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Updated: May 9, 2025
It is a toilsome walk, 20 miles of the distance being across a sand desert. Occasionally we have to wade the river, crossing it back and forth. Toward evening we cross several beautiful streams, tributaries of the Uinta, and pass through pine groves and meadows, arriving at the reservation just at dusk.
Southwest of the Fort, at the distance of four or five miles, a singular butte, the top of which is as level as the floor of a ball-room, rises to the height of eight hundred feet above the valley of Black's Fork, and commands a view of the entire broad plateau between the Wind River and the Uinta and Wahsatch Ranges.
Towards evening, after a long pull, we neared the reservation of the Uinta Utes, and saw a few Indians camped away from the river. Here, again, were the cottonwood bottoms, banked by the barren, gravelly hills. We had been informed that there was a settlement called Ouray, some distance down the river, and we were anxious to reach it before night.
Passing over the Wasatch by way of Spanish Fork, he again entered the valley of the Colorado on the head-waters of the Uinta, pausing briefly at Roubidoux's Fort on Uinta River. Soon after he left, the fort and its occupants were annihilated by the Utes.
The Green, as has been explained in preceding pages, was known as far as the Uinta Mountains, and here and there at widely separated points on down to about Gunnison Valley. But there were long gaps, and below Gunnison Crossing as far as the Grand Wash the knowledge of the canyons as already pointed out was vague in the extreme.
But the river was sluggish, with devious and twisting channels, and it was dark when we finally landed at the Ouray ferry. Ouray, Utah, consisted of a large store to supply the wants of the Indians and ranchers, a small hotel, and a few dwellings. The agency proper was located some distance up the Uinta River, which stream emptied into the Green, just below Ouray.
Its topmost springs are far north and east in Wyoming and Colorado, on the snowy Wind River, Front, Park, and Sawatch ranges, dividing the two ocean waters, and the Elk, Wasatch, Uinta, and innumerable spurs streaked with streams, made famous by early explorers and hunters.
We had a canteen in which our powder was carried, but the powder was nearly all gone so we emptied it and used the canteen to carry water in. Early Monday morning we loaded ourselves, mostly with jerked mule and wolf, leaving many useful things behind, bid adieu to Fort Uinta and took up our line of march rather reluctantly.
It will be remembered that the course of the river from Flaming Gorge to Beehive Point is in a southerly direction and at right angles to the Uinta Mountains, and cuts into the range until it reaches a point within five miles of the crest, where it turns to the east and pursues a course not quite parallel to the trend of the range, but crosses the axis slowly in a direction a little south of east.
Desolation is a fine chasm, whose walls are 2400 feet. The view on page 206 gives an excellent idea of their average character. The mouth of the Uinta River, not far above its head, is 4670 feet above the sea, while Gunnison Valley is 4083, showing a descent for the river, in Desolation and Gray, together of 587 feet. Desolation is full of rapids, some of them bad.
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