|
A river, the
"Buenaventura," indicated upon a map furnished me by the
Hudson's Bay Company as breaking through the mountains, was
found not to exist.
John Charles Frémont , April 1891 edition
of Century Magazine.
"An inteligent man with whom I boarded had a map which
showed these rivers (one was the Buenaventura) to be large,
and he advised me to take tools along to make canoes, so
that...we could descend one of these rivers to the Pacific."
John Bidwell, Barttleson-Bidwell Party, 1841.
"Until the first expedition by Frémont in 1842,
geographers did not recognize the existence of any basin on
that part of the continent: the Buenaventura River was drawn
as the outlet of the Great Salt Lake, which was then
designated Lake Timpanogos, and which had been quite
accurately placed by Humboldt. Frémont sought the
Buenaventura long and anxiously on his journey southward
from Oregon, in the winter of 1843--1844, and in his efforts
to extricate himself through the Sierra Nevada , suffered
the greatest possible hardships." Lorin Blodget,
Climatology of the United States, 1857.
 If
you have arrived here from a web search, please see entire
article.
|
 Governor
McGlaughlan (Hudson's Bay Company, Fort
Vancouver) believed in the existance of this
river
[Buenaventura],
and made out a conjectural manuscript map to
show its place and course. Frémont
believed in it, and his plan was to reach it
before the dead of winter and hybernate upon
it.
Thomas Hart Benton,
Thirty Years View.
There is a large number of water courses
descending from this mountain on either
side--those on the east stretching out into the
plain, and those on the west flow generally in a
straight course until they empty into the
Pacific; but in no place is there a river course
through the mountain.
Zenas Leonard,
Bonneville-Walker Expedition, June
1833.
|
|
 November
18, 1843; The Dalles.
From this lake
[Klamath, "Clamet" on
the map at right] our course was
intended to be about southeast, to a reported
lake called Mary's
[the sink of the
Humboldt River--then Mary's
River], at some days journey into
the Great Basin; and thence, still on southeast,
to the reputed
Buenaventura
River
[map below
right], which has had a place in
so many maps, and countenanced the belief of the
existence of a great river from the Rocky
Mountains to the bay of San Francisco.
December 11, 1843; Klamath Marsh.
In our journey across the desert,
Mary's Lake, and the
famous
Buenaventura
River, were two points on
which I relied to recruit the animals and repose
the party. Forming, agreeably to the best maps
in my possession, a connected water line from
the Rocky mountains to the Pacific ocean. I felt
no other anxiety than to pass safely across the
intervening desert to the banks of the
Buenaventura, , where, in the softer climate of
a more southern latitude, our horses might find
grass to sustain them, and ourselves be
sheltered from the rigors of winter and from the
inhospitable desert.
|
|
 January
3, 1844; Mud Lake.
We had reached and run over the position
where, according to the best maps in my
possession, we should have found
Mary's Lake or river.
We were evidently on the verge of the desert
which had been reported to us; and the
appearance of the country was so forbidding,
that I was afraid to enter it, and determined to
bear away to the southward, keeping close along
the mountains, in the full expectation of
reaching the
Buenaventura
River.
Note: Frémont's
position was too far west. The following year,
he would follow this river, and, unfortunately,
rename it the Humboldt.
January 17, 1844; Pyramid Lake/Truckee
River.
With every stream I now expected to see the
great
Buenaventura;
and Carson hurried eagerly to search, on every
one we reached, for beaver cuttings, which he
always maintained we should find only on waters
that ran to the Pacific; and the absence of such
signs was to him a sure indication that the
water had no outlet from the great
basin.
January 23, 1844; East Fork of Walker
River"...we were sanguine to find
here a branch of the
Buenaventura;
but were again disappointed, finding it an
inland water, on which we encamped after a day's
journey of 24 miles."
|
|
January 26, 1844; Bridgeport, CA.
The river
[East Fork of the
Walker River] is fifty to
eighty feet wide, with a lively current, and
very clear water. It forked a little above our
camp, one of its branches coming directly from
the south. At its head appeared to be a handsome
pass; and from the neighboring heights we could
see, beyond, a comparatively low and open
country, which was supposed to form the valley
of the
Buenaventura.
 January
27, 1844; West Fork of Walker River near Sonora
Junction.
Continuing along a narrow meadow, we
reached, in a few miles, the gate of the pass,
where there was a narrow strip of prairie about
50 yards wide, between walls of granite rock. On
either side rose the mountains, forming on the
left a rugged mass, or nucleus, wholly covered
with deep snow, presenting a glittering and icy
surface. At the time we supposed this to be the
point into which they were gathered between the
two great rivers, and from which the waters
flowed off to the bay........
NOTE: Here he refers to the
Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. His
erronious lunar determination of longitude
the previous night (121° 49' 52") was
the actual longitude of the confluence of
these rivers. This led him to believe that he
might have actually passed through the
mountains via the Buenaventura. But in
a few miles, the West Walker turned to the
right, and flowed into the Great Basin.
We then immediately struck a stream,
which gathered itself rapidly, and descended
quick; and the valley did not preserve the open
character of the other side, appearing below to
form a cañon. We therefore climbed one of
the peaks on the right, leaving our horses
below; but we were so much shut up that we did
not obtain an extensive view, and what we saw
was not very satisfactory, and awakened
considerable doubt. The valley of the stream
pursued a northwesterly direction, appearing
below to turn sharply to the right, beyond which
further view was cut off.
January 29, 1844; Antelope Valley, West
Fork of Walker River.
Several Indians appeared on the
hill-side, reconnoitring the camp, and were
induced to come in; others came in during the
afternoon; and in the evening we held a council.
The Indians immediately made it clear that the
waters on which we were also belonged to the
Great Basin, in the edge of which we had been
since the 17th of December; and it became
evident that we had still the great ridge on the
left to cross before we could reach the Pacific
waters.
[The Indians] appeared to have a
confused idea, from report, of whites who lived
on the other side of the mountain; and once,
they told us, about two years ago a party of
twelve men like ourselves had ascended their
river, and crossed to the other waters. They
pointed out to us where they had crossed; but
then, they said, it was summer time; But now it
would be impossible. I believe that this was a
party led by Mr. Chiles, one of the only two men
whom I know to have passed through the
California mountains from the interior of the
Basin--Walker being the other; and both were
engaged upwards of twenty days, in the summer
time, in getting over. Chiles's destination was
the Bay of San Francisco, to which he descended
by the Stanislaus River; and Walker subsequently
informed me that, like myself, descending to the
sourthward on a more eastern line, day after day
he was searching for the
Buenaventura,
thinking that he had found it with every new
stream, until, like me, he abandoned all idea of
its existence, and, turning abruptly to the
right, crossed the great chain. These were both
western men, animated with the spirit of
exploratory enterprise which characterizes that
people.
|
|
February 21, 1844; ridge between Carson
Pass and Strawberry.
Shortly afterwards we heard the roll of
thunder, and looking towards the valley, found
it all enveloped in a thunder storm. For us, as
connected with the idea of summer, it had a
singular charm; and we watched its progress with
excited feelings until nearly sunset, when the
sky cleared off brightly, and we saw a shining
line of water directing its course towards
another, a broader and larger sheet. We knew
that these could be no other than the Sacramento
and the bay of San Francisco; but, after our
long wandering in rugged mountains, where so
frequently we had met with disappointments, and
where the crossing of every ridge displayed some
unknown lake or river, we were yet almost afraid
to believe that we were at last to escape into
the genial country of which we had heard so many
glowing descriptions , and we dreaded again to
find some vast interior lake, whose bitter
waters would bring us disappointment. On the
southern shore of what appeared to be the bay
could be traced the gleaming line where entered
another large stream; and again the
Buenaventura
rose up in our minds.
 April
14, 1844; leaving the southern end of the San
Joaquin Valley.
We here left the waters of the bay of San
Francisco, and, though forced upon them contrary
to my intentions, I cannot regret the necessity
which occasioned the deviation. It made me well
acquainted with the great range of the Sierra
Nevada of Alta California, and showed me that
this broad and elevated snowey ridge was a
continuation of the Cascade Range of Oregon,
between which and the ocean there is still
another and a a lower range, parallel to the
former and to the coast, and which may be called
the Coast Range. It also made me well acquainted
with the basin of the San Francisco bay, and
with the two pretty rivers and their valleys,
(the Sacramento and San Joaquin,) which are
tributary to that bay; and cleared up some
points in geography on which error had long
prevailed. It had been constantly presented, as
I have already stated, that the bay of San
Francisco opened far into the interior, by some
river coming down from the base of the Rocky
Mountains, and upon which supposed stream the
name of Rio
Buenaventura had been
bestowed. Our observations of the Sierra Nevada,
in the long distance from the head of the
Sacramento
[Klamath]
to the head of the San Joaquin, and of the
valley below it, which collects all the waters
of the San Francisco bay, show that this neither
is nor can be the case. No river from the
interior does, or can, cross the Sierra
Nevada--itself more lofty than the Rocky
Mountains; and as to the
Buenaventura,
the mouth of which seen on the coast gave the
idea and the name of the reputed river, it is in
fact a small stream [Salinas River] of
no consequence, not only below the Sierra
Nevada, but below the Coast Range--taking its
rise within half a degree of the ocean, running
parallel to it for about two degrees, and then
falling into the Pacific near Monterey. There is
no opening from the bay of San Francisco into
the interior of the continent.
 Washington,
D.C., early 1845:
The president [Polk] seemed for the
moment sceptical.....Like the Secretary [of
the Navy] he found me "young," and said
something of the "impulsiveness of young men,"
and was not at all satisfied in his own mind
that those three rivers [including the
Buenavntura] were not running there as laid
down [on previous maps].
|
|
