A short time after the establishment of Salt Lake City, Brigham Young, so his followers related to me as well as to others, had a revelation in which the Lord appeared to him as He did to Moses of old, and designated certain of the pioneers to push their way through to the Pacific Coast and there establish an outpost of Zion. This was done as a mark of signal Divine approval of their conduct. They were to travel southwesterly many weeks and months, but finally, after crossing a vast desert, were to encounter a snow-capped range upon the opposite side of which they would find a fertile, well-watered, and well timbered valley. They were to know when the spot selected by the Almighty was reached, by a great sign, the "Finger of the Lord," as Brigham called it, on the mountain side, pointing directly into the heart of the valley. Here they were to remain and build up a "Stake of Zion."
Enthusiastic over the Divine favor thus bestowed upon the select ones, they undertook the journey without guide or knowledge of the terrible barren and waterless wastes to be encountered. They skirted what afterwards became known as Death Valley, then crossed the Mojave Desert, and then encountered the lofty San Bernardino range. Crossing it with difficulty, for they missed the most and in fact only feasible pass farther west, they traveled down into the valley, letting their wagons down the steep mountain side by felling trees and fastening them to the rear axles--known today as "Mormon brakes." Close to the point at which they landed, they saw plainly delineated on the mountain side by some unexplainable freak of Nature, a great arrowhead , some 2700 feet in length, with the point resting almost exactly in a cluster of springs of hot mineralized water which sent a good- sized stream down into the plain.
Where and how Brigham Young had obtained his information regarding this phenomenon was always a mystery. Steadfastly he ever maintained that the Lord had revealed it to him in a vision.