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Show NPS Form 10-900-a Utah WordPerfect 5.1 Format (Revised Feb. 1993) 0MB No. 10024-0018 United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section No. _8_ Page _6_ Bluff Historic District, Bluff, San Juan County, UT months and testing their endurance and dedication to the limits. This route became known as the Hole in the Rock Trail. It was named after one of the most difficult segments, a steep, narrow chute that had to be dynamited and improved to accommodate their wagons. (The Hole in the Rock Trail was listed in the National Register in 1981.)6 The perseverance shown by the San Juan pioneers in completing the difficult trek set the tone for the entire settlement effort, as historian Michael Hurst has noted. For whatever reasons they decided to plunge directly toward their destination-instead of following roads broken by the exploration company-that decision, and its attendant ordeal, became the foundation for the heritage of Bluff, for it led directly to Hole in the Rock. The Hole in the Rock trek became the great gestation for the Mormon colony on the San Juan; it provided the suffering and endurance which united the settlers in an uncommon bond of togetherness, and being so great a price, it became justification in itself for the colony's existence. While the details are best told elsewhere, the ordeal of making roads where there were-and are-none, through the hole, up Cottonwood Hill, the slick rocks, Clay Hill, and San Juan Hill, exacted such a toll from the travelers that by the final week some were making less than one mile per day. Bluff City would never have been what it was-if it had lasted at all-if it had not been born amid such anguished labor pains. 7 Settlement and Early Agricultural Efforts, 1880-1885 Though the ordeal of the trek was behind them, the Bluff settlers faced another set of hardships in their new home. They soon learned that there was less land than they had thought, forcing them to divide the surrounding farmland into smaller allocations. Plus the area was simply not easily adapted to farming. Marginal soil, floods, dam breaks, extreme heat, and Indian trouble conspired against their every effort. Many left the settlement that first year, discouraged and destitute. Those who remained pleaded with church leaders to allow them to abandon the town. They were advised to remain. The settlers initially lived in hastily built brush huts or their wagon boxes. In September 1880, buoyed by a visit from church leaders from Salt Lake City, they built a fort of cottonwood logs and dirtroofed log cabins on the inside of the fort. (The Barton Cabin is the only remnant of these first houses.) Most continued to live in the fort until 1883, when they started moving out onto their town lots. Most of their efforts went into developing an irrigation system and the surrounding farmland. In August 1880 the ditch washed out, leaving the crops to dry up. This would be a regular occurrence in the 6Afull account of the Hole-in-the-Rock trek can be found in David E. Miller, Hole-In-The-Rock: An Epic in the Colonization of the Great American West (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1959). 7 Hurst, p.8. x See continuation sheet |
