Rather than follow the northern route through the Rocky Mountains along the Platte River favored by John C. Frémont and most Americans migrating to Oregon territory, Young apparently envisioned that the Mormons would travel down the Mississippi River and up the Arkansas River until they intersected with the Santa Fe Trail at the Great Bend of the Arkansas River. By roughly following the northern branch of the Santa Fe Trail to Bent’s Fort and then following the old Spanish trail that Zebulon Pike used to explore the headwaters of the Arkansas River and crossing over the continental divide to the headwaters of the Colorado River, they would journey about five hundred miles by land. (See Frémont, Report of the Exploring Expedition, 47–48, 128–129; Walker, Wagonmasters, 20–21, 23–25; and Pike, Account of Expeditions, 157–177.)

Frémont, John C. Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843–’44. Washington DC: Gales and Seaton, 1845.

Walker, Henry Pickering. The Wagonmasters: High Plains Freighting from the Earliest Days of the Santa Fe Trail to 1880. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966.

Pike, Zebulon M. An Account of Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi, and through the Western Parts of Louisiana, to the Sources of the Arkansaw, Kans, La Platte, and Pierre Jaun, Rivers, Performed by Order of the Government of the United States during the Years 1805, 1806, and 1807. And a Tour through the Interior Parts of New Spain, When Conducted through These Provinces, by Order of the Captain-General, in the Year 1807. Philadelphia: C. and A. Conrad, 1810.

Three days earlier Brigham Young discussed with Hosea Stout a similar plan of “settling the interior of the country between the head waters of the Arkansas and the head waters of the Colerado of the West.” (Stout, Journal, 19 Mar. 1845.)

Stout, Hosea. Journal, Oct. 1844–May 1845. CHL. MS 1910.