The Jordan River should be named the Provo River, not the river that now bears that name; and Jim Bridger probably wasn't really the first white man to see the Great Salt Lake.
These are some of the revelations of "The Lost Map of 1836."
Fred R. Gowans, professor of history at Brigham Young University, has spent years studying the obscure writings and the 1836 map of Warren A. Ferris, an early Western explorer.
"What could have been?" is how Gowans describes his conclusions, and he'll be presenting them today at 6:30 p.m., at the Gore Business Building, Westminster College, 1840 S. 1300 East, as the keynote address at the Utah State Historical Society 2001 annual meeting. The talk is free and open to the public.
According to Gowans, this 1836 map is some three decades ahead of its time in the accurate detail of rivers, lakes and place names. He said it looks like a college-level map, while other maps of the day appear like elementary-school productions.
"The map would have had some impact on those who came west, especially those who went to California," Gowans said, if it had been available to the public in the 1830s to the 1860s.
For example, he said the map contains 234 place names and today's Jordan River is clearly named the Provo River on the map. That means mountain man Etienne Provost (after whom the Provo River, city and canyon are named) and his men clearly had their Indian battle in the fall of 1824 on today's Jordan River, not today's Provo River, where most historians assume it took place.
Provost did not name either river, but today's Jordan River was apparently known by his name in recognition of his visit by the time of Ferris' trip. The river now known as the Provo River doesn't appear on the map under any name.
The eventual domino effect today of "if" the Jordan had its original Provo River name is that Provo city would be called something else. And would today's West Jordan and South Jordan be "West Provo" and "South Provo?"
No one can be sure, but Gowans is certain that another offshoot of the river's misnomer is that it also means that Provost and his men were the first white explorers to see the Great Salt Lake in 1824. The way history reads now, Jim Bridger floated down the Bear River and saw the lake first in the spring of 1825.
The Ferris map also accurately shows no outlet from the Great Salt Lake to the Pacific Ocean. Other maps didn't show that until 10 years later after John C. Fremont's expedition.
Gowans said the Ferris map still has a few mistakes, but nothing critically important. In more conjecture, he believes Brigham Young would have been even better prepared for the pioneer trip west if he had the Ferris map, instead of just Fremont's journals. However, he feels the map would have made little difference to the Donner-Reed Party because they ignored the warnings of earlier explorers anyway.
Ferris spent 5 1/2 years in the West, from 1830 to 1835. He kept a daily diary and gathered intricate geographical detail. When he returned to Buffalo, N.Y., in late 1835, he produced a map of the West, covering from Missouri to central Nevada on the east-west and from the Grand Canyon to Yellowstone on the north-south.
Submitting the map and some writings to a publisher in 1836, Ferris left home again for another adventure. However, the publisher rejected and returned his map and writings because there was already a similar project in the works. From there, the map was lost until 1940 when it was republished in crude form. It was reprinted in more detail in 1982.
The original map has since been donated to Brigham Young University and it, along with some Ferris letters, reside there. BYU published 2,000 copies of the Ferris maps two years ago and has now sold about half.
E-MAIL: lynn@desnews.com