Gove County KS Archives History - Books .....Fremont In Gove County 1930 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ks/ksfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@gmail.com July 22, 2005, 6:08 pm Book Title: History Of Gove County, Kansas CHAPTER III FREMONT IN GOVE COUNTY John C. Fremont, soldier, explorer and statesman, first candidate of the Republican party for president and familiarly known as the "Pathfinder of the Rockies," made three expeditions to the unexplored regions of western North America between the years 1842-48. At this time the frontier settlements reached only to the Missouri river but the territory of the United States extended westward to the Rocky Mountains and, in the northwest, to the Pacific Ocean. The expeditions of Lewis and Clark in 1804 and Pike in 1805 had given only a vague and imperfect idea of this vast region; so in 1842 Fremont, then a lieutenant in the regular army, was sent out with an exploring party to find out more about the country and the Mexican possessions south and west of it which a strong party in the United States had already determined should be annexed to the States. Fremont's first trip was up the Republican river to the mountains and back by way of the Platte. This expedition, while very interesting, has nothing to do with our history. In the following year he set out again, his instructions being to explore the mountain passes, cross the mountains and go on to California, and to return by some different route. This was one of the greatest exploring expeditions ever made in the history of the world. He started from Kansas City May 29, 1843, and, thirteen months later, having in the meantime crossed the mountains and the desert, penetrated to the Pacific, laid out roughly the route which the first great transcontinental railway followed a quarter of a century later, explored the grandest mountain region in North America and the sources of several great rivers—we find him on July 1, 1844, on his return, at Bent's Fort of the present city of Las Animas, Colorado. We will now let Fremont tell the story in his own words. His report is accompanied by an excellent map and is addressed to his commanding officer, the chief of the Corps of Topographical Engineers: "On the 5th we resumed our journey down the Arkansas and encamped about 20 miles below the fort. Agreeable to your instructions which required me to complete as far as practicable our examination of the Kansas, I left at this encampment the Arkansas river, taking a northeasterly direction across the elevated dividing grounds which separate that river from the waters of the Platte. On the 7th we crossed a large stream about forty yards wide and one or two feet deep, flowing with a lively current on a sandy bed. The discolored and muddy appearance of the water indicated that it proceeded from recent rains, and we are inclined to consider this a branch of the Smoky Hill river, though possibly it may be the Pawnee fork of the Arkansas." The map shows that this stream was the Big Sandy which falls into the Arkansas about twenty-five miles west of the Kansas line. Fremont's route here was through the counties of Bent, Kiowa and Cheyenne in Colorado, and it was in the latter county that he struck both the Big Sandy and the Smoky. Kit Carson, the celebrated scout, was a member of Fremont's little party of sixteen horsemen, and he passed very close to or maybe crossed the site of the town of Kit Carson named in his honor. But let us listen to Fremont: "Beyond this stream we traveled over high and level prairies, halting at small ponds and holes of water, and using for our fires the bois de vache,* the country being destitute of timber. On the evening of the 8th we encamped in a cottonwood grove on the banks of a sandy stream where there was water in holes sufficient for the camp. Here several hollows or dry creeks with sandy beds met together, forming the head of a stream which afterward proved to be the Smoky Hill fork of the Kansas river." *Note 3. Fremont's map shows that this camp was made in Colorado about twenty miles west of the Kansas line—July 8, 1844. "As we traveled down the valley water gathered rapidly in .the sandy bed from many small tributaries; and at evening it had become a handsome stream fifty to eighty feet in width, with a lively current in small channels, the water being principally dispersed among quicksands. Gradually enlarging, in a few days march it became a river eighty yards in breadth, wooded with occasional growths of cottonwood. Our road was generally over level uplands bordering the river, which were closely covered with a sward of buffalo grass." Fremont's map shows his camp on the 9th to- have been in Wallace county, Kansas, about eight miles east of the Colorado line. On the 10th he camped somewhere in the neighborhood of the present town of Wallace, and here they stopped over for a day to hunt buffalo. The camp on the 12th was somewhere east of Russell Springs. On the 13th of July he entered Gove county and camped that night somewhere east of Jerome near the mouth of Plum Creek. On the 14th he camped between the Smoky and the mouth of Indian Creek in Larrabee township, not far from Alanthus. But let us let Fremont tell it: "On the 10th we entered again the buffalo range where we had found those animals so abundant on our outward journey, and halted for a day among numerous bands in order to make a provision of meat sufficient to carry us to the frontier. "A few days afterward we were encamped in a pleasant evening on a high river prairie, the stream being less than a hundred yards broad. During the night we had a succession of thunder storms with heavy and continuous rain, and toward morning the water suddenly burst over the banks, flooding the bottom and becoming a large river five or six hundred yards in breadth. The darkness of the night and incessant rain had concealed from the guard the rise of the water; and the river broke into the camp so suddenly that the baggage was instantly covered and all our perishable collections almost utterly ruined and the hard labor of many months destroyed in a moment." Now the question arises, did this disaster happen to Fremont within the limits of Gove county? Fremont says it was "a few days afterwards" from the hunt of the 11th. His last camp in Gove county was on the 14th. What did Fremont mean by "a few days?" The term is delightfully indefinite. But till some evidence is brought forward to disprove it I shall claim that it was in Gove county that Fremont encountered the storm that broke up his camp. The conformation of the river bottom in the neighborhood of Alanthus is such that it might easily have happened there. The banks of the river are low and it takes no great rise to put the water over them and cause it to spread out over the bottom the "five or six hundred yards in breadth" mentioned by Fremont. Such a thing has happened frequently within historic times. The Fremont expedition proceeded down the river and on the last day of July reached "the little town of Kansas on the banks of the Missouri river"—now Kansas City. From there it went by boat to St. Louis where the party was disbanded. The next year this indefatigable explorer was off again on a third expedition more famous than the others, in which he was to again penetrate to the Pacific coast, and, war having broken out, drive the Mexicans from California and eventually return to Washington as the first senator from the new state of California and a candidate for the presidency. But as he went out this time by the Santa Fe Trail and never appeared again along the Smoky his last expedition has no place in our history. Additional Comments: History of Gove County, Kansas by W. P. Harrington Gove City, Kan. 1930 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ks/gove/history/1930/historyo/fremonti5ms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/ksfiles/ File size: 8.2 Kb