In January, 1847, Brigham Young started West with one hundred and forty-two in his party to find a location to which the rest should follow. They had seventy-three wagons which moved two abreast for protection, and they had a cannon and were well armed. They reported seeing hundreds of thousands of buffalo grazing along the Platte Valley, and were obliged to send outriders ahead to make a way through the herds for their caravan. They traveled on the north side of the Platte River so as to have an exclusive trail of their own, and it became known as the "Mormon Trail"; the fur traders having made their trail along the south side of that river. When they reached Fort Laramie, they ferried across to the south side of the river where the Government Post had been located; the change from the north to the south side being necessary because of the physical difficulties on the side of the river where they had been traveling. Here on June 1, 1847, they were joined by a party of Mormons who had started from Mississippi and Illinois; had wintered where Pueblo now is; had passed north through Colorado, and doubtless over the ground occupied by Denver following the Platte River to Greeley where they would travel almost due north to Fort Laramie. These Mormons at Pueblo were the very beginning of anything approaching white citizenship in Colorado, for no other white families had ever spent so long a time within the present limits of our State. General Fremont had passed by Salt Lake in 1843 on one of his expeditions, and doubtless the Mormons knew of that Valley from his report as well as of other points of the West. But the Mormons did not know where they were going to settle, and had started north-westerly from South Pass in search of a location and then turned to the south to Salt Lake Valley. Upon their arrival there, the first day, they planted six acres of potatoes because of the necessity of having food for the vast numbers who were to follow them. The rest of the people started from Florence July 4, 1847, and consisted of nearly two thousand persons, about six hundred wagons, over two thousand oxen, and many horses, cows, sheep, hogs and chickens. Following later, came hundreds with push carts, who started too late to get through before winter set in. Their suffering, starving, sickness, and the death of nearly a quarter of their number on the way is a sad story, and is the toll exacted in the settling of a new country.