1857 Utah expedition

"I have one hundred and forty-four horses, and have lost one hundred and thirty-four. Most of the loss has occurred much this side of South Pass, in comparatively moderate weather. It has been of starvation. The earth has a no more lifeless, treeless, grassless desert; it contains scarcely a wolf to glut itself on the hundreds of dead and frozen animals which for thirty miles nearly block the road with abandoned and shattered property, they mark, perhaps, beyond example in history, the steps of an advancing army with the horrors of a disastrous retreat." --Philip St. George Cooke

The report by Philip St. George Cooke of his 1857 march in brutal winter conditions from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to Fort Bridger, Wyoming is available in a Congressional publication of 1858 (Thirty-fifth Congress, first session, House of Representatives, Ex. Doc. No. 71) titled The Utah expedition.



Cooke's gritty narrative also circulated widely in contemporary newspapers. The New York Times (January 29, 1858), published the entire account, aptly described in another column as "terse and graphic." On February 4, 1858 the Pittsfield Sun gave extensive quotes from Cooke's report in an article reprinted from the Boston Post under the heading, "Col. Cook's March to Join the Utah Army." Elsewhere headlines read "Terrible Sufferings."

Pittsfield Sun - February 4, 1858