Desert Between the Mountains: Mormons, Miners, Padres, Mountain Men, and the Opening of the Great Basin, 1772-1869

by Michael S. Durham

Book Overview

On July 24, 1847, a band of Mormon pioneers who had crossed the Great Plains and hauled their wagons over the Rocky Mountains descended into the Salt Lake valley. They settled alongside the Indians there in an immense, self-contained region covering more than 220,000 square miles aptly named the Great Basin because its lakes and rivers have no outlet to the sea. Within ten years of their arrival, the Mormons had established nineteen communities...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806131861
• ISBN13: 9780806131863
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

This book makes the Great Basin come alive!

As someone interested in that region of our country, I found this book compelling . . . and it gave me a new understanding of the Mormons' struggle to find their homeland. I would recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in Mormons or in that area of that country. The story is page-turning, not a dry history at all.