...Fremont led five expeditions into the West.
On the first, he surveyed the Platte "up to the head of the Sweetwater";
on the second, of fourteen months duration, he made a circuit of the entire West, launching his India-rubber boat on the Great Salt Lake on the outbound trip and examining Utah Lake on the return.
The third expedition took him across the Salt Lake Desert and also involved him in the struggle to wrest California from Mexico and eventually in a court-martial trial which ended his government-sponsored explorations.
The fourth, a winter expedition designed to ascertain the feasibility of a central railroad route, became stranded in the snows of the rugged San Juan Mountains of Colorado.
The fifth and final expedition, which also had a railroad objective, was saved from disaster by the Mormons of Parowan.
