Tyler Hill [00:00:05] A couple hundred million years ago, a bunch of dinosaurs died, and their skeletons were preserved, turned to stone.

Noel Black [00:00:13] Then, about 40 million years ago, a bunch of explosive volcanic activity led to superheated molten minerals forcing their way through the rock where they eventually cooled and solidified.

Tyler Hill [00:00:25] In 1858, 168 years ago, a human being would discover those mineral deposits, gold, and hordes of people would flock to the place we now call Colorado in search of wealth and a better life.

Noel Black [00:00:38] Only a handful would find what they were looking for, and many of them would die. Others would realize that the real money to be made in the gold rush was in selling things to these prospectors. Villages developed, then towns, then cities.

Tyler Hill [00:00:52] In 1870, 156 years ago, a human being would discover one of those petrified dinosaurs, and in the following years, an almost comically absurd feud between rival paleontologists would unfold as they competed to be the first to discover a new species.

Noel Black [00:01:09] Their findings would come to define Hollywood's vision of dinosaurs, and thus the worlds to this day.

Tyler Hill [00:01:14] Sure, the story of Colorado is largely one of extraction and greed, but it's also one of hope and fresh starts. It's a place where we can project our dreams for a better world.

Noel Black [00:01:26] But here's the thing that's easy to forget. None of this was inevitable.

Tyler Hill [00:01:31] When the dinosaurs died, when the gold solidified, when those things were first dug out of the ground, nobody could have imagined what Colorado would become.

Noel Black [00:01:39] On August 1st, 2026, Colorado celebrates the 150th anniversary of joining the United States in 1876, almost exactly 100 years after the American Revolution.

Tyler Hill [00:01:52] Looking back from the present, it's easy to take for granted that things were always going to turn out this way.

Noel Black [00:01:57] But what we've always been most interested in at Lost Highways is what got us here.

Tyler Hill [00:02:02] In this special three-part series, we'll look back at those 150 years, 250 really, and ask ourselves, what happens to our view of ourselves as Coloradans and Americans when we change the starting point?

Noel Black [00:02:15] We find here.

Tyler Hill [00:02:16] How do we sell what we sell?

Noel Black [00:02:17] Found here. And who gets to benefit from what we found and sold here. From History Colorado Studios, this is Lost Highways, dispatches from the shadows of the Rocky Mountains. I'm Noel.

Tyler Hill [00:02:30] And I'm Tyler Hill. This episode, Expedition 1776, the journey of Dominguez and Escalante. We look back on the first Spanish venture into what's currently known as Colorado, which happened in 1776 shortly after the American Revolution started in the Northeast.

Noel Black [00:02:47] The Dominguez and Escalante expedition is far from the only starting point.

Tyler Hill [00:02:51] But it is a pretty solid one, and it's a starting point that marks the beginning of a shift from an indigenous landscape to a European-dominated one. Not unlike the events happening in the American Northeast around the same time.

Noel Black [00:03:04] We'll uncover how their journey paved the way for Colorado's statehood 100 years later and how it shaped the place we call home.

Tyler Hill [00:03:26] When you hear the number 17-7-

Noel Black [00:03:28] 96. What comes to mind?

Tyler Hill [00:03:40] At the same time as all that was going down in the Northeast, things in the American West were different, as were the visions of how people thought the future would play out.

Speaker 3 [00:03:49] We tend to think about Colorado as it relates to the United States. And the story of the United State is most often when told from East to West.

Noel Black [00:03:58] This is Nick Sines, professor of history at Adam State University and contributor to the History Colorado exhibit, Expedition 1776, The Journey of Dominguez and Escalante.

Speaker 3 [00:04:09] On the one hand, we have these 13 colonies, and those colonies turn into an independent country. That country gradually moves westward, first to the Mississippi, and then with the Louisiana Purchase to the mountains, and then with Mexico all the way to the Pacific Ocean. And so Colorado kind of sits in this westward movement narrative, and the United States kind of arrives there. But there's another story of the expansion of European colonization and settlement that moves from south to north. And that's where the story of Dominguez-Escalante is really important in understanding alternative pathways that could have played out.

Tyler Hill [00:04:54] To understand why the Dominguez and Escalante expedition is so crucial to Colorado's history, first we have to understand the context in which it took place.

Noel Black [00:05:03] For one thing, less than 100 years prior, New Mexico had just seen the Pueblo Revolt, which was the most successful revolt of indigenous peoples in North America to that point.

Tyler Hill [00:05:12] And Nick Sines says there are several other often overlooked geopolitical events happening in North America in 1776 that are important to understand.

Speaker 3 [00:05:21] Spain has just come out of the Seven Years War. This is a major global conflict that involved all of the major European players, but significantly for the purposes of Spain, it means that France has been knocked out of North America and the Spanish Empire now shares a border with the British Empire along the Mississippi River. It's also prepping for what it imagines will be the next great conflict with Great Britain directly. And so Spain needs to have a better grasp on its North American interior.

Noel Black [00:05:53] Gaining more control over the interior of North America is one of the main reasons for the Spanish to undertake the expedition.

Speaker 3 [00:05:59] I think it's important to remember that so much of the focus of colonial activity in what we now today think of as Mexico was around mining. And so in the north of Mexico City, there were a number of key mines. They were in many ways the bedrock upon which the entire Spanish Empire. And North America was built. And so New Mexico emerges as a key to that story in so far as it's somewhat of a buffer between the expansion of other European colonial powers, but the the British into that area, right?

Tyler Hill [00:06:36] The Spanish want to protect those mines from the French and British at all costs.

Speaker 3 [00:06:40] And so knowing better what exists north of New Mexico is a way to ensure that there's not potentially some surprise that might reckon with the balance of power and the wealth of Colombo, Mexico.

Noel Black [00:06:53] Then there's the fact that this clash of empires is also heating up in the Pacific Ocean.

Tyler Hill [00:06:58] British, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese are all making inroads in the Atlantic as well, compounding on a long maritime rivalry between the Spanish and British in particular.

Noel Black [00:07:08] In other words, the Spanish Empire is feeling pressure from all sides.

Tyler Hill [00:07:14] With the seven years war over, those two powers now share a very, very long international border. And both countries are building up their fighting power.

Speaker 3 [00:07:23] But this enterprise of venturing into the interior of North America is part of that project to better prepare for and protect the empire from coming conflict.

Tyler Hill [00:07:35] Not to mention, in Canada, the British and Spanish are both looking for a northwest passage, a way to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific across North America to make shipping and settlement more efficient.

Noel Black [00:07:47] And the Spanish were beginning to lose their grip on power in the Atlantic after years of naval dominance.

Speaker 3 [00:07:53] There are also really very importantly the russians

Noel Black [00:08:02] Yes, you heard that right, the Russians.

Speaker 3 [00:08:05] The Russians pose a clear and direct threat to the Spanish empire along the Pacific seaboard. In the early part of the 18th century, Peter the Great commissioned a captain by the name of Vitus Baring to go forth and essentially plant the Russian flag in the North Pacific area. And he, through a series of expeditions, arrives in Alaska and establishes a foothold. For the Russians there. The Russians are principally interested in fur trading. The Spanish know the existence of the Russian presence in Alaska, and that is key to understanding why the settlement of California takes place when it does.

Tyler Hill [00:08:52] The Spanish, on maps at least, had claimed California as their territory for generations. But there was just one problem.

Noel Black [00:08:59] Not many of them had actually been there or settled California at all.

Speaker 3 [00:09:03] That's really important for understanding the coming conflict because if the Spanish can put settlers, if they can put guns in presidios, California becomes a sort of bulwark against further expansion of the Russians into more longer settled areas of the Spanish Empire. So California emerges the very late 1760s and 1770s as another sort of protective measure to ensure the continued viability and productivity of those minds in the north of what today we think of as Mexico.

Tyler Hill [00:09:38] Which brings us to the third geopolitical development happening in North America at the time.

Noel Black [00:09:42] All these Europeans are treating this territory as unoccupied land.

Tyler Hill [00:09:47] But you didn't think we were going to do that too, did you?

Speaker 3 [00:09:50] The third major kind of geostrategic realignment that takes place in the middle part of the 18th century is the rise of the Comanche Empire. The Comanches essentially break off of the Shoshone at the turn of the eighteenth century. They are a group who takes up the horse, largely left over from the Spanish abandonment of New Mexico around the time of the Pueblo Revolt in 1680.

Noel Black [00:10:15] With the rise of that equestrian culture, the Comanches expand their territory dramatically on the Great Plains and start migrating south toward New Mexico, where there are, well, more horses.

Tyler Hill [00:10:25] This leads them to make their way to places like Taos, where they're able to trade and raid for horses.

Speaker 3 [00:10:31] It's a very disruptive period of time for indigenous peoples, in addition to Europeans. The Comanche empire is so successful that it essentially becomes this block to the further expansion of the French out of the Mississippi basin into the Great Plains and also effectively renders New Mexico as a kind of satellite because of this demand for horses and the continued raiding of the Comanche on New Mexico. New Mexico is really on the back foot in this time period. It is facing repeated assaults every summer. There are hundreds of Comanches who are attacking small towns and ranches around New Mexico. And so New Mexico really is in a state of almost perpetual siege throughout the 1760s and the 1770s.

Noel Black [00:11:24] The Comanches also keep the Spanish from expanding northwards into what is today Colorado, which means the Spanish really don't know what's even out there beyond Taos and the San Luis Valley.

Speaker 3 [00:11:34] There's been concerns that the Ute who live in that space would be very resistant to the presence of the Spanish. And so the Spanish are very cautious about eventually provoking a Ute conflict and so worries about a kind of simultaneous war between the Spanish and both the Comanche and the Utes.

Tyler Hill [00:11:58] For a long time, the Ute and Comanche had actually been allies, but then...

Speaker 3 [00:12:03] For reasons that aren't entirely clear, around 1750, there is a falling out of sorts between the Ute and the Comanche. The Comanche turned from raiding with the Utes on New Mexico to suddenly actually raiding Ute communities themselves. And so in this realignment, the Uts start looking to the Spanish as potential allies. And that process of alliance-making begins early on through trade.

Noel Black [00:12:32] Not to mention the rumors of silver farther north.

Speaker 3 [00:12:35] That of course piqued the interest of the Spanish. And so the Spanish send the first series of expeditions into Ute country, trying to better understand both that geographic space and also the people that live there.

Noel Black [00:12:49] On July 4th, 1776, two Franciscan priests, Adonacio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante, are set to lead an expedition to do just that. But there's one last minute change of plans. Escalate gets sick.

Tyler Hill [00:13:03] And a few days later, he's asked to give blessings to a group of Spanish soldiers who are heading off to battle the Comanche in the east.

Speaker 3 [00:13:10] On one end of the continent, we have the signing of the Declaration of Independence for the United States. On the other side of the Continent, we have this group of travelers about to set out to better understand the interior of the continental. Up until that point, Spain had claimed on maps, but hadn't really mapped out in any degree. So Spain is prepping for war. It needs to know better what exists on the interior the continent. And so we have The Beginnings. Of the United States, a state that in time will grow to encompass the very space traversed by the Dominguez and Escalante expedition.

Noel Black [00:13:47] The expedition leaves on July 29th instead.

Speaker 3 [00:13:53] A symbolic moment marking the fact that Spain is not going to be the long-term expansionist party in the space, but in time is going to lose out to the Anglo-American front on the other side of the continent.

Tyler Hill [00:14:11] Dominguez was 36, more experienced, a little cranky, and raring to convert as many people as he could.

Noel Black [00:14:18] Escalante was 26 and maybe a little bit naive and idealist. He takes on the role of scribe, documenting the events that are about to unfold.

Speaker 4 [00:14:26] They leave Santa Fe July 29, 1776 on the expedition and there's a team of ten.

Tyler Hill [00:14:32] This is Jeremy Morton, lead exhibit developer of Expedition 1776 at the History Colorado Center. He says that of those eight other people on the expedition, there's one who's the most important to remember.

Speaker 4 [00:14:45] Don Bernardo de Mera y Pacheco, who's the expedition's cartographer, who's actually 63 years old at the time of his departure. So a soldier who's fought the Apache and the Comanche multiple times, but he's also a prolific artist, designing altar pieces throughout New Mexico and paintings that still survive to this day. An astronomer, an engineer. At one point he's in debtor's prison and he does all this while standing under five feet tall, which is an interesting little tidbit we know about him.

Tyler Hill [00:15:24] His primary role on the expedition is to map the territory, and he's pretty good at it.

Speaker 4 [00:15:29] His maps are very accurate, and beyond that, they're very artistic, him being an artist in his own right. So there's a certain beauty in the maps that he creates due to his artistic flair. But at the same time, it establishes an understanding of the American West that's important for the next 25 to 50 years.

Noel Black [00:15:52] Their main goal is to reach Monterey to help establish a Spanish presence in California and to find decent spots for settlement along the way. They're trying to connect the dots of empire.

Tyler Hill [00:16:02] Trying to make some converts, make a name for themselves, and maybe even find some precious metals along the way.

Speaker 4 [00:16:08] For them, they're Franciscan priests, and every person that they're unable to convert to Christianity, they've kind of condemned to eternal hellfire. I think it's easy for us to conflate the idea of colonial goals with Christianity today and discount the concern that people like Dominguez and Escalante might have had converting souls and so on. And it was less of a tool to gain political power over these tribes. That can't also be said for every Spanish person or politician or soldier. Obviously Christianity was also a tool for colonization as well.

Noel Black [00:17:00] It's with all these geopolitical shifts and conflicting goals in mind that the expedition finally sets off.

Speaker 4 [00:17:08] Thank you trapped in maze-like canyons, they wander through granite jagged mountains, they get drenched in rain, they encounter strangers friendly and unfriendly, they get frozen in the nighttime, they they trudge in the face of blizzards and blistering wind until they reach icy rivers with raging rapids and then half starved, they have to swim across The rivers to get home. It's a story like straight out of a movie

Tyler Hill [00:17:41] First, they head north to Abiquiu, the last town under any sort of Spanish

Noel Black [00:17:45] influence on their route. Then they cross over the modern border of Colorado through places we now call Pagosa Springs and Chimney Rock. They pass through Durango.

Speaker 4 [00:17:54] You know, obviously Durango doesn't exist at the time, but he notes in his journal that that's a terrible place to make a city. And now today it's the largest city in that whole.

Noel Black [00:18:07] Shortly thereafter, they're overtaken by two hennissaros, half-indigenous, half-Spanish people forced to work without pay, slaves and everything but name.

Speaker 4 [00:18:16] And they actually must have tracked the party of 10 for two weeks without being noticed because they're not mentioned in Escalante's journal at all. And then two weeks in, all of a sudden they show up at camp. And it's kind of frustrating reading Escalate's journal because he makes a single paragraph mention of this kind of insane thing, these two people being able to track them for that long without being notice. And then presumably once they're out of range. Of their sort of Spanish masters, they're able to say, hey, we wanna join the expedition. And their response from Escalante and presumably Dominguez is more one of annoyance than anger or anything like that. And ultimately they actually say, yeah, sure, like you can come along on the expedition

Tyler Hill [00:19:09] These late additions to the expedition would actually be more important than Dominguez and Escalante realize. Their knowledge of the area would prove invaluable.

Speaker 4 [00:19:18] And then those Henny Saros would play a pretty critical part in their, ultimately their ability to survive and get home.

Noel Black [00:19:27] They press on into what's now Western Colorado.

Speaker 4 [00:19:30] And eventually they do come across a Ute person. And that Ute-person plays a little coy, even claims that he doesn't know where he lives and at least that's what's written in the journal. And so what that tells you is like, oh, they don't want to engage. They have no desire to engage with the Spanish or at least this group of Spanish. But ultimately by offering trade goods and so on, the Ute leads them to an encampment.

Tyler Hill [00:19:58] At the Ute encampment, they're able to trade for some of the supplies they need.

Speaker 4 [00:20:02] But, at the same time, the Ute continually try to deter them from going on. They basically say, hey, if you go west, if you leave this encampment, instead of going back to New Mexico, the Comanche are going to attack and kill you, like, guaranteed.

Noel Black [00:20:23] But Franciscans love a martyrdom story, and the adventuring party is unfazed.

Speaker 4 [00:20:28] They make comments that, you know, they'll need all the tribes in the world couldn't stop us with the protection of our God and so on. So the Ute even sort of, funnily enough, say, okay, well, you can continue on, but can you at least send a note or someone back to New Mexico to tell them that we didn't kill you? And they say, no, we're not going to do that.

Tyler Hill [00:20:54] Another person joins the party, a ute guide.

Speaker 4 [00:20:58] But interestingly enough, in the journal, they refer to the Laguna Ute. And why that's interesting is, you know, Lake Ute, and why Lake Ude is interesting is they're Referring to a sort of mythical lake to the north

Noel Black [00:21:13] These mythical lands are easy for us to discount, but at the time there was a distinct possibility that they could be real.

Speaker 4 [00:21:19] And so they're searching for the land of Tuwaio, the Lake of Coppola, and these are ideas that have come down to them through Indigenous mythology. You know, they hear about these stories of great lakes to the north and wealthy lands and so on, and those are then placed onto maps of the same era. So the fact that they're calling their guide a Laguna Ute indicates that they know that there's a lake with some sort of indigenous tribe nearby, or at least they're very confident of that. And that guide leads them to that lake, which is today modern day Utah Lake. And it is indeed this sort of bountiful lake that's temperate, even in the late fall, early winter, that has so many different animals that Escalante lists off that you could hunt and use for. Fur or meat or different tools and all these things.

Tyler Hill [00:22:20] By the time they reach Utah Lake, winter is quickly approaching.

Speaker 4 [00:22:24] They clearly didn't pack enough supplies for a journey like this, and they're able to get to the lake, and it gives them a chance to sort of recharge and replenish their supplies. So in that sense, I would say they did find the Lake of Coppola. I don't know that there's 100% confirmation, but I think Escalante, Dominguez, Miry, and Pacheco, they probably did believe that they found this sort of mythical Lake of Coppel. There wasn't this fabulous wealth and gold and silver kings and things like that, but there was this sort of bountiful temperate lake.

Noel Black [00:23:04] It's easy to wonder now why they thought they could even do this in the first place.

Speaker 4 [00:23:08] You know, we look at a map and the idea of walking or even riding a horse all the way from Santa Fe to Monterey seems absurd. They're aware that in Monteree there's this huge bay that has a river leading into it, so that river's got to lead to the mountains. So all we got to do, they're thinking, is get to the other side of the mountains, we'll make a boat, we'll hop in a boat. You know? Easy peasy. We'll be in Monterey uh... Before the first snowfall they had no idea of of the great basin area of the united states were every single river or creek creek or stream dries up at a certain point and they had not idea of this year and about a mountain range uh... There's a map from twenty four years later actually that conflates the two conflats the sierra nevadas and the rockies into a single range so So even a quarter of a century later... There's not this clear idea of the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin, and then the Sierra Nevadas.

Tyler Hill [00:24:16] Luckily, the Ute welcomed them with food and replenished their supplies.

Speaker 4 [00:24:20] After Utah Lake, they start heading south and they very quickly run out of supplies again. It's about two, three weeks later and they're talking about being out of supplies and being hungry and starved. And this is when they're hit with, you know, blistering wind and blizzards just all in their face. And they're struggling with the weather. They're struggling with their lack of food. The tempers start to rise. And at one point, one of the team members punches another team member, ironically for not praying with him.

Noel Black [00:25:09] The Ute guide decides the vibes are bad, and he leaves.

Speaker 4 [00:25:13] So for the first time, they're left without a guide that knows the area at all. It exposes how dependent they are on indigenous knowledge as soon as they don't have a guide. There's moments where they chase mirages, there's moments when the horses, for lack of water, break free and run back to previous campsites or places of water. Eventually they're able to come across some Paiute. Tribes people in what would now be considered sort of south central Utah

Tyler Hill [00:25:47] Tensions continue to rise as the Paiutes don't seem particularly interested in providing them with another indigenous guide.

Speaker 4 [00:25:54] The Paiute, they don't want to guide Dominguez and Escalante, and you can speculate as to why that is. But I think there's a connection to be made to slavery in the American Southwest. You know, it wasn't the same as slavery in, in the deep south, in, the Atlantic colonies. But the Paiut were often the target of raids from the Ute, and the Utte would raid the Paiute, capture them, and then sell the Piaute. Into slavery with the Spaniards. So there was this sort of slave economy of the Ute capturing them and then bringing them to New Mexico. So you can imagine when they see Spaniard and potentially Ute approaching them, they're not in any hurry to stay within view, much less help them in any sort of way.

Noel Black [00:26:48] The party forcibly detains two Paiute women in the hopes of acquiring another guide.

Speaker 4 [00:26:53] And they note how afraid the women were, but how surprised they are that they're afraid. And you're like, yeah, like, obviously you just rode up on them on this giant beast with your horse and then you forcibly detained them. Of course they're gonna be terrified.

Tyler Hill [00:27:13] The Paiute reluctantly offered to help.

Speaker 4 [00:27:24] Then they lead them into a sort of narrow canyon, and the second, the horses can't really follow the Paiute runoff. And again, they're sort of left with just sort of vague directions where the Colorado River is. Once they don't have a Paiut guide at all, that's when it becomes most dire. They're running out of water. At one point, they even have to make the decision to eat one of their horses. They eat a porcupine at one point. Any sort of sustenance they could find. At one in the journal Escalante notes state. That they're down to just two slabs of chocolate that they have left.

Noel Black [00:27:58] There's a certain irony to these European colonizers who surely saw themselves as more civilized than the indigenous peoples being so dependent on indigenous knowledge.

Tyler Hill [00:28:07] Their Enlightenment-era tools couldn't save them. They weren't even lost. They had gone off the map entirely.

Speaker 3 [00:28:20] And so Dominguez and Escalante rely throughout their expedition on you guys.

Noel Black [00:28:27] Nick Signs

Speaker 3 [00:28:28] The degree of participation that Utes have in the context of the Dominguez and Escalante expedition is really exceptional and I think it speaks to this pivot that is happening at this point in time with regard to how the state is viewing native peoples and their relative value to this larger project of statecraft. And I think that's important. Because it speaks to the role of rationality and efficiencies coming out of the Enlightenment as part of what it meant to run a very modern for that time period bureaucracy. And so Dominguez is part of this enterprise coming out of the enlightenment trying to quantify measure. And ultimately regulate what had been in place for hundreds of years, but now in the context of the 18th century, using this new knowledge to do it more efficiently.

Tyler Hill [00:29:25] The enlightenment leads to the development of new scientific tools of measurement. Tools that can make accurate and precise projections of the natural world. In other words, tools that can make...

Noel Black [00:29:35] Maps.

Speaker 3 [00:29:36] So if you look at the history of maps over time, one of the things that I think is apparent to any observer is the degree of precision that emerges over time. Spaces that look like islands suddenly become connected to the mainland, rivers start emerging as systems in which you can clearly see how the rise of mountain ranges relates to the orientation of rivers.

Tyler Hill [00:30:03] Dominguez and Escalante have these kinds of tools with them on the expedition, even though they're no match for the indigenous knowledge of the region.

Speaker 3 [00:30:11] So the maps that Mieta Eipacheco makes actually have in the margin the latitude marks. And so he's able to roughly show, you know, this river over here and this mountain range over here. They correspond to this distance relative to this other body on the map. There is this focus on gathering all of this data in the effort of managing a more efficient religious bureaucracy.

Noel Black [00:30:52] The Spanish empire at this time is struggling financially and if they can make better maps, acquire more knowledge, build a better route to California, build a system of missions in California.

Speaker 3 [00:31:02] They can ultimately extract greater wealth from the Americas. Now, that's important as it relates to the Dominguez and Escalante expedition insofar as we could read the expedition into what is now Colorado and other U.S. States. As this effort to get a better handle on exactly what was out there in a part of the world that Spain claimed on maps, but didn't actually really have good knowledge of. And so by being able to, in a journal, put down where there are potential riverways to be tapped, there are a potential vein of ore to extract, potential pasturage land to employ for livestock, farming, grazing, what have you, the exhibition is potentially, in its long-term ramifications, contributing to that larger project of creating. A more productive empire.

Tyler Hill [00:31:58] Anyway, back to the expedition. Here's Jeremy Morton again.

Speaker 4 [00:32:06] So I mentioned the Lake Tempanogos tribes person, their guide that they get at Lake Tempinogos returns to the lake and they're left without a guide. And that's actually when they decide they're gonna turn around, they're going to head back to New Mexico. Dominguez and Escalante make this decision, but it's not a unanimous decision. Miria Ipacheco, he's a hardened, grizzled soldier. He wants to press on to California. A couple other team members also. Want to press on to California, they see, you know, if they could get to California they see it as a way to become very wealthy.

Noel Black [00:32:42] At this point, Dominguez and Escalante could just pull rank and take the party back to New Mexico.

Speaker 4 [00:32:48] But rather than do that, they decide to draw lots. They decide to put it in the hands of God. And at least in my head, very dramatically, one of them reaches in a hat and pulls out a scrap of paper. And to their luck, it says Cosnina, because if they would have pulled Monterey, I don't think we'd be talking about him.

Noel Black [00:33:23] If they hadn't decided to turn back, they likely would have starved or frozen to death that winter in the Sierra Nevadas. But the journey back is no easy feat either. First, they have to cross the Colorado River.

Speaker 4 [00:33:34] That's the biggest obstacle of them throughout the entire expedition. The most dangerous bits are always river crossings. And the Colorado is the largest, most dangerous river that they have to cross.

Tyler Hill [00:33:50] The party spends almost two weeks looking for a place to cross the Colorado.

Speaker 4 [00:33:55] At one point they build a raft and they're pulled down the Colorado River and it falls apart and they can't cross that way.

Noel Black [00:34:02] And once again, they end up relying on indigenous knowledge.

Speaker 4 [00:34:06] And this is where the Hennysarrows come in particularly important, you know, the people that overtook them toward the beginning of the trip. Two of them are some of their best swimmers, and them along with another one of the team members swim back and forth across the Colorado, searching for ways to cross. But eventually, after two weeks of searching, they're able to cross the Colorado River. The place that they cross becomes known as the Crossing of the Fathers.

Tyler Hill [00:34:35] Today, the crossing of the Fathers is at the bottom of Lake Powell, near the border of Utah and Arizona.

Noel Black [00:34:42] Once they're on the other side of the river, they're essentially home free in familiar territory, mapped territory.

Speaker 4 [00:34:49] When they cross the Colorado River, they shoot a musket in the air, which tells us two things. You know, one, they definitely had a muskete and two, shooting a gun in the area for fun has been around for a really long time. So.

Noel Black [00:35:15] They continue on to Hopi territory.

Speaker 4 [00:35:18] The Hopi were famously resistant to the Spanish, refusing to adopt Christianity, even when it would have benefited them immensely in the moment. When Dominguez and Escalante get there, they're actually lucky that the Hopi welcomed them in at all. Some historians guess that the reason they did that is because at the time there was a pretty bad drought and they're also warring with the Navajo or the Apache. So they're willing to entertain the Spaniards at the time.

Tyler Hill [00:35:49] The Hopi asked to make an alliance with the Spanish.

Noel Black [00:35:52] And the Spanish have one condition.

Speaker 4 [00:35:54] Dominguez and Escalante say, sure, you know, all you got to do is, is adopt Christianity. And there's a sort of sidebar with the Hopi elders or leaders. And they come back and they sort of a thanks, but no thanks. They're like, we would love your help. But yeah, we're not, we are not adopting Christianity.

Tyler Hill [00:36:17] This more or less tracks with what the Spanish already know about the Hopi.

Speaker 4 [00:36:21] The Spaniards often referred to them as the obstinate Hopi, because they're sort of staunch refusal to adopt Christianity. And many modern day Hopis adopt that as a sort of badge of pride, how obstinate they were in refusing the Spaniard.

Noel Black [00:36:39] They make their way to Zuni Pueblo, where Escalante was stationed as a priest before the expedition.

Speaker 4 [00:36:47] So once they're in Zuni they stay there for three weeks actually before they ultimately head on back to Santa Fe and officially complete their expedition, which would have been on January 3rd. Then they submit the journal to the powers that be and that concludes the sort of epic tale of Dominguez and Escalante.

Tyler Hill [00:37:12] It's been 250 years since the Dominguez and Escalante expedition. Why are we still talking about it when they didn't even make it to Monterey?

Speaker 4 [00:37:20] I mean, there's there's a way to read the expedition as a huge failure, right? Like they don't succeed in any any of their goals, really. Right. They don't reach moderate. No towns ultimately results from it. Don't really connect the empire. They don't go back and convert the large groups of Ute or Tempanogos or Paiute that they come across. Yeah. Outside the one youth they bring back to Santa Fe and I believe baptize, that's only one soul saved for a pretty arduous journey. But really the Dominguez-Escalante expedition sort of shapes western American, European, Spanish thought of the American West for really 50 to 100 years.

Noel Black [00:38:14] The path that they charted actually becomes the basis for part of the Old Spanish Trail, a trade route that eventually does link California and New Mexico about 50 years later.

Speaker 4 [00:38:24] And then beyond that, the tribes people that they came across, the perception of the Ute, the Tempanogos, the Paiute, European perception of those tribes was shaped by the words that Escalante wrote. So in that sense, it does sort of forge our cultural understanding, set the stage for cultural exchange in what becomes the American West for a very long time.

Tyler Hill [00:38:55] And then there's those beautiful and imperial maps.

Noel Black [00:38:59] Those maps, along with the knowledge gathered by the expedition, ultimately contribute to the demise of many native cultures and ways of life. Here's next signs again.

Speaker 3 [00:39:08] The maps produced by the expedition's cartographer, Bernardo de Mera y Pacheco, become really key to the later expansion of not just Spanish efforts to acquaint themselves with the region, but in time, also Anglo-American ones. And so we can read the maps produced by Bernardo De Mera Y Pacheca as the beginning of this onslaught, really, of Western interests in the region and in time ultimately conquest.

Noel Black [00:39:39] Those maps were the result of the Enlightenment, which put us on a trajectory toward industrialization.

Tyler Hill [00:39:44] Which put us on a trajectory toward a global economy.

Noel Black [00:39:47] Which put us on a trajectory of, well, where we are now in 2026.

Tyler Hill [00:39:52] Reactions to reactions to reactions to reactions.

Noel Black [00:39:56] Various empires and tribes, each with their own values and traditions and intellectual movements and ways of life, struggling against each other for power in a way that wasn't predetermined.

Speaker 3 [00:40:07] In thinking about the kind of big picture here and maybe why the Dominguez Escalante expedition matters for the future state of Colorado, I would say the Daminguez Escolante expedition is important in that it opens up connections between south and north that hadn't existed as clearly up until that point in time. And so collaborations between the youths and New Mexico create a path towards the eventual settlement of Southern Colorado by persons who are part of that New Mexican system.

Noel Black [00:40:47] It's a story that changes depending on which starting point you pick.

Tyler Hill [00:40:51] And it could have gone any number of ways. It only turned out this way because, well, that's how it turned out. For example, what if the expedition had made it to Monterey?

Speaker 3 [00:41:01] There might have then been a kind of opening between Spanish New Mexico and Spanish California and the movement of peoples and goods, even ideas across that space in time for their missions, presidios, essentially the features of Spanish settlement in that space. That would mean that essentially the western part of North America would be more hispanized than it is in some respect today. So we have these these two potential pathways, these two potential trajectories for what the eventual development of Colorado would have looked like. If we think about a successful Dominguez-Escalante expedition and no American revolution to distract the Spanish empire, it's likely, if not almost inevitable, the Spanish would have moved into spaces like Colorado and Utah and potentially have settled them, and in doing so. Contributed more significantly to the development of that space and how we think about those spaces today as being in time brought into the fold of the Western world.

Noel Black [00:42:18] Both of those trajectories mark a turning point for the native peoples in the west.

Speaker 3 [00:42:22] The arrival of Dominguez and Escalante marked the beginning of a protracted but very significant disruption to their way of life. From this point forward, continued visits by both people from South and East are going to alter their way-of-life fundamentally. We're going to start to see more and more interest on the part of traders and trappers in this region, some of whom are going to use the very maps created by Bernardo de Miere Pacheco to find their way into these spaces. So as much as we think about this as an opportunity for Europeans to gain kind of scientific understanding and geographic knowledge of the North American West, this is also a kind of tragic turning point. This marks kind of the demise of native life ways and homelands that had persisted up until that point.

Noel Black [00:43:21] In a world where we have constant access to GPS in our pockets, sometimes it's easy to forget that even a scientifically measured map can tell a one-sided story.

Speaker 4 [00:43:31] These are important in the sense not just of them documenting the existence of physical features or rivers or whatever, they're important also in the since of they're not indicating indigenous sovereignty. They're highlighting resources and geography and they're disregarding any idea of a Ute homeland, or a Paiute homeland, or a Navajo, or any of the tribes. They're portraying the West as land that is open to be claimed. You know, they're concerned with the tribes potentially threatening their settlements, but all of it is free to be settled in their eyes.

Tyler Hill [00:44:35] Lost Highways is a production of History Colorado and History Colorado Studios.

Noel Black [00:44:39] If you enjoyed this podcast and want to learn more about Dominguez and Escalante, you can visit Expedition 1776 on display at the History Colorado Center in Denver until January 31, 2027.

Tyler Hill [00:44:52] Special thanks to our editors for this episode, Colorado State Historian Dr. Susan Schulton at University of Denver and Sam Bach, Director of Interpretation and Publications at History Colorado.

Noel Black [00:45:03] Finally, thanks to the entire staff of History Colorado. I'm Noel Black.

Tyler Hill [00:45:07] And I'm Tyler Hill.