| OCR Text |
Show A SHORT LOOK AT CONTROVERSY OVER FORT ROBIDOUX LOCATION LOCA-TION According to A. Reed Morrill, from the Utah State Historical Society Quarterly published for January, April 1941, the Robidoux Post, was located in the vicinity of the present White Rocks Indian School and settlement. settle-ment. The Robidoux Post was often called Fort Uinta or Fort Wintey. The Fort is considered to be among some of the first in the northern part of the state. It was intersected by early ear-ly travel routes, traversed travers-ed by fur trapper, trader, missionary and explorer. It was brought out in the article that Morrill expressed the fact when actual whereabout of the Fort was being researched research-ed the then present day Indians dropped their artifacts ar-tifacts to confuse the researcher. First through Utah's Uintah Basin was the Catholic missionary, Father Escalante in 1776. But of course this only by written record. It is obvious ob-vious to historians generally the published records indicate only a small fraction of the early travelers through the region. Mountain men were here before and after Father Escalante; it is just the free trappers did not keep journals and accounts. Antoine Robidoux came to the valley through his employment with H. Ashley as part of Ashley's Rocky Mountain Fur trappers. In fact there are indications leading to 1 the idea that Robidoux was in the Basin one year prior to Ashley's trip into the region. It is believed that no later than 1824, Robidoux erected the fort which bore his name, sometimes called Fort Uinta or Fort Wintey from the river on which it was situated. "Denis Julien, 1831" is engraved on a rock wall a few miles below the site of Fort Robidoux, and the Robidoux biographer says Antoine was in the Uinta Basin first in 1831. |
