From Springs to Sin City: John C. Fremont (1813–1890) | America 250
This excerpt from "The First 100: Portraits of the Men and Women Who Shaped Las Vegas" is presented with permission from the publisher. Copies of the book are available for purchase at LasVegasAdvisor.com.
By A.D. Hopkins
Discoveries are rarely the work of one person, and no case shows this more dearly than the debate over who "discovered" Las Vegas for settlers of European ancestry.
There was Antonio Armijo, a New Mexico merchant who in the winter of 1829-1830 organized a trading expedition to California. There was Rafael Rivera, Armijo's scout, who probably camped in the valley before his commander. But it was John C. Fremont who literally put Las Vegas on the map. And because more than 20,000 copies of his map were immediately published and distributed to anybody who wanted one, Las Vegas became an important stop on the way West.
It is an accident of history that the Las Vegas route became famous as "The Old Spanish Trail." The accident involves one of the most remarkable adventurers of Western history — John C. Fremont.
Fremont was the son of Anne Beverly Whiting, a Virginia aristocrat whose family married her off at 17 to a rich man of 62. In 1808, when Anne was 29 and her husband 74, she fell in love with a Frenchman who taught languages and fencing. They fled Richmond together in 1810 and had a son, Fremont, in 1813. He became a brilliant scholar, yet was so often truant that he was expelled from college.
In 1837 the federal government decided to survey the Cherokee country of Georgia and the Carolinas. Here Fremont learned to camp and to pack a mule. He then was appointed to the U.S. Topographical Corps, and was a member of Joseph Nicolas Nicollet's expedition to map the country between the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
Back in Washington by 1840, Fremont traded his stories of adventure for invitations and introductions, including an introduction to Senator Thomas Hart Benton. Fremont fell in love with Benton's 16-year-old daughter, Jessie, and she married him in October 1841.
Benton was a leading exponent of opening the West. He knew more about it than almost anybody in Washington. Fremont, however, had the charisma and courage to put Benton's dream into practice. And Fremont had the timing. The United States was ready to finance an expedition to map the Oregon Trail. In the spring of 1842, Fremont made his way to St. Louis and began assembling the first expedition that would bear his name.
The expedition beat its way across the Sierra Nevada
to Sutter's Fort ... Fremont then headed south
to strike the Spanish Trail toward Santa Fe.
In May 1843, Fremont's second expedition was to map the area between the Rockies and the Pacific Ocean. The men carried breechloading rifles-advanced weapons for the time-and also dragged along a small howitzer. Fremont pushed through what is now Utah and into Oregon. Then he turned south seeking the Rio Buenaventura, Klamath Lake, and Mary's Lake, all "described" by earlier explorers. He found Klamath Lake but the other two, it turned out, do not exist.
By January 1844, Fremont had abandoned the howitzer in heavy snowdrifts in Northern Nevada. History buffs and treasure hunters have been looking for the "Fremont Cannon" ever since. Today, a replica of it is a revolving trophy for football games between UNLV and UNR.
The expedition beat its way across the Sierra Nevada to Sutter's Fort, arriving with only 33 of the 67 horses and mules that started the trek. Fremont then headed south to strike the Spanish Trail toward Santa Fe.
Fremont described the march in his memoirs: "Forced on south by a desert on one hand, and a mountain range on the other; guided by a civilized Indian, attended by two wild ones from the Sierra; a Chinook from the Columbia; and our own mixture of American, French, German — all armed; four or five languages heard at once; above a hundred horses and mules, half wild; American, Spanish, and Indian dresses and equipments intermingle — such was our composition. Our march was a sort of procession. Scouts ahead, and on the flanks; a front and rear division; the pack animals, baggage, and horned cattle in the centre; and the whole stretching a quarter of a mile along our dreary path."
Now that Fremont was far off the main route to New Mexico, [his companion] Fuentes guided him along the alternate. The camp Fremont's diary described on May 1 was probably today's Mountain Spring. They made but 12 miles the next day, camping in the region of Blue Diamond or Oak Creek Canyon. And on May 3: "After a day's journey of 18 miles, in a northeasterly direction, we encamped in the midst of another very large basin, at a camping ground called Las Vegas — a term which the Spaniards use to signify fertile or marshy plains. … Two narrow streams of clear water, four or five feet deep, gush suddenly with a quick current, from two singularly large springs; these, and other waters of the basin, pass out in a gap to the eastward. The taste of the water is good, but rather too warm to be agreeable; the temperature being 71 in the one and 73 in the other. They, however, afford a delightful bathing place."
Fremont wrote little more about the future Sin City.
"From the ashes of his campfire have sprung cities."
- Senator Thomas Hart Benton
Of course, Fremont would be remembered for a good deal more. For instance, he helped provoke the Bear Flag Rebellion, which culminated in the United States' acquisition of California in the Mexican War.
Arriving in California in 1846, on what was supposed to be another scientific expedition, he was ordered to leave by the Mexican government. Instead, he took up a position on a hilltop, daring the Mexicans to attack. Fremont instigated several attacks by armed settlers and then took command of Sutter's Fort.
California would soon fall. Fremont was court-martialed for incidents growing out of his high-handed conduct. President James Polk canceled his dismissal from the Army, but Fremont resigned anyway and continued to explore with private backing.
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln made Fremont a general commanding the Department of the West. Fremont promptly issued his own emancipation proclamation in August 1861. It applied only in Missouri, but the threat of such a proclamation was the strongest hole card Lincoln held in trying to end the war, and he didn't appreciate Fremont playing it without asking him. He watered down Fremont's order and eventually transferred him East.
Fremont had become wealthy by purchasing real estate in California's early days, but by 1870 he had lost it all in litigation over mining rights and a failed railroad venture. The family's poverty was relieved somewhat by Jessie's emergence as a popular author. Fremont was appointed governor of the Arizona Territory from 1878 until 1881. His last home was in Los Angeles.
On a visit to New York City in July 1890, Fremont fell ill with peritonitis, possibly resulting from a ruptured appendix, and quickly died of it. At his own orders he was buried in a plain coffin and a civilian suit.
History adopted as his epitaph one short phrase attributed to Benton: "From the ashes of his campfire have sprung cities."
