It was during the period of expansion and occupation that southwestern Utah was generally explored with a view toward settlement. Late in the fall of 1847, a small party under the leadership of Captain Jefferson Hunt pushed to the Pacific coast to secure provisions and livestock, carrying instructions to the Mormon Battalion members mustered out in California to remain there that winter and not to attempt to come to Salt Lake until Spring.[20] The party followed approximately the route of U. S. Highway 91 from Great Salt Lake to Little Salt Lake, Iron County, where it picked up the Old Spanish Trail and followed it to the coast. Hunt’s men were the first Mormons to travel the route later known as the Mormon Trail. Where they obtained information to guide them is a question, but it is known that the Mormons were acquainted with Fremont’s report of his trip along that route in 1844. There was an important deviation from Fremont’s path, however; they went through Scipio Valley and the pass to the east of the Canyon range of mountains, whereas Fremont had gone on the west side. Further details of this trip are lacking.[21] The party wintered in California, where negotiations were entered into between Hunt and United States Army officers for raising another battalion of Mormons to garrison posts in California. When Hunt returned to Salt Lake in the spring of 1848, he carried the details with him, but no report of his trip is extant. On September 17, 1848, while Brigham Young was visiting at Fort Provo, a group of leaders gathered at Hunt’s house in the evening to “converse about the southern country and the prospects of settling it.... Many questions were asked in regard to routes, traveling, locations, incidents, etc., and the prospects before the Saints caused quite a good feeling.”[22] During the late summer and fall of 1849, hundreds of emigrants on their way to seek gold in California poured into the Salt Lake Valley too late to make the trip westward across the Sierra Nevada Mountains before snow blocked the way. There was little food and the Mormons were not eager to have these people winter with them. The difficulty was solved by the offer of Captain Hunt to pilot them across the southern route. Altogether there were about 125 wagons and 1,000 head of cattle. The Argonauts were a nondescript lot, everyone intent upon his own personal problems and not actuated by a common ideal as were the Mormons. They caused Hunt a great deal of trouble and even threatened his life over certain details of the trip. Dissensions arose which split the party several times. At last, near the rim of the Great Basin not far from the Mountain Meadows, most of them left him for a supposed cutoff via Walker’s Pass in the Sierras. Hunt, in peace, safely piloted the remaining six or seven wagons to the coast. The party taking the cutoff ended in disaster in Death Valley.[23] Captain Hunt stayed in California more than a year and returned to Utah early in 1851.