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• 6 <br />Smith thus linked the routes of Esca]ante and Garcia [the <br />Arze-Garcia party in 1813 established a~trail between the Green River <br />of the Colorado River basin and the Sevier River of the Great Basin <br />(C]ine 1963, Hafen and Hafen 1954)]. This opened what ]ater became <br />known as the Oid Spanish Trail (Crampton ]972). <br />The Virgin River section of the trail was travelled in 1829 by <br />Peter Skene Ogden (in search of beaver) and Antonio Armijo (leading <br />a trading party from Santa Fe to California). Armijo returned over <br />the same route in 1834 thus marking the opening of regular trade <br />between PJew Plexico and California (Crampton 1972, Hafen and Hafen <br />1954). Armijo and his successors used the names Rio de la Virgen, <br />Rio Santa Clara, La Verkin and Las Vegas. They probably originated <br />with the Spanish explorers and have since been Anglicized (Leigh 1961). <br />William Wolfskill and George C. Yount led a beaver trapping party <br />from Taos to California in 1830=31. They discovered a shortcut west <br />from Cedar Valley to hiountain Meadows (the famed resting place) and <br />down the Santa Clara to join Jed Smith's route over the Beaver Dam <br />Mountains. Woifskill is considered the first person to travel the <br />Old Spanish Trail in its entirety (Hafen and Hafen 1954, Woodbury <br />1950). <br />U.S. Army Captain John C. Fremont was sent to the West in 1843 <br />to explore and map the largely unknown interior. He travelled from <br />Kansas westward to San Francisco, south to Los Angeles, then northeast <br />via the Old Spanish Trail through Las Vegas to the valley of the <br />Virgin River (May 1844). Fremont described the Rio Virgen as <br />