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Several explorers visited Routt county in the early 1800s. Captain Benjamen L. <br />• E. Bonneville came into the region in 1826. Dr. Fredrick Wislizenius, traveling on <br />a botanizing expedition for the American Fur Co., visited Fort Davy Crockett in <br />1839. E. Willard Smith visited the Fort in 1840 and found it still active; Smith had <br />been given an expedition to the 'Nest as a graduation present from his father and <br />made his way to Brown's Park via North park and the Little Snake River. His party <br />was alert to the dangers of Indians and encountered Shoshoni, Sioux, and Ute during <br />his travels (Smith 1955). <br />Thomas J. Farnham and a party of four, guided by the trapper Kelly,.came <br />through the country in 1839, through The Gore Mountains via Red Dirt Creek, Gore <br />Peak, to Service Creek, the Yampa River, and on To Fort Davy Crockett, with no <br />trails to guide them. At least two accounts of this journey exist, the diary of <br />Farnham himself (Farnham 1841) and that of Obadiah Oakley (Oakley 1955), a <br />member of the party. Oakley's account is sketchy; Farnham's is more complete and <br />replete with eloquent 19th century prose. Both accounts suffer from lack of detail, <br />but it seems possible that their route might have taken them through Egeria Park to <br />the Yampa River and thence downstream to Steamboat Springs. Farnham's guide, <br />Kelly, had first come to the country in 1827 with the American Fur Co., and the <br />• party had stayed oT a stockade Kelly had constructed to defend against Utes while <br />he nursed a trapper back To health. On his return visit, Kelly complained, <br />Now, the mountains are so poor that he would stand a <br />right good chance of starving, if he were obliged To hang up <br />here for seven days. The game is all driven out. No place for <br />a white man now. .More danger then, to be sure; but more <br />beaver too; and plenty of grease about the buffalo ribs. Ah! <br />Those were the good times, but a white man has no business <br />here (Farnham 1841:100). <br />Wislizenius and Smith must have echoed those sentiments when they noted the area <br />was of little consequence (Aihearn 1976). <br />Farnham was particularly impressed with the country northwest of Craig. He <br />wrote: <br />We had been traveling the last five days in a westerly <br />course; and as the river (Yampa) continued in that direction, <br />we left it to see it na more, I would humbly hope, till the dews <br />of heaven shall cause this region of deserts to blossom and ripen <br />info something more nutritive Than wild wormwood (sage) and <br />~J <br />2.8-f5 <br />