The weather was fine, the valleys literally covered with buffaloe, and everything seemed to promise a safe and speedy movement to the first grove of timber on my route, supposed to be about ten days' march.

"William Henry Ashley" Notable Names Database
American National Biography - Ashley William Henry. Though a native of Virginia Ashley had already moved to St.

Before the war he did some real estate speculation and earned a small fortune manufacturing gunpowder from a lode of saltpeter mined in a cave near the headwaters of Missouri's Current river. In 1826 he led an expedition into the Salt Lake Valley. South of the Great Salt Lake he discovered Utah Lake which he named Lake Ashley.