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CHAPTER FIFTEEN Solving Transportation Difficulties Perhaps Howard Stansbury, an early visitor to Utah, aptly described the territory's need for land transportation in his 1852 book, "A Winter Among the Mormons." He did so, it might be pointed out, in manner which would agonize most newspaper editors. The descriptive paragraph extended 102 words without a period. In fact, almost without a place to catch the breath. A hard-bitten wielder of a blue pencil would've carved it unmercifully. Nonetheless, Mr. Stansbury, whose book intrigued readers in both the United States and Great Britain, recognized what the Mormon pioneers already knew -- making it possible to get wagon loads from one place to another was a major challenge. Wrote Stansbury: "The founding, within a space of three years, of a large and flourishing community, upon a spot so remote from the abodes of man, so completely shut out by natural barriers from the rest of the world, so entirely unconnected by watercourses with either of the oceans that wash the shores of this continent - a country offering no advantages of inland navigation or of foreign commerce, but, on the contrary, isolated by vast, uninhabitable deserts, and only to be reached by long, painful, and often hazardous journeys by land -presents an anomaly so very peculiar that it deserves more than a passing notice..." Wagon roads - if the term "roads" isn't an exaggeration ~ were the first organized and planned means of travel in Utah. In general, they formed a cross, east-west meeting north-south in the Salt Lake valley. Needless to say, they were by no means as straight and direct as that might imply. For example, Ezra Knowlton's extensively-researched book, "History of Highway Development in Utah" decribes one early route in these terms: "The most important link in this system was the 279 |
