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VineyardHistory

Lore · 1776 to 1844

The River to the Sea

For seventy years, the maps showed a river running from our lake to the Pacific. It was never there.

Map of John C. Frémont's 1842 to 1844 expeditions, drawn by Charles Preuss. Frémont's 1844 return route passes Utah Lake, shown south of the Great Salt Lake. This copy carries handwritten notes by George Gibbs adding Jedediah Smith's routes.

Map of John C. Frémont's 1842 to 1844 expeditions, drawn by Charles Preuss. Frémont's 1844 return route passes Utah Lake, shown south of the Great Salt Lake. This copy carries handwritten notes by George Gibbs adding Jedediah Smith's routes.John C. Frémont and Charles Preuss, annotated by George Gibbs; World Digital Library, Library of Congress, Public domain

Drawn by
Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco, 1778
Name on the maps
Río de San Buenaventura
Disproved by
John C. Frémont, 1843 to 1844
Real outlet
The Jordan River, to the Great Salt Lake

When the friars came through in 1776, their mapmaker, Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco, drew Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake as one body of water pinched in the middle. The Timpanogos had told them about a river that ran north to a lake of salty water, and Miera seems to have pictured that water as a way west.

Miera also named the Green River the Río de San Buenaventura and drew it running off into the desert. Other mapmakers copied his map, and then improved on it with imagination. By the early 1800s, popular maps showed the Buenaventura, or a river out of Lake Timpanogos, running all the way to San Francisco Bay or the Pacific near Monterey.

It was the river everyone wanted to exist. It would have been the easy road to the coast. Fur trappers looked for it. In the 1840s John C. Frémont crossed the Great Basin half expecting to find it around the next bend.

Frémont finally settled the question in 1843 and 1844. There was no river to the sea. The waters of the Great Basin, Utah Lake included, never reach the ocean. They stay here.

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The Legend of Timpanogos

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