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- _. 5 Meadows they travelled south along Ash Creek (Escalante called it the Rio del Pilar) to the Virgin River.. hliera, cartographer for Escalante, named the Virgin the Rio Sulfureo de las Piramides because of the hot, sulfurous springs entering the river along the.Hurricane Fault (Crampton 1972). The fathers encountered some Parusis (or Parrusits, now Southern Paiutes) along Ash Creek near present Toquerville. They raised squash and corn arith the aid of irrigation. The fathers, informed of a deep canyon to the south, climbed the Hurricane Cliffs and traversed the Arizona Strip to the Crossing of the Fathers (in Glen Canyon) and returned to Santa Fe (Bolton 1950, Cline 1963, Crampton 1972, Hafen and Hafen 1954, Woodbury 1950). The first tivhite, non-Spanish exploring party to visit the Virgin River basin was probably the Jedediah Strong Smith parties of 1826 and 1827. Smith, an explorer and part owner of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, led an expedition from~the Great Salt lake to find new trapping grounds and possibly a route to the Pacific. He followed the Dominguez-Escalante route south along Ash Creek to the Virgin River (he named it the Adams River in honor of President John Quincy Adams). On his 1826 trip he travelled the Virgin south through the defile in the Beaver Dam Mountains (=the Virgin River Gorge or Arizona Narrows). In 1827 he skirted the narrows to the west by traveling up the Santa Clara River (Smith's Corn Creek) and over a low pass (where present highway 91 crosses) and down Beaver Dam Creek (Smith's Pautch Creek) to the Virgin River and on to California via the Colorado and Mojave Rivers (Auerbach 1941, Cline 1.963, Hafen and Hafen ]954, Morgan 1953, Woodbury 1950).