Clayton's Guide

Clayton's Guide^[1], Clayton's Emigrant Guide^[2], or as when published The Latter-Day Saints' Emigrants' Guide^[2] published by Missouri Republican Steam Power Press, Chambers & Knapp, 1848^[2] was one of a number of very popular guidebooks written to support the westward expansion of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century when organized emigrant wagon trains began to form in large numbers at various river ports on the Missouri River.

Spurred by violent and repressive religious persecution, the Mormon migration west to Utah added two new river boat ports to the palette of jumping off point towns supporting outfitting of settler parties heading westward — Nauvoo, Illinois whose state legislature^{[notes 1]} spurred the Mormon Fathers to call for a migration, then the heart of Mormonisim in the world, and Kanesville in the recently organized Iowa Territory. for teamsters and emigrant parties interested in traveling from the settled and comparatively civilized eastern United States east of the Missouri River through the Midwest (most territory technically still belonged by treaty to Amerindian tribes) to one of the far west U.S. possessions following the various northern plains Emigrant Trails joining or spinning off from the 1830s fur trader opened Oregon Trail^{[notes 2]} The Emigrant Trails became increasing less relevant from the 1869 completion of the transcontinental railway, especially after the 1880s-1890s, but the well explored, relatively safe roads and their guide were still in popular use into the 1910s, and again, at least along local stretches, saw significant traffic during the dust bowl disaster spawned migration from the midwest in the 1930s.

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The Latter-Day Saints' Emigrants' Guide: Being a Table of Distances, Showing all the Springs, Creeks, Rivers, Hills, Mountains, Camping Places, and all Other Notable Places, From Council Bluffs, to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake .... The Whole Route Having Been Carefully Measured by a Roadometer, and Distance from Point to Point, in English Miles, Accurately Shown. St. Louis: Mo. Republican Steam Power Press, Chambers & Knapp, 1848.

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The Saints' Emigrant Guide specifically was a detailed guide to waypoints along the full length of the Mormon Trail expressly for and developed from the Mormon migration to the Mexican territory of Utah where church fathers hoped to practice their religion unmolested, a migration which began after Illinois achieved statehood with the dispatch of a trickle of advance parties heading out along the newly opened Mormon road early in 1846, and which became an recommended, well organized, fully church sanctioned movement in 1847 despite the outbreak of the Mexican-American war — one result of which was this guidebook published in 1848 in Saint Louis. ^{[notes 3]}

Clayton's Guide was one of the best published containing odometer measured distances both from trailheads, but distances to destinations, allowing parties to better plan where they could camp, find animal fodder, find water, and pace their travel. In addition to a number of accurate sextant measured co-ordinates, Clayton's Guide also published many elevations taken at landmarks along the way.

The Oregon Trail and California Trails shared Missouri River wagon train organization and outfitting towns, and traveled the south bank of the Platte and North Platte Rivers until the Mormon trail along the north banks of the same rivers, joined in a common Migrant Trail road at Fort John

Footnotes and references

Notes

1. ^ The early Latter Day Saint leaders taught that Polygamy was the greatest societal friction producer  — among several typical outre church members' behaviors like their obnoxious evangelism, their communal (communistic or socialistic) mindset (and actions)  — at the heart of the LDS churches frictions with the 1840s gentiles of more traditional christian faiths. The political battles locally in Illinois and Ohio, the U.S. Congress' organization of the new state of Iowa by acts which explicitly included language prohibiting polygamy in the state and in the unorganized rump territory remnant.
2. ^ The Oregon Trail, beginning from its first exploitation around 1833 as a better trapper's mule train trail after the rendezvous of 1832 (A more difficult trail had been used from the time of the Astorians and by the fur trade in the 1820s through Idaho before discovery of the South Pass) from the east leading to the 'promised lands' of the fantastically rich farm lands of the Oregon Country and the lucrative fur trapping resources of the Columbia basin's beaver populated streams, was finally by 1841, widened all the way to the Columbia River banks at The Dalles in Oregon allowing traffic by both wagon trains and professional teamster run commercial freight hauling wagons — even as the North American fur trade was dying under the twin assaults of the Silk trade supplanting it's primary uses and the over exploitation of the fur bearing American beaver populations (before large parties of settlers could enter the region, whose ownership was a point of international dispute).
3. ^ With the company and battalion organized church sponsored groups sent out ahead, the Mormon Trail soon became an arguably better route than the south bank Oregon Trail whose roads had been in use for wagon commerce and steadily improved by the Fur Company teamster teams from the mid-1830s as the river crossings and campsite were engineered by improvement parties, in places ferrys were constructed and manned, and supply posts — 'Mormon Trading Posts', were established, supplied, and operated by the church communal funds. and which passes through the rougher, less hospitable terrain along the north (vice the south) bank of the Platte River and North Platte River after the Missouri was crossed.

References

1. ^ "Pacific Springs (on the Oregon Trail)". http://wyoshpo.state.wy.us/trailsdemo/pacificsprings.htm. Retrieved 2010-11-28. 
2. ^ ^{a b c} Archived online by Brigham Young University. "Clayton's Emigrant Guide". http://net.lib.byu.edu/imaging/into/pco1847/Clayton%27s/Claytonfs.html. Retrieved 2010-11-28. 

External links

• Clayton's Guide (BYU ebook)