Interstate 15 (I-15) is a major Interstate Highway in the Western United States, running through Southern California and the Intermountain West. I-15 begins near the Mexican border in San Diego County and stretches north to Alberta, Canada, passing through the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, and Montana. The Interstate serves the cities of San Diego, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Idaho Falls, and Great Falls. It also passes close to the urban areas of Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside counties, California. The stretches of I-15 in Idaho, Utah, and Arizona have been designated as the "Veterans Memorial Highway". The southern end is at a junction with I-8 and State Route 15 (SR 15) in San Diego, and the northern end is at a connection with Alberta Highway 4 at the Sweetgrass–Coutts Border Crossing.
The Mojave River is an intermittent river in the eastern San Bernardino Mountains and the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, California, United States. Most of its flow is underground, while its surface channels remain dry most of the time, except for the headwaters and several bedrock gorges in the lower reaches.
The Mormon Battalion was the only religious unit in United States military history in federal service, recruited solely from one religious body and having a religious title as the unit designation. The volunteers served from July 1846 to July 1847 during the Mexican–American War of 1846–1848. The battalion was a volunteer unit of between 534 and 559 Latter-day Saint men, led by Mormon company officers commanded by regular U.S. Army officers. During its service, the battalion made a grueling march of nearly 1,950 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to San Diego, California.
Las Vegas Boulevard is a major road in Clark County, Nevada, United States, best known for the Las Vegas Strip portion of the road and its casinos. Formerly carrying U.S. Route 91 (US 91), which had been the main highway between Los Angeles, California and Salt Lake City, Utah, it has been bypassed by Interstate 15 and serves mainly local traffic with some sections designated State Route 604.
The settlement of Las Vegas, Nevada was founded in 1905 after the opening of a railroad that linked Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. The stopover attracted some farmers to the area, and fresh water was piped in to the settlement. In 1911, the town was incorporated as part of the newly founded Clark County. Urbanization took off in 1931 when work started on the Boulder Dam, bringing a huge influx of young male workers, for whom theaters and casinos were built, largely by the Mafia. Electricity from the dam also enabled the building of many new hotels along the Strip. The arrival of Howard Hughes in 1966 did much to offset mob influence and helped turn Las Vegas into more of a family tourist center, now classified as a Mega resort.
The Old Spanish Trail is a historical trade route that connected the northern New Mexico settlements of Santa Fe, New Mexico with those of Los Angeles, California and southern California. Approximately 700 mi (1,100 km) long, the trail ran through areas of high mountains, arid deserts, and deep canyons. It is considered one of the most arduous of all trade routes ever established in the United States. Explored, in part, by Spanish explorers as early as the late 16th century, the trail was extensively used by traders with pack trains from about 1830 until the mid-1850s. The area was part of Mexico from Mexican independence in 1821 to the Mexican Cession to the United States in 1848.
The Arrowhead Trail or Arrowhead Highway was the first all-weather road in the Western United States that connected Los Angeles, California with Salt Lake City, Utah by way of Las Vegas, Nevada. Built primarily during the auto trails period of the 1910s, prior to the establishment of the United States Numbered Highway System, the road was replaced in 1926 by U.S. Route 91 (US 91) and subsequently Interstate 15 (I-15). Small portions of the route in California, Nevada and Utah are sometimes still referred to by the name, or as Arrow Highway.
Mormon Station State Historic Park is a state park in downtown Genoa, Nevada, interpreting the site of the first permanent nonnative settlement in Nevada. Mormon Station was originally settled by Mormon pioneers and served as a respite for travelers on the Carson Route of the California Trail. The park offers artifacts and exhibits about the station's history housed in a replica of the 1851 trading post stockade which burned down in 1910.
Kyle Ranch or Kiel Ranch, was one of the earliest ranches established in Nevada's Las Vegas Valley. Founded by Conrad Kiel in 1875, today the location of the former ranch is in North Las Vegas, where the city maintains the remnants of the site as the "Kiel Ranch Historic Park." The original adobe structure, one of the oldest buildings in Las Vegas, a wooden shed known as the "Doll House," and the cemetery are all that remain after loss of buildings through fire and neglect. Also within the park is an artesian well and a small wetlands, a reminder of what drew travelers and early settlers to the area. Presently the ranch's location is memorialized with Nevada Historical Marker number 224.
The Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad was a rail company in California, Nevada, and Utah in the United States, that completed and operated a railway line between its namesake cities, via Las Vegas, Nevada. Incorporated in Utah in 1901 as the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, the line was largely the brainchild of William Andrews Clark, a Montana mining baron and United States Senator. Clark enlisted the help of Utah's U.S. Senator Thomas Kearns, mining magnate and newspaper man, to ensure the success of the line through Utah. Construction of the railroad's main line was completed in 1905. Company shareholders adopted the LA&SL name in 1916. The railway was also known by its official nickname, "The Salt Lake Route", and was sometimes informally referred to as "The Clark Road". The tracks are still in use by the modern Union Pacific Railroad, as the Cima, Caliente, Sharp, and Lynndyl Subdivisions.
The Mojave Road, also known as Old Government Road, is a historic route and present day dirt road across what is now the Mojave National Preserve in the Mojave Desert in the United States. This rough road stretched 147 miles (237 km) from Beale's Crossing, to Fork of the Road location along the north bank of the Mojave River where the old Mojave Road split off from the route of the Old Spanish Trail/Mormon Road.
The Salt Spring Hills are a low mountain range in the Mojave Desert, in northern San Bernardino County, California. They are just outside the southeastern corner of Death Valley National Park, southeast of the Saddle Peak Hills. The road between Shoshone and Baker passes through the hills.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Nevada refers to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members in Nevada. Nevada has the 7th most church members of any U.S. state, and the fifth-highest percentage of members. The LDS Church is the 2nd largest denomination in Nevada, behind the Roman Catholic Church.
Claude Nelson Warren was a California Desert anthropologist and specialist in early humans in the Far West and was instrumental in defining the San Dieguito and La Jolla cultural complexes. His Ph.D. dissertation proved that Native Americans lived in the San Diego coastal area 10,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought. He also had an interest in the history of anthropology.
In the history of the American frontier, pioneers built overland trails throughout the 19th century, especially between 1840 and 1847 as an alternative to sea and railroad transport. These immigrants began to settle much of North America west of the Great Plains as part of the mass overland migrations of the mid-19th century. Settlers emigrating from the eastern United States did so with various motives, among them religious persecution and economic incentives, to move from their homes to destinations further west via routes such as the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails. After the end of the Mexican–American War in 1849, vast new American conquests again encouraged mass immigration. Legislation like the Donation Land Claim Act and significant events like the California Gold Rush further encouraged settlers to travel overland to the west.
Octavius Decatur "O. D." Gass was an American prospector, businessman, and politician. A four term member of the Arizona Territorial Legislature, he was active in the early history of Las Vegas, Nevada, and the creation of Pah-Ute County, Arizona Territory.
Camp Cady was a U.S. Army Camp, on the Mojave Road near the Mojave River in the Mojave Desert, located about 20 miles east of modern-day Barstow, California in San Bernardino County, at an elevation of 1690 feet. Camp Cady was named after Major Albemarle Cady, 6th Infantry Regiment, who was a friend of Carleton and commander at Fort Yuma in 1860.
Bitter Spring is a spring within the Fort Irwin National Training Center in San Bernardino County, California. It lies at an elevation of 1355 feet and is located in a valley between the Soda Mountains to the east, the Tiefort Mountains to the northwest, Alvord Mountain to the southwest and Cronese Mountains to the south and southeast.
Mormon Road, also known to the 49ers as the Southern Route, of the California Trail in the Western United States, was a seasonal wagon road pioneered by a Mormon party from Salt Lake City, Utah led by Jefferson Hunt, that followed the route of Spanish explorers and the Old Spanish Trail across southwestern Utah, northwestern Arizona, southern Nevada and the Mojave Desert of California to Los Angeles in 1847. From 1855, it became a military and commercial wagon route between California and Utah, called the Los Angeles – Salt Lake Road. In later decades this route was variously called the "Old Mormon Road", the "Old Southern Road", or the "Immigrant Road" in California. In Utah, Arizona and Nevada it was known as the "California Road".
The Mojave Road Los Angeles was designated a California Historic Landmark on March 19, 1985. It runs from Drum Barracks in Los Angeles County to the Colorado River in San Bernardino County, California.
