Cisco Sonar

Looking toward Rendezvous Beach during Big Spring Creek spring flooding

By Bryce Nielson
For All Who Live and Love Bear Lake

I was intrigued to see that a group wants to hold a Rendezvous near Meadowville.  As long as I can remember there has been a big rock at the rest area at the south end of the lake that talks about the mountain man rendezvous held at the south end of the lake.  A few years ago I met with a group of historians known as the Utah Westerners that wanted to talk about the rendezvous' that were held at Bear Lake.  I have always had a theory that the Rendezvous' were held near the spring where Big Spring Creek originate in round Valley between the Wamsley and Johnson ranches. 

 Round Valley looking towards Meadowville

During this get together they provided me with some research done by Philip Covenington who wrote extensively about trapping in the West.  Understand at this point there are pages and pages of accounts of the 1827 Rendezvous at Sweet/Little Lake (Bear Lake).  I wish there was space for everyone to read it but a quick synopsis is all I can do.  First try to visualize Round Valley before white men, cattle, farming, fences and irrigation ditches.  Big Spring Creek would have been clear, lined with cottonwoods and other riparian vegetation.  The surrounding areas would have been, grassy teaming with wildlife.  Rendezvous sites needed firewood, good water, grazing areas and plenty of game to accommodate the 1000's of Indians and traders. 

Covenington described Sweet Lake as follows:  "We camped at the south end of the lake.  It had a most beautiful shore, sloping gradually to the water's edge, sandy and gravelly, with a considerable quantity of cottonwood trees growing without any underbrush .  South of the lake was a beautiful valley as eyes ever beheld, about two or three miles in each way, all covered with the most luxuriant grass, which furnished excellent pasturage for our animals.  About a half mile from the lake, a large spring (Fallulla Spring) came up out of the prairie, which made a stream about two feet deep and fifteen to twenty feet wide with plenty of the finest quality of fish.  This was on the east , and on the west, came out another spring (Big Spring) nearly the same description, both boiling up on the prairie and dry ground all around.  Both of these streams ran down a gradual gradient slope into the lake."   I believe that Round Valley is a much more appropriate location for a rendezvous than the beach.