Hastings Cutoff
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The Hastings Cutoff was an alternative route for westward emigrants to travel to California, as proposed by Lansford Hastings in The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California. The ill-fated Donner Par
Hastings Cutoff marker near Pilot Peak
Great Salt Lake Desert
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The Great Salt Lake Desert is a large dry lake in northern Utah, United States, between the Great Salt Lake and the Nevada border. It is a subregion of the larger Great Basin Desert, and noted for whi
Hastings Cutoff
…St. Francisco, by the route just described. The cutoff left the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger in Wyoming, passed through the Wasatch Range, across the Great Salt Lake Desert, an 80-mile nearly water-less drive, looped around the Ruby Mountains, and rejoined the California Trail about seven miles west of modern Elko (also…
The desert's white salt is depicted in Utah's northwest.
Middle Spring in the Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge at the northeast corner of the Fish Springs Range
View of the desert from an airplane
Great Salt Lake Desert as seen from Pilot Peak