While trade between California and New Mexico was beating the path of the Old Spanish Trail into a road across southwestern Utah, events elsewhere were leading to the elimination of Spanish influence and the rise of Anglo-Saxon power. The Mexican War ended Spanish domination, but it was the Mormon migrations which were to fill the region with settlements. In 1847, the Mormons began to move west from the Missouri River to the Great Salt Lake Valley. The precedent of Texas breaking away from Mexico was before them as they traveled across the plains to enter Mexican territory, where they would be free from those who had persecuted them, and where they would be practically isolated from Mexican authority by the barrier of the Grand Canyon. What dreams of empire held their thoughts as they trekked across the plains can only be conjectured.[17] Outposts, forts, and settlements were scattered throughout the vast area they hoped to dominate. Western Colorado, southwestern Wyoming, southern Idaho, Utah, Nevada, northern Arizona and southern California were all included in their colonization plans. Strategic points throughout this whole vast empire were to be occupied and controlled. The intervening territory would be filled in later with the great number of converts to the faith pouring in from Europe. The transfer of this entire territory to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo exercised a restraining influence upon their ambitions and brought them once more under the hand of the Federal government. During the first few years of settlement, there was little change in governmental organization and the people were for the most part guided and controlled by their religious leaders. In March, 1849, they set up a provisional government for their proposed State of Deseret.[18] In 1851, however, Congress carved this western empire into territories, paying no attention to the proposed State and designating its heart as the Territory of Utah (named for the dominant Indian nation of the region, the Utes or Utahs). The Mormon dreams were thus dimmed, but they did not finally die until 1858, when Albert Sydney Johnston’s army marched to Utah and completely ended all hopes of an independent political unit. Thereafter, the Mormon attitude gradually changed from one of open opposition to one of conditioned loyalty and the long struggle for statehood began.[19]