By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Catholic and Spanish history in Utah runs deeper than most people suspect. In the Summer of 1776, as a new nation was born on the American East Coast, out west the Franciscan priests Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante explored Central and Southern Utah.
Their primary goal was to find an overland route from Santa Fe to the Catholic missions near Monterrey in California. They also hoped to return, however, to start new missions and schools and baptize the Native Americans.
Velez de Escalante passed away in 1780 at just age 30. Dominguez lived longer and died in Mexico in the early 1800s. They never made it back to Utah.
If they had, many places and landmarks in what is now called Utah County—home to Brigham Young University—might have borne rather different names, just like so much of California is named after the Franciscan missions there. Dominguez and Escalante gave us a brief glimpse of that alternative universe.
The ten-man expedition left Santa Fe, in what was then called New Spain, on July 29, 1776. Escalante made detailed written notes during the journey.
In 1909, the Intermountain Catholic Press of Salt Lake City published one of the first translations of Escalante’s journals in a book (by Dean Harris) about the history of the Catholic Church in Utah. Herbert Auerbach, a Utah businessman and legislator, translated and published the journals too in the 1940s in the Utah Historical Quarterly.
According to Escalante’s journal, the expedition entered Utah near present day Vernal. By late September, the explorers stood at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon and saw Utah Lake and Utah Valley for the first time.
They befriended the Native Americans there, the Timpanogos, a branch of Shoshone Indians closely allied with the Utes. The Spaniards spent two days visiting with Timpanogos leaders, baptizing some of the people they met, and telling them that others would follow soon to live among them, build churches, and teach them to farm and raise cattle.
Along the way, the Franciscans also gave Spanish or Catholic names to many of the places they saw.
They called the Wasatch mountains along eastern Utah Valley the Sierra de Los Timpanogos. Because of hot springs they encountered nearby, the Spaniards named the Spanish Fork River Rio de Aguas Calientes.
The Provo River was named Rio de San Antonio de Padua. The city of Provo eventually
was named after French Catholic fur trapper Etienne Provost, but if the Spanish Franciscans had their way, it might’ve been known as San Antonio.
Escalante referred to Utah Valley as El Valle de Nuestra Señora de la Merced de los Timpanoautzis (the Valley of Our Lady of Mercy of the Timpanogotzis). He called Utah Lake the Laguna de Los Timpanogos, the same basic name the natives used.
Escalante’s description of the area is wonderful: “The lake, which must be six leagues wide and fifteen leagues long, extends as far as one of these valleys. It runs northwest through a narrow passage, and according to what they told us, it communicates with others much larger. This lake of Timpanogotzis abounds in several kinds of good fish, geese, beaver, and other amphibious animals which we did not have an opportunity to see. Round about it are these Indians, who live on the abundant fish of the lake, for which reason the Yutas Sabuaganas call them Come Pescados [FishEaters]. Besides this, they gather in the plain grass seeds from which they make atole, which they supplement by hunting hares, rabbits and fowl of which there is great abundance here.”
The Timpanogos told the Franciscans about an even larger lake to the north (the Great Salt Lake) with “noxious and extremely salty” waters, but the explorers did not visit it. Perhaps the Spaniards were deterred by reports that “a person who moistens any part of his body with the water of the lake immediately feels much itching in the part that is wet.”
The Franciscan names for other geographic landmarks are interesting too: American Fiver was Rio de Santa Ana Timpanogos; the Green River…Rio de San Buenaventura; Hobble Creek…Rio San Nicholas; Salem Creek…San Andres; Payson Creek…San Paolo; and the Sevier River…Rio Santa Ysabel.
It does seem a bit odd to rename places you are only visiting. If I went to your home, you probably would not want me to rearrange the furniture, renumber your home address, or rename your household pets.
Many of the places the 1776 expedition relabeled probably had indigenous names already. The visiting Spanish Franciscans incorporated some of those names but likely displaced others.
Perhaps doing so was simply more convenient, an easier way to document a landscape in their own familiar Spanish and Catholic lingo. On the other hand, perhaps it is yet another example of toponymic aggression.
Whatever it was, it is intriguing to contemplate how a part of Utah now closely identified with Latter-day Saints might have had a more Catholic feel, and a much more Latin sound, than it does today.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022. Mike’s new holiday novel, tentatively titled “The Merry Matchmaker Monks,” will be published in time for Christmas 2026.
