Miles Goodyear

Miles Goodyear. . The Goodyears, Miles with his Ute wife, Pomona, and children, Eliza and Willie, established Fort Buenaventura the first cabin and trading post in the Great Basin, here in 1846. With stockade and cabins they raised vegetables, fruit trees, cattle, goats, sheep, horses and a cat. , , Goodyear's epic, adventurous life of 32 years began in Connecticut in 1817, orphaned as a toddler, completed his indentured servitude at age 16, he headed westward seeking freedom and fortune. At 19 he left Missouri accompanying missionaries and first white women, Whitmans and Spauldings, with supply pack train headed by Thomas "Broken Hand" Fitzpatrick across South Pass to the 1836 Fur Trade Rendezvous at Horse Creek of the Green River. Goodyear began his fur trapping career from Fort Hall traveling trails to Santa Fe, Yellowstone, Los Angeles, Sacramento trading horses, hides and furs. , , Goodyear distinguished himself for courage at Fort Bridger in 1843 by retrieving stolen horses, attending special Rendezvous with Sir William Drummond Stewart at Horse Creek. He guided and traded with John C. Fremont in 1846, and met and advised Mormon Vanguard Pioneers on July 10, 1847 near Bear River. During the US Mexican War, he drove over 200 horses from California to Fort Leavenworth, and back, a distance totaling over 4000 miles. And in the California Sierras, he discovered gold on the Yuba River, where on November 12, 1849, a sudden illness took the life of Miles Morris Goodyear.