San Juan County, Utah - People, Resources, and History

Introduction, Allan Kent Powell

Introduction For several centuries Utah sat on the fringe of penetra­tion by Spanish explorers and traders pushing north out of New Mexico. In the sixteenth century Cortes, Coronado, and other Spanish conquistadores heard Indian accounts of the fabulous lands of Lake Copala and El Gran Teguayo to the north, which historians identify as in the vicinity of Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries plans were formulated and expeditions launched to find these "mysterious kingdoms of the north." Apparently, some came close to their objective. Brigham Young Univer­sity history professor Ted J. Warner writes that documents in the Spanish archives of New Mexico, National Archives in Mexico City, and the archives in Seville, Spain, contain ". . . numerous suggestions . . . that Spaniards on authorized as well as unauthorized expeditions penetrated southern Utah before 1776."1 One of these expeditions about which information has recently come to light is the 1765 trip of Juan Maria Antonio Rivera and four others who, according to historian Donald C. Cutter, ". . . became the first known white men to enter Utah when they crossed the line somewhere northeast of Mon-ticello [in San Juan County] probably on October 6, 1765."2 Passing through Dry Valley, across the base of the La Sal Mountains, and traveling down Spanish Valley, the group left San Juan County and traveled on a few miles past present Moab to the Colorado River, their intended goal. Here, before returning to New Mexico, they left a large cross on the meadow of the river, establishing Spain's claim to the region. Eleven years later, in 1776, the Dominguez-Escalante ex­pedition left Santa Fe to make contact with the natives to the San Juan County northwest and to open an overland route from Santa Fe to the Spanish settlements in California. On the first leg of its journey, the small group led by the Franciscan fathers skirted to the east of San Juan County as it passed by present Dove Creek, Colorado. Later, after abandoning the westward jour­ney to California in favor of returning to New Mexico, the group crossed the Colorado River at the Crossing of the Fathers, touching the extreme southwest corner of San Juan County before entering present Arizona. After the Spanish Trail was opened between Santa Fe and Los Angeles, the 1,200-mile route became the main corridor through the Southwest between 1830 and 1848. This famous trail, as it left Santa Fe, entered Utah and San Juan County near Ucolo, two miles south of Piute Spring, an often used campsite. Following a northwesterly course toward the Col­orado River crossing at Moab, the route passed through Dry Valley paralleling present Highway 163 past Looking Glass Rock, thence to La Sal Junction, and on to Cane Springs Can­yon which, with its bounteous supply of water, made it an important stopping place on the trail. Following a steep nar­row trail out of Cane Springs Canyon to the top of Blue Hill, the trail gradually descended through Spanish Valley toward the Colorado River. The Spanish explorers, missionaries, traders, trappers, and horse dealers, whose ephemeral tracks of a hundred and fifty years ago have long since disappeared, were followed by Anglo explorers beginning with the William Huntington ex­pedition in 1854. Huntington took wagons from the Mormon settlements across the Spanish Trail as far as the head of Spanish Valley in San Juan County. After abandoning the wag­ons the group continued south, reaching the Hovenweep ruins near the present Colorado border before returning home. The following year saw the establishment of the Elk Mountain Mission at the strategic crossing of the Colorado River which Rivera had visited many years earlier. Though the mission lasted only three months because of Indian hos­tilities, the mission leader, Alfred Billings, took a few men and Introduction explored south across Dry Valley and around the eastern side of the Blue Mountains to Comb Wash which they followed to the San Juan River. From this point they pushed forty miles further south to a settlement of Navajos with whom they traded. They then returned to the newly constructed rock fort near the Colorado River, which they abandoned a few days later. Further Mormon exploring ventures in San Juan County were marked by an interlude of twenty-five years until 1879 when Silas S. Smith led an expedition to locate a route and settlement site for the San Juan Mission. This Mormon explor­ing hiatus in southeastern Utah did not mean the region was forgotten. Between 1859 and 1880 a number of federal gov­ernment explorers penetrated the area. The first of these was Captain John N. Macomb of the United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. As chief topographical engineer in New Mexico, Macomb was in­structed to find the best route between Santa Fe and the Mor­mon settlements in southern Utah, determine the course of the San Juan River, and locate the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers. Accompanied by John Strong Newberry, considered America's foremost geologist, Macomb and his men followed the Spanish Trail into San Juan County where their explorations took them near the La Sal Mountains, to the overlook of the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers, then back across Peter's Hill and the east slope of the Blue Mountains to the San Juan River. The Civil War interrupted further exploring activities for a decade until John Wesley Powell made his historic voyages down the Green and Colorado rivers in 1869 and 1871. Members of the Ferdinand V. Hayden Survey made a recon­naissance trip into San Juan County in 1875. Led by James L. Gardner and Henry Gannett, the group surveyed the La Sal Mountains before crossing Dry Valley to conduct a similiar reconnaissance of the Blue Mountains. Their plans were cut short when an Indian attack forced them to abandon their records and scientific equipment as they fled eastward into San Juan County Colorado. In the following year, 1876, parties from the Hayden survey returned to San Juan County to make a cur­sory examination of the Blue Mountains and the San Juan River drainage. The line between exploration and settlement of the San Juan region was crossed in 1879 as Mormons launched a major colonizing effort under the direction of Silas S. Smith to gain control of southeastern Utah. The San Juan Mission came in the twilight of a far-reaching and ambitious western colonization effort launched by the Mormon church following their exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1846 and the establish­ment of Salt Lake City in 1847. A brief review of the settle­ment of Utah communities reveals several interesting patterns and offers a context for understanding the significance of the San Juan settlement achievement. By the end of 1847, two communities, Bountiful and Farmington, were established a few miles north of Salt Lake City, and in 1848, following the purchase of Fort Buenaven­tura from Miles Goodyear, Mormons moved into Weber Val­ley with the establishment of Ogden. The following year, 1849, witnessed the move west to adjoining Tooele Valley and south to Utah Valley with the establishment of Provo and, at the end of 1849, further south into Sanpete Valley with the establishment of an outpost at Manti 120 miles from Salt Lake City. The year 1850 saw further activity in Utah Valley with settlements at Lehi, Springville, and Payson. In Weber Valley, Harrisville was settled north of Ogden. The years from 1851 to 1856 witnessed the greatest activity as the settlements of Nephi, Fillmore, Beaver, Parowan, and Washington were es­tablished in southern Utah as part of a Mormon corridor to the Pacific Ocean. To the north, Brigham City was settled in 1851 and a foothold in Cache Valley made at Wellsville in 1856. The settlement of Sanpete Valley was strengthened with the founding of Ephraim and Mount Pleasant in 1852, while an abortive attempt was made in 1855 by Elk Mountain missionaries to push east from the Sanpete Valley to the Col­orado River. Introduction The Utah War brought an interlude in the settlement process from 1857 until 1859 when the only new areas opened were in the valleys just east of Salt Lake City and Ogden at Heber City, Coalville, Morgan, and Huntsville. New settlements were also made at Logan and Providence in Cache Valley and Moroni and Gunnison in Sanpete Valley. In 1860 Deseret was established in Millard County in west cen­tral Utah, and the promise and need of a western cotton in­dustry led to the founding of St. George in 1861 near Washington in southwestern Utah. The Sevier Valley, south of Sanpete Valley, was settled in 1863 as the pressure for land by the older communities of Manti, Ephraim, and Mount Pleasant led to the new settle­ments of Salina, Richfield, and Monroe. Further south from Sevier Valley, along present-day U.S. Highway 89, the settle­ments of Panguitch and Kanab were made in 1864. For the next thirteen years there was relatively little ac­tivity in Utah's colonization saga. In northern Utah, Lewiston was established at the north end of Cache Valley in 1870 and the same year Randolph in Rich County near the Wyoming border. Escalante, which was the last settlement the San Juan pioneers passed as they pushed toward the east, was founded in 1875. Seventy miles east of Panguitch, Escalante marked the direction Mormon settlement efforts would take during the next decade. The death of Brigham Young in 1877 briefly delayed the march eastward, but the period from 1876 to 1880 saw the Mormon occupation of the vast Colorado Plateau. Perhaps in no other time since the pioneer arrival in 1847 had so much territory come under Mormon domination. This occupation stretched from the Uinta Mountains on the north to the Little Colorado River in Arizona on the south and from the rim of the Great Basin eastward toward the Rocky Mountains. It in­cluded the present-day areas of the Uinta Basin with Vernal established in 1878; Castle Valley with Price, Huntington, Castle Dale, and Ferron settled in 1877; the Moab area reset­tled in 1880; San Juan County with the settlement of Bluff in San Juan County 1880; Bicknell in Wayne County in 1882; and the area around Snowflake, Arizona, beginning in 1876. Other areas would be settled later, but none on a scale or with the same sense of mission as that of the Colorado Plateau and specifi­cally San Juan County. The Mormon foothold at Bluff was very tenuous, espe­cially as Indian relations bordered on open hostility, the San Juan River proved unmanageable for irrigation purposes, the shortage of good farm land limited the size of the community, and Texas cattlemen saw the Hole-in-the-Rockers as a distinct challenge to their use of the extensive and lush range land in the county. Suggestions were made that Mormon church authorities release the Bluff settlers from their mission call and allow them to settle in a more favorable locality. After a visit by President Joseph F. Smith and Apostle Erastus Snow, those who wanted to leave were permitted to do so; how­ever, for those willing to remain in the face of dire cir­cumstances, the church leaders promised they would be "doubly blessed of the Lord."3 Fortunes did take a turn for the better after the arrival of Francis Hammond in 1885 to assume duties as San Juan Stake president. Under Hammond, the Mormons abandoned their futile farming efforts and gave their full energies to rais­ing livestock. In time the Mormon cattlemen, in an unusual alliance with drought and low market prices, wore down the non-Mormon cattlemen and by the early 1890s controlled San Juan County's livestock industry. At the same time a new opportunity opened with sheep, and most San Juan County livestock men acquired large herds of them. This change from agriculture to livestock meant the abandonment - for San Juan County at least - of Brigham Young's home industry-self- sufficiency economic philosophy in favor of an export economy dependent on national markets. The Mormon entry into the San Juan livestock industry on a large scale was coupled by a successful effort to estab­lish communities at strategic locations along the access routes to the mountain grazing lands. Consequently, Mon- Introduction ticello was established on North Montezuma Creek and Ver­dure on South Montezuma Creek in 1887. A third settlement on White Mesa was also planned for 1887. However, since the anticipated influx of Mormons into San Juan County did not materialize, the plan was delayed until the establishment of Blanding in 1905 under the direction of Walter C. Lyman, a member of the original San Juan Mission who became stake president in 1902. Since the 1900 census, when San Juan County registered a population of 1,023, the growth rate has been fairly even at about a thousand new people each decade, except for the 1920s when the population remained at 3,500 and the 1950s when the population nearly doubled from 5,300 to over 9,000 people. Another significant growth was registered be­tween 1970 and 1980 when the number zoomed from 9,600 to 13,000. Both periods of unprecedented growth, the 1950s and 1970s, were the result of uranium and oil booms. It is ex­pected that in the future the county will continue to roller coaster its way through the boom-bust national and interna­tional cycles, while tourism and recreation will continue to become more and more important in the county's economy. Blessed with an array of national parks, national monuments, national recreation areas, national forests, primitive areas, and state parks, San Juan County draws a large number of in-state and national tourists as well as an ever-increasing number of international visitors. The essays and comments that follow focus on specific themes and subjects in San Juan County's history. Though not a comprehensive history of the county, they offer many new insights and bring together in one volume a sense of San Juan County's heritage through an examination of the major forces and issues that have molded and shaped the promising, but challenging, destiny of southeastern Utah. In the first section on the prehistoric peoples of the San Juan area, Winston Hurst, a native of San Juan County and an expert on southwestern archaeology with special emphasis 7 San Juan County on early ceramics, outlines, in terms of time span, the first 98 percent of the region's history. He reviews the three major prehistoric groups who made their homes in the San Juan re­gion: the Paleo-Indians, the Archaic cultures, and the Anasazi - all of whom predate the historic Indians. He observes that although archaeologists have been able to sketch in the broad outlines of these prehistoric cultures, the study has just begun. Unfortunately, some of the answers to the important questions about these early people may have been lost al­ready because of inept past archaeological efforts or unscien­tific collecting and looting of significant sites. Robert Hosier, speaking for many of the San Juan County citizens who have developed a keen interest in the area's prehistoric residents, calls for the establishment of a local depository for reports, artifacts, and information about the early inhabitants. Con­vinced that interested local amateurs and outside professional archaeologists have for too long been jealous and suspicious of each other, although they share common interests and concerns, Hosier summons a new alliance among those inter­ested in San Juan County's prehistory. Part two reviews the historic Indian groups of San Juan County. Gregory C. Thompson, assistant director of libraries and head of special collections for the University of Utah's Marriott Library, outlines the history of the Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos from 1700 to the present. He finds that each group had a highly developed economic system and that they dem­onstrated strong resistance to the non-Indian intruders into the area between 1870 and 1923. The Indians of San Juan County are somewhat unique in American history because they have remained in their homeland without being forced to move to another location as was the fate of so many Amer­ican Indian tribes. In the early 1890s San Juan County's In­dians and their supporters were nearly successful in having the entire county declared an Indian reservation. Clyde J. Be-nally, in his review of the Navajo experience in the South­west, gives us an insider's glimpse into Navajo history and life as he touches on the communal concept of property; the Introduction Navajo family; Navajo government; chants, rites, mythical fig­ures, ceremonies, and medicine men; sheep raising; silversmi-thing; weaving; hogans; the importance of the trading post; and other facets of his people and culture. By 1880 San Juan County's native inhabitants faced an important challenge as Mormon settlers, blasting and hacking their way over the Hole-in-the-Rock trail, came from the set­tlements of southwestern Utah to control and Christianize the Indians while snatching the San Juan region from non-Mor­mons who had begun to view the area with keen interest. The third essay looks at the uniqueness of the Hole-in-the- Rock trail, as it stretches nearly two hundred miles from Es­calante in Garfield County to Bluff. The trail, listed in the Na­tional Register of Historic Places, is remarkable because of the conviction and struggle that marked the effort to con­struct a road across one of the most rugged and isolated sec­tions of the United States. The essay, "The Hole-in-the-Rock a Century Later," documents how much of this unique re­source still remains and recalls the story of the 250 individu­als who made the memorable trek during the winter and early spring of 1879-80. The essay is followed by comments from Lynn Lyman, a son of Walter C. Lyman - one of the original members of the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition. He (Lynn) was a member of the first party to retrace the route of the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition in 1940. Since then he has carefully examined and studied the trail and guided numer­ous expeditions over it in a heroic and successful effort to locate the trail and increase understanding and awareness of its historical importance. Once the difficult Hole-in-the-Rock journey was com­pleted, San Juan pioneers set about building the community of Bluff and in time looked to the establishment of new com­munities. Gary Shumway, professor of history at California State University at Fullerton, in a paper presented at the Twenty-seventh Annual Meeting of the Utah State Historical Society in September 1979, recounts the making of Blanding. In this excellent portrait of his home town, Dr. Shumway San Juan County sketches the individuals, groups, forces, traditions, myths, ob­stacles, and accomplishments which shaped the community. Clarence Rogers, a life-long resident of San Juan County, fol­lows with recollections about the settlement of Blanding, the construction of the tunnel to bring irrigation water to White Mesa, adobe making, and several dramatic events in the county's history. Part five examines the livestock and agricultural history of San Juan County. Charles S. Peterson, professor of history at Utah State University and author of numerous articles and books on southeastern Utah, sees San Juan County as different - different because of its unusual geology, large size, remote­ness, unique experiences, and heavy emphasis on ranching. In his essay he tells the story of San Juan's cowboys, cattle bar­ons, sheepherders, and dry farmers, pointing out the conflicts and adjustments that have colored the agricultural experience in the county. His review is highlighted by character sketches of Texas-trained cattlemen, Mormon cowboys, Mexican sheepherders, and hopeful dry farmers. Most of these men displayed a spartan-like commitment to their employers or their own undertakings - a necessary quality as the county's agricultural fortunes bounced along the narrow tightrope be­tween success and failure. Peterson's observations are given careful scrutiny by Hardy Redd, a San Juan County rancher whose family has been involved in livestock since the first days of the county. Redd emphasizes the staying power of the Mormon cattlemen in the establishment of a viable agricul­tural base for San Juan's economy. Preston G. Nielson, also a San Juan cattleman, provides a perspective on San Juan's ag­riculture and livestock industry since 1959. He observes that the expenses of operating a farm or ranch continue to rise without accompanying increases for goods produced. Nielson also outlines the significant advances that have been made during the past twenty-five years with better fertilizer; sprays for insects, noxious weeds, and plant diseases; methods of ir­rigation with sprinklers; development of new water sources; more selective animal breeding; and range rehabilitation. 10 Introduction The development of San Juan roads and the management of county resources is examined in part six. Jay M. Haymond, coordinator for collections and research at the Utah State His­torical Society, outlines the development of the San Juan road system from the Hole-in-the-Rock trail to the upgrading of old roads and new road construction during the 1960s. He finds that roads were almost always built or upgraded because of the demand for natural resource development and that fed­eral funds for roads were usually essential to the success of these undertakings. Calvin Black, San Juan County commis­sioner, follows this essay with a review of his experience with roads and road construction in the county. He then re­hearses the difficulties for the county as the assessed valua­tion of property during the past thirty years has fluctuated radically because of instability in the uranium and oil indus­try. Commissioner Black outlines the county's push for state legislation to implement a county tax stability program to provide a reserve or trust fund, thereby allowing the county to maintain adequate funding levels without raising the mill levy when the total valuation level drops. Kenneth Bailey, also a member of the San Juan County Commission, follows with a statement of similar concerns and a demonstration of the extent, in terms of dollars, of the fluctuation in assessed valuation. He then traces the tremendous growth in county expenditures for roads. Part seven looks at San Juan County's uranium industry. Gary L. Shumway, a long-time student of the Colorado Plateau's uranium industry, traces the development of uranium mining in southeastern Utah from the first decade of the twentieth century to the present. Mining was usually un­profitable, often dominated by large companies, and colored by a cadre of impoverished but dedicated prospectors and miners. However, with the development in the early 1950s of the cold war with Russia and the setting of lucrative prices and long-range planning by the Atomic Energy Commission, a uranium boom swept the Colorado Plateau and brought previously unknown wealth to San Juan County. Though the 11 San Juan County uranium market has fluctuated since the 1950s, Professor Shumway projects a bright long-range outlook as America turns more and more to nuclear power plants. Hanson L. Bayles, in his comments, describes the changes in uranium mining since the boom of the early 1950s, and Don Kemner follows with an account of the changes which the oil boom brought to Montezuma Creek in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The last section of this volume focuses on education in San Juan County. Jessie L. Embry, director of the Charles Redd Center oral history program at Brigham Young Univer­sity, draws extensively from an excellent collection of inter­views to sketch the difficulty that plagued administrators in finding teachers for San Juan County and to explain how these low-paid, young, and usually unmarried ladies handled their primitive and remote one-room schools. Following this essay Reta Bartell recalls her experiences as a teacher and supervisor. She was responsible for implementing curricula in the public schools during the early 1960s for Indian children who spoke little or no English. The section concludes witb comments by Zenos Black, a native of San Juan County, who graduated from the University of Utah in 1930. Black taught school in Idaho for twelve years before he was appointed superintendent of the San Juan School District in 1943, a pos­ition he held until 1967. From his perspective as an adminis­trator for twenty-four years, he recounts the problems of teacher recruitment, scarce funding, caring for the widely scattered one-room schools, and supervising teachers with unusual styles and methods; the implementation of an Indian education program; the traditional resistance to consolidation proposals; and the special challenges in meeting the demands of an exploding school population. Allan Kent Powell 12 Introduction NOTES ' Richard D. Poll et at, eds., Utah's History (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young Univer­sity Press, 1978), p. 36. 2 Donald C. Cutter, "Prelude to Pageant in the Wilderness," Western Historical Quarterly 8 0anuary 1971): 4. 3 Cornelia Adams Perkins, Marian Gardner Nielson, and Lenora Butt Jones, Saga of San Juan, 2d ed., (San Juan County: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1968), p. 76. 13