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GET out THERE!!
Utah is crammed with history and history sites. You can find remnants of the past everywhere you go. Eugene the gull is our travel mascot, and we took him along to experience history. See where he went.
Hovenweep National Monument: The Deserted Valley
Quiet. Peace. Awe. Find them at Hovenweep National Monument, home to six ancestral Pueblo villages. The villages lie on the Cajon Plateau, along the southern Utah-Colorado border, and the ruins are stunning. Unique square, circular, and D-shaped towers perched on the canyon rim seem to suggest that the villages were built for defense. Indeed, this time period was generally a time of scarce resources and violence in the Four Corners area. But the towers also may have served as storage rooms, signaling stations, observation points, or ceremonial chambers.
Contemporaries of the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, Hovenweep’s towers were built between about A.D. 1230 and 1280, possibly as a response to region-wide drought. This drought may also have been responsible for the area’s eventual abandonment during the late 1200s.
The Square Tower Group is the monument’s primary attraction. You can see it by walking along an easy two-mile loop trail leading from the visitor center. The outlier sites, also accessible by trail, are smaller but just as scenic.
Hovenweep, which means “deserted valley” in Ute/Paiute, was preserved in 1923 by President Warren G. Harding, who recognized its rich cultural significance. However, the land has been valued for much longer by indigenous people, including the culture that built these remarkable towers, and their presumed descendants, the Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, and Rio Grande Pueblo tribes of today.
Get to this isolated spot by driving south on 191 from Blanding then east on 262 (for a total of 45 miles). Plan on staying four to six hours if you want to see the whole park. For not-too-hot, not-too-cold, and not-too-rainy weather, your best bet is September or October, but all year round you can experience that sense of awe, wonder, and stillness. Bring your camera, paintbrush, writing book, pets (and leashes), children, water, and curiosity. www.nps.gov/hove/ or 970/562-4282. |
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John Wesley Powell River History Museum
Get a taste of early river running on the Green and Colorado rivers. In a 15-minute movie of Powell’s first expedition down the rivers, a replica of Powell’s boat navigates the rapids. Historical photos and journal excerpts accompany this river-running footage. On display in the museum you can see boats of different eras, starting with a bullboat and dugout canoe. The replica of Powell’s No-Name boat, which disastrously wrecked and broke in half at—what else?—Disaster Falls in Lodore Canyon, has a “wineglass” keel, a detail that made the boat unstable in rapids. You can compare it with the flat keels of later boats—Norm Nevilles’s “Mexican Hat,” for instance.
In the museum you can also learn about 1) the unique characters who ran the river and who now are memorialized in the hall of fame, 2) steamboats on the Green River, 3) the Stanton Survey done to determine the feasibility of running a railroad through the river canyons, 4) Mountain Men on the Green River, and 5) much, much more.
The museum, at 1765 E. Main, Green River, Utah, is open 7 days/week from 8 a.m.–8 p.m. 435/564-3427.
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The musuem has a replica of Powell's No-Name, the boat the wrecked in Lodore Canyon |
Some West Desert Adventures...
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5-year old Melanie and 9-year old Madeline Reinhard show Eugene one of the Leamington Charcoal kilns
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Leamington Charcoal Kilns
In the 1870s, enterprising Leamingtonites took advantage of the new railroad in the area: They built charcoal kilns to process juniper (or cedar) trees into charcoal to ship to Salt Lake City. You can visit two of these big kilns just east of Leamington on highway 132 (near Delta). |
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Great Basin Museum
See artifacts of west Millard County dating from thousands of years ago to a decade or two ago—from the Paleoindian culture to the space age. This museum has prehistoric points and ceramics, a barracks from the Topaz Relocation Center (the World War II-era Japanese American internment camp), displays of early 20th-century life in the county, farming equipment, and an exhibit of the locally mined beryllium ore and items made from it. 328 West 100 North, Delta. Call for hours. (435) 864-5013. |
Outside the main building, the Great Basin Museum exhibits farming implements and a barracks from Topaz |
 Topaz Relocation Center
During World War II, the U.S. government forced thousands of Japanese Americans to leave their homes on the West Coast and move to internment camps, including one near Delta, where wind blew almost constantly and temperatures could range from below zero to above 100 degrees.
As you drive through a flat landscape to reach the site (get directions at the Great Basin Museum or at topazmuseum.org), imagine the disorientation of these people as they saw the landscape that would be their home for months or years. Also, look for former camp barracks being reused as houses or outbuildings.
When you arrive, you won’t see any buildings. This is a sad, lonesome place. Only foundations and bits of detritus from those years remain; the government auctioned off the actual barracks to the locals. But you can drive down the roads of the camp. You can get out, feel the wind, look across the bleak landscape of greasewood, jackrabbits, and ravens, and ponder. You can imagine what it was like here when 8,000 people were crammed into thin-walled barracks, eating and washing at communal mess halls and wash-buildings. You can imagine the little gardens the Japanese families tried to raise in front of their bleak barracks. You can think about “wartime hysteria, racial animosity, and economic opportunism” (as the site’s plaque says).
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Fort Deseret
It may just look like old walls made of mud—because that’s what it is. But those walls tell a story. In 1865, during the “Blackhawk War,” 98 men from the settlement of Deseret got busy and built a fort. They wanted to gain a sense of protection from the Utes who were rebelling against the waves of Anglo settlers coming onto their lands. In 18 days the men laid a rock foundation and built 10-foot-high walls out of mud and straw. In 1866, the fort proved useful when Blackhawk’s band stole some cattle. The settlers hustled the rest of their livestock into the fort while they negotiated a peace with the Utes.
You can see the old fort on State Highway 257 south of the town of Deseret.
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Fort Deseret's mud walls have stood for nearly 150 years |
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Old Cemeteries
History abounds in cemeteries. You may find the graves of well-known people, or you may not. Either way, you can look at the way headstones have changed over time, read epitaphs, get a sense of individual and community values, and piece together history. Or just enjoy the walk.
The Salt Lake City Cemetery at 200 N. Street contains the graves of famous people, members of different ethnic groups and religions, soldiers, early pioneers and more. If you would like a guide, the cemetery sexton recommends a map called The Famous and Infamous: A Guide to the Salt Lake City Cemetery.
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Golden Spike National Monument: Joining of the Rails
Railroad buffs have to see Golden Spike—but they know that already. This article is for those whose hearts don’t beat faster at the sight of a train. To be honest, you have to reach the Golden Spike site by a long drive through a landscape that some might think is desolate (while others think it’s beautiful). But if you take a learning attitude with you on that drive, you can’t help but feel a little thrill to see the original cuts, fills, and trestles of the epic public works project that linked the nation and changed history forever.
In the 1860s the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads, paid by the government both through cash subsidies and land grants, worked toward each other from Sacramento and Omaha. After they met, they industriously continued constructing parallel grades (using shovels, dynamite, carts, and horse-drawn graders) for almost 250 miles before the government found out about the duplication and told them to cease
and desist.
So the rails were joined at Promontory Summit, and you can see the spot as well as working replicas of the locomotives that came together on that momentous day—May 10, 1869. During the summer season (May 1 through Labor Day), the locomotives come out at 10 and 10:30 a.m., demonstrate their stuff at 1 p.m. (and 3 p.m. on Saturdays), and retire at 4 and 4:30 p.m.
On Saturdays and holidays, the locomotives and faithful volunteers re-enact the driving of the spike at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. And on the second Saturday in August, the park holds a big Railroader’s Festival where you can race a handcar and compete in a buffalo-chip throwing contest (among other things).
The visitors’ center has good films and displays, but don’t neglect to get out on the railroad grades by foot, car, or bicycle —and be sure to take along one of the park’s trail or road guides for a fascinating close-up look at history on the landscape. At the Big Fill Trail, you will see how the railroads dealt with the steepest grade between Donner Pass and Omaha (believe it or not!)
If you pass through Corinne on the way, pause to drive through the streets and see if you can find remnants of the era when this was a wild, 100-saloon railroad town. It also has the oldest standing Protestant church building in Utah, the Corinne Methodist Episcopal Church.
Another good stop in the neighborhood shows a far different look at federally subsidized transportation. Near Golden Spike, follow the signs to the Thiokol missile display to see a good outdoor exhibit of missiles and booster engines made by the company over the years.
Golden Spike National Monument is open every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. www.nps.gov/gosp or 435/471-2209.
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More Places to Go...
Sego Canyon Rock Art Site
Several panels in one area show rock art spanning perhaps 8,000 years. In this spot, people from the historic Ute culture and the prehistoric Archaic, Fremont, and Ancestral Pueblo cultures chose to paint (pictographs) or carve (petroglyphs) on the rock face. Interpretive signs put up by the BLM help the visitor make sense of it all.  The Archaic culture (so-called by archaeologists) lived in the area between 2,000 and 8,000 years ago. Their ghostlike, big-eyed, reddish anthropomorphs are stunning and mysterious. In a fascinating juxtaposition, the art of the other cultures gives a great sense of far different cultures and times. Unfortunately, you can also get a sense of a culture closer to home: vandals have shot at, written on, and otherwise defaced several of the panels.
The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Get there by going to Thompson Springs, which is 28 miles east of Green River on I-70 and a few miles east of Crescent Junction (the turnoff to Moab). Drive north over the railroad tracks and continue on, following signs to Sego Canyon and ”Indian Writings,” as an old BLM sign reads. The panels are three miles up this paved road.
Enjoy—but please don’t touch or disturb the art in any way. Why not see if it can last another few thousand years?
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Fort Pearce
When Blackhawk was stirring up the Utes in the 1860s, John Pearce and men built this fort along the old route from St. George to Pipe Springs. They built 10-foot-high walls without mortar—and without a roof. The fort was, among other things, supposed to prevent the Indians from having access to the nearby spring. Pearce Wash had always been a good place to stop and get water; in fact, the Dominguez Escalante party of 1776 camped here. So over the years, the fort sheltered many travelers.
Down the wash, on the sandstone walls, you can see petroglyphs and the carved names of men who spent time at the fort. As a bonus, two miles east of the fort is a short trail to dinosaur tracks.
Travel to the fort is on a dirt road. Because of changing road construction, we can’t give directions to the fort. Inquire locally.
Ela Smart takes a look at Fort Pearce
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