The story of the White Mountain Expedition highlights a long-neglected aspect of the Utah war.  White historians have dealt with military operations and political maneuvers of this confrontation between the United States and the Mormon theocracy in 1857-1858, little attention has been paid to an alternative strategy of Brigham Young's: to abandon the fledgling settlements of Utah territory for yet another refuge among the desert mountain ranges of the Great Basin.

As the United States Army prepared to advance against the Mormons in the spring of 1858, Young pursued numerous military and diplomatic defense solutions, but he also had an alternative plan to avert bloodshed.  He commissioned two companies of men, supplies, and wagons to search out the unexplored reaches of the great Basin deserts and locate places of refuge for the Utah settlers.  The exploring companies, led by George W. Bean and William H. Dame, expected to find remote but fertile valleys where they could "raise grain, keep stock, and secret families" in the White Mountains to the west.  For months the White Mountain companies explored the inhospitable deserts of present-day Utah and Nevada in an attempt to locate suitable land.  Their search was documented in journals and letters which taken together, illustrate the determination of the explorers and the futility of the quest for the mythical mountain sanctuary.