THE AMERICAN BISONS. 119 
Respecting its former occurrence in Eastern Oregon, Professor O. C. 
Marsh, under date of New Haven, February 7, 1875, writes me as follows: 
“The most western point at which I have myself observed remains of the 
buffalo was in 1873, on Willow Creek, Eastern Oregon, among the foot- 
hills of the eastern side of the Blue Mountains. This is about latitude 44°. 
The bones were perfectly characteristic, although nearly decomposed.” 
The former existence of the buffalo in the Great Salt Lake Valley is es- 
tablished by the occurrence of its remains there, in a still good state of 
preservation, as well as by the testimony of those who have seen them 
there. Along the railroad leading from Ogden City to Salt Lake City I 
examined, in September, 1871, numbers of skulls in a nearly perfect state 
of preservation, which had been exposed in throwing up the road-bed across 
the marshes, a few miles north of Salt Lake City. I also saw a few on the 
terraces north and west of Ogden City, but generally in a disintegrated con- 
dition, as were all that I saw which had not been buried in the recent deposits 
about the Great Salt Lake. Iwas also informed that there is a tradition 
among the Indians of this region that the buffaloes were almost entirely 
exterminated by deep snows many years since. Mr. E. D. Mecham, of 
North Ogden, a reliable and intelligent hunter and trapper of nearly forty 
years’ experience in the Rocky Mountains, and at one time a partner of 
the celebrated Joseph Bridger, informed me that few had been seen west 
of the great Wahsatch range of mountains for the last thirty years, but 
that he had seen their weathered skulls as far west as the Sierra Nevada 
Mountains.* In 1836, according to Mr. Mecham, there were many buffaloes 
in Salt Lake Valley, which were nearly all destroyed by deep snow about 
1837, when, according to the reports of mountaineers and Indians, the snow 
fell to the depth of ten feet on a level. The few buffaloes that escaped 
starvation during this severe winter are said to have soon after disappeared. 
Mr. Henry Gannet, astronomer of Dr. Hayden’s Survey, informs me that 
the Mormon Danite, “ Bill” Hickman, claims to have killed the last buffa- 
loes in Salt Lake Valley about 1838. How long the buffalo inhabited the 
Basin of the Great Salt Lake, it is of course now impossible to determine, 
but it seems probable that their occupation must date back to a remote 
* I was informed by several persons, whom I met in the Salt’ Lake Valley, that they had seen skulls 
of buffaloes as far west as the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. These persons were un- 
known to each other, and their accounts were wholly distinct in respect to date and locality, and hence 
seem all the more entitled to credence. 
