Johnson’s Creek was named for a foolish missionary a great many years ago, who was on his way to Oregon, in company with a party of emigrants in charge of John Gray.

As they were breaking camp one morning, a band of Sioux suddenly charged out of the hills, and preparations were immediately made by Mr. Gray and his men to repel them.  Against such a course as this Mr. Johnson loudly protested.  He declared that it would be a terrible outrage to shed innocent blood, and as the savages neared the camp, he marched out to meet them and have a talk, notwithstanding that he was told by his companions that the Indians would not listen to him for a moment, but would take his scalp.

The deluded fool really believed that the savages would not harm him, because he was a missionary, and had ventured out among them to do their race good.  Of course he fell a victim to his own ridiculous credulity; for the moment the Indians came close enough, they incontinently murdered him, and his hair was dangling at the belt of one of the warriors before Johnson had a chance to put in a word.

In the fight which ensued three of the Indians were killed, and were, with the mangled remains of the unfortunate missionary, buried in one grave.

Independence Rock is an isolated mass of clear granite, located a few hundred yards from the right bank of the Sweetwater.  Its base covers an area of nearly five acres, and rises to a height of about three hundred feet.  There is a slight depression on its summit, otherwise the rock would be nearly oval in shape.  In the early days of the trail, a little soil, which had probably been drifted into the depression mentioned, supported a few sickly shrubs and one dwarf tree.

The front face of this ancient landmark, like that of Pawnee Rock, on the old Santa Fe Trail, is covered with the names of trappers, traders, emigrants, and other men who supposed that their rude carvings would immortalize them.

The rock derives its patriotic name from the fact that many years ago one of the first party of Americans who crossed the continent by the way of the Platte Valley, under the leadership of a man named Thorp, celebrated their Fourth of July at the foot of the now historic mass of granite.

The most prominent inscription on the face of the rock is Independence. 
Father De Smet, the celebrated Jesuit priest, says of it in his
letters to the bishop of St. Louis, in 1841: 
        The first rock which we saw, and which truly deserves the name,
        was the famous rock Independence.  At first I was led to
        believe that it had received this pompous name from its
        isolated situation and the solidity of its basis; but I was
        afterward told that it was called so because the first
        travellers who thought of giving it a name arrived at it on
        the very day when the people of the United States celebrate