of their journals record smoke rising from high hills and the surrounding mountains. In 1826, Peter Skene Ogden and his Snake River brigade of beaver trappers were the first Euro-Americans to note the City of Rocks. Having few beaver, the area was ignored until 1843, when growing streams of wagons began flowing through the area in the summer. California Trail After many attempts to find a wagon route to California early California settlers like Joseph B. Chiles and mountain men such as Joseph R. Walker found the route up the Raft River, through the City of Rocks, over Granite Pass and down a series of streams like Goose Creek and Thousand Springs to the Humboldt River. From the junction of the Humboldt near today's Wells, Nevada they could follow the Humboldt west to the Sierra Nevada (U.S.) and on to California. Both Chiles, Walker and later John C. Fremont led settlers over this route. Later wagon parties seldom used guides but followed the tracks of the early pioneer's wagons or the wagons in front of them. By 1850 so many people were on the trail that it was often like a long traveling village crawling its way to California. Newspapers and independent publishers in the east or mid-west often published emigrant "guides" that could be bought for little money from several different authors by 1850. The City of Rocks and the nearby Granite Pass (Idaho) marked roughly half way to California for the emigrants and their loaded wagons. By 1846, some emigrants headed for Oregon's Willamette Valley also used this route as part of the Applegate Trail. This rugged cutoff was little used in later years. In 1848 Samuel J. Hensley, a pioneer that accompanied Joseph B. Chiles in 1842, pioneered the Salt Lake Cutoff from Salt Lake City north of the Great Salt Lake when he traveled east while returning to Missouri. The Salt Lake cutoff rejoined the main California Trail near the City of Rocks. Settlers using the Salt Lake Cutoff traveled about the same number of miles as settlers going by way of Fort Hall and west along the Snake River valley route. In 1852, some 52,000 people passed through the City of Rocks on their way to join the California Gold Rush. When the California Trail was first opened in 1843, Granite Pass, near City of Rocks provided the pass that allowed an "easy" connection with