The Kit Carson Cross inscription site, located on Fremont Island in the Great Salt Lake, Weber County, was inscribed on September 9, 1843. The period of significance is 1843, when it was inscribed and during which time John Charles Frémont, Kit Carson, and several others explored the Great Salt Lake and its islands and the broader Great Basin. The Kit Carson Cross is significant at the state level under Criterion A due to its association with Euro-American exploration and settlement of the American West and in what would later become the state of Utah. Pioneers later used Frémont’s maps and reports of his expedition to the Salt Lake Valley as guides when they settled the region. The 1843 expedition in which the cross was inscribed was significant for information provided for later exploration and settlement of the Great Basin and Salt Lake Valley because it mapped important resources in the region. Marking an important time in the growth and expansion of the United States, the Kit Carson Cross is the only known extant physical evidence of the 1843 expedition, thus representing the expedition itself and the growing presence of Euro-Americans in the Salt Lake Valley and Great Basin. The cross is significant on a state level due to its relationship to this important 1843 expedition which is crucial to Utah’s history as this exploration led to non-Indigenous settlement of areas throughout the state and region.
