old crossing, which later became the site of Greenville in 1861. This change included a major detour from the new Beaver River crossing to Muley Point, cutting distance and dodging a tough six-mile stretch up California Hollow and over a steep Black Mountains ridge—terrain better suited to Old Spanish Trail mule trains than wagons.

The steepest part, called Doubleup Hollow, hints at the practice of hitching extra teams to haul wagons up the worst climb. The new path ran through gentler ground in Nevershine Hollow, crossed Beaver Ridge, and entered Fremont Wash canyon, where it met the original road; Interstate 15 now follows this alignment. The road soon became a winter-only route for wagon trains hauling goods shipped by sea from San Francisco to San Pedro and then to Los Angeles.

These trains departed Los Angeles (and later San Bernardino) for Salt Lake City in late fall and returned by spring’s end, breaking Utah’s isolation when Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountain passes were snowed in. In California, it was called the Los Angeles–Salt Lake Road or Salt Lake Road; in Utah and Nevada, it was known as the California Road.