Utah

Visit Emigrant Trail Park in Lake Point, Utah to view an original mid-1800s California Trail swale. Swales are broad, linear areas of sunken ground. While ruts mark the passage of wheels, swales mark the passage of large numbers of animal pulled vehicles, such as the wagons used on the California Trail. Learn more about the Hasting's Cutoff at this site.

Big Mountain Pass provided emigrants their first happy glimpse of the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. But reaching the valley required a hair-raising descent: wagons, with high centers of gravity, could not switchback down unimproved side-hill slopes for fear of toppling over and crashing down the mountainside. One of the highest points on the three trails, Big Mountain Pass, presented quite a challenge to travelers. Enjoy the view from this spot. Hiking trails are available.

For several years, emigrants on their way to California corralled their cattle and camped here during their stay in Salt Lake City. Later, the livestock pens were moved outside of the city. The 1894 City and County Building occupies the site today, and a monument commemorating the Mormon pioneers is located at the northwest corner of the square.

This Is the Place Heritage Park, near the location where Brigham Young first surveyed the valley in July 1847, represents the Mormon arrival. But as the City of the Saints grew from a rustic frontier village to a bustling territorial capital, many California-bound travelers paused here for a layover to rest, re-supply, or spend the winter. The Pony Express descended the canyon and went through town, too, carrying mail to a station on Main Street.

Echo Canyon Road evolved from an Indian trail into a wagon road, an early automobile highway (the Old Lincoln Highway), and a federal highway (U.S.-30). Today it is a narrow, winding frontage road. Proceed slowly and be prepared to stop along the road shoulder to view the historical features described in the entries below. Many of these historic features are on private land; please observe them from the public right-of-way.

The Steamboat Rocks (Echo Canyon), a series of geological formations that protrude into the canyon like a row of great ships at dock, were another emigrant landmark. They were called by other names, as well, including The Great Eastern and Noah’s Ark. Southwest of Steamboat Rocks is a meadow where Brigham Young’s 1847 company and later emigrants camped.

The Hanging Rock Pony Express Station (Echo Canyon), also called Halfway Station, was located near a spring about halfway down the canyon. Nothing remains of the relay station but a pony express marker post standing in a trowel-like wagon swale marks it’s approximate location. The "hanging rock" itself a small natural bridge is just around the curve to the south. The area was an immigrant campground. 

The Weber Station (Echo, UT) began as a settler’s isolated log cabin and blacksmith shop in 1854 and later served as a stage stop and Pony Express home station. A granite memorial commemorating the station (nothing remains of the building itself) is at a turnout on the right at odometer mile 11.3. The site is also marked with Summit County’s brown tour sign No. 17 and with a silver-colored Pony Express marker post.

Echo Canyon is a natural conduit through the Wasatch Mountains, used for thousands of years by wildlife and native people migrating between the Rockies and the Great Basin. Once discovered by mountain men in the early 1800s, the 24-mile passage eventually became a thoroughfare for pack trains, commercial and emigrant wagons, Forty-niner brigades, military columns, handcart processions, the Pony Express, the Overland Stage, and the transcontinental telegraph.

Mormon militiamen, fearing an attack on Salt Lake City by the U.S. Army, built the low rubble walls above the emigrant road in 1857. Before modern highways were built, this segment of Echo Canyon was narrow, forcing wagon traffic to travel single-file. For the Mormon militia, this seemed a strategic location to stop or delay approaching federal troops.