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The crossing of the Colorado by Jacob Hamblin November 6, 1858, eighty-two years almost to the day after Domínguez and Escalante, is the opening event in the continuous history of Glen Canyon. Hamblin and his ten companions were bent upon visiting the Hopi Indians to initiate missionary work among those people on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A pioneer in the settlement of Utah's "Dixie", Hamblin was named president of the Southern Indian Mission in 1857 by church authorities, and he was a central figure in the Glen Canyon region for 30 years as missionary, Indian agent, explorer, peacemaker between whites and Indians, and colonizer. Hamblin visited the Hopi towns a number of times following on the earlier trips the route located in 1858, essentially the same one that Dominguez and Escalante had opened in 1776. Hamblin's party traveled from Santa Clara by way of Pipe Spring to the northern end of the Kaibab Plateau (Buckskin Mountain) where they met a band of Paiutes and their chief, Naraguts (Naraquatz, Naraquatas). The chief, and about 18 of his men, guided Hamblin's party through House Rock Valley, around the base of the Paria Plateau to the mouth of the Paria River. They then climbed the Echo Cliffs and reached the Colorado at the Ute Ford, which Hamblin (later) identified as the Crossing of the Fathers. Jacob Hamblin and his companions were guided across the ford by the Indians. The Paiutes all clasped hands and waded into the water, forming a line nearly 100 ft. long. On horseback, the whites followed the shallowest route indicated by the depth of the weaving line of Indian bodies ahead of them. Ammon M. Tenney, who was along as Spanish interpreter, estimated they were in the water about a mile on this first crossing. Hamblin returned from Oraibi by the same route before the end of the year. Another trip to the Hopis was organized in the fall of 1859. Hamblin this time planned to build a boat and ferry the run at the later site of Lee's Ferry but in the absence of an Indian who was to serve as guide on the other side of the Colorado, it was decided to travel once again via the Crossing of the Fathers. Thales Haskell whose diary documents the trip, mentions that they went through [Gunsight Pass] ... "just wide enough for the mules to single file..." This means that Hamblin was using the left bank trail into Navajo Canyon, not the right bank route of the Fathers. Haskell feelingly describes the difficulties in fording the river which was crossed November 2, 1859. He notes the finding on the right bank of a raft made of poles and rushes which it was supposed had been used by the Ute Indians. Hamblin returned by the same route before the year was out. 13Epson Perfection 4870 Photo, 400 dpi, 8 bit, 13,905,920 byte