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Show END OF ISOLATION, 1930-1960 J/rom the arrival of the Mormons in the 1850s and 1860s onward to 1930, the people in Washington County were relatively isolated. The railroad did not penetrate the county despite several schemes to entice investors to bring it into Dixie. Between 1903 and 1911 several proposals seemed near finalization. The Iron County Record of Cedar City announced on 17 July 1903: "Mdford and Dixie are to be connected by an electric radroad, according to the plans of George F. Lane, the Mdford mining operator, who says he has secured ample capital for the enterprise and the work will be commenced within ninety days. The line wdl be 130 mdes long and wdl go by way of Beaver and Parowan, running four miles west of Cedar and on to St. George." Work never commenced. The commercial clubs of Washington County and Iron County joined to lobby radroad officials in Salt Lake City to choose the Cedar City-St. George route down the Black Ridge for a proposed railroad to the Grand Canyon. Throughout the year 1910, boosters from Cedar City wrote letters and articles in the Iron County Record expressing confidence that the railroad would come to Dixie. The 213 214 HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY Wagons loading freight at Lund, Utah, the closest railhead to Saint George until 1923. (Wm. L. Crawford Collection) boosterism and optimism were assertive, but the capitalists in Salt Lake City were not moved. The rad line was laid farther west, skirting Washington County; thus the commerce and outside capital that usuaUy accompanied the "iron horse" went elsewhere. The alternative to the radroad was wagon roads into Washington County; however, they were a major deterrent-difficult to traverse, particularly down the Black Hdl between Harmony and Toquervdle. To the south, navigation on the Colorado River never did materialize as a significant route even though Brigham Young had considered that possibdity. Dixie was not connected to national traffic and was hardly connected to Utah travel; it remained isolated. That did not mean total isolation, however. Obviously the settlers themselves had reached this land of sand and sunshine. They engaged in a lively freighting trade with their northern compatriots. Miners also flocked to Sdver Reef in the late 1870s, but most had left by the early 1890s. Mail came regularly. Cattlemen drove herds to market, END OF ISOLATION, 1930-1960 215 mainly to the radheads at Modena and Lund in western Iron County. California immigrants followed the Spanish Trad through the western edge of the county. Mormon church leaders visited regularly, as did federal marshals seeking polygamists. Folks came up the "Honeymoon Trad" from the Little Colorado River settlements to be married in the St. George LDS Temple. Some Dixieites traveled two days to the railhead and rode the train to Salt Lake City for the Mormon church's semiannual general conference, family visits, or trade; nonetheless, Dixie remained quite isolated, a fact which brought both advantages and disadvantages. Zion National Park Gradually outside influences began to interrupt the peaceful isolation, the monolithic culture, the agrarian austerity that pervaded Dixie. One of the first elements of change began quietly. Off in a remote corner of the county where the tiny Mormon villages of Springdale and Rockville were devoted to subsistence farming along the banks of the Virgin River, an event occurred that would transform the region. In 1909 the U.S. government designated a canyon of the Virgin River as Mukuntuweap National Monument after an Indian name for the area. This came as a surprise to most county residents, but it was the beginning of a process that would eventually give Dixie its international reputation for scenic beauty and its largest industry-tourism. The designation of Mukuntuweap National Monument by presidential proclamation signed by President William Howard Taft was the result of an extended process of discovery of the area by "outsiders." Two of John Wesley Powell's associates in the explorations of the Grand Canyon, Clarence Dutton and Frederick Dellenbaugh, helped bring Zion Canyon to national attention. Dutton explored the canyon in 1880 and included florid descriptive language in his 1882 U.S. Geological Survey report: Nothing can exceed the beauty of Little Zion Valley In its proportions it is about equal to Yosemite, but in the nobility and beauty of the sculptures there is no comparison. No wonder the fierce Mormon Zealot, who named it, was reminded of the Great 216 HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY ^_ % * 0 rt^7. £SBL r i k '• * It'll T & & <&> • '''IV'SHBE. i ' ^ s i m7'-.^:^ wBgmg ' fi ^H Aerial view of Zion Lodge area in 1923-24. (National Park Service Photograph, J. L. Crawford Collection) Zion, on which his fervid mind was bent-"of a house not budt witii hands, eternal in the heavens."1 Much later, in 1903, Frederick Dellenbaugh visited Zion Canyon and took photographs which he published in the January 1904 issue of Scribner's Magazine. That same year several of his oil paintings were exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair. This exposure brought notoriety but did not open up the area to travel because existing roads were merely wagon trails. Leo A. Snow, U.S. deputy surveyor and resident of St. George, following months of survey work in southern Utah which included Zion Canyon, wrote in June 1909: A view can be had of this canyon surpassed only by a similar view of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. At intervals along the west side of the canyon streams of various sizes rush over the edge of the chasm forming water falls from 800 to 2000 feet high. The END OF ISOLATION, 1930-1960 2T7 stream in the bottom of the canyon appears as a silver ribbon winding its way among the undergrowth and occasionally disappearing from view. In my opinion this canyon should be set apart by the government as a national park.2 A little over a month after receiving Snow's report, the Acting Secretary of the Interior made a recommendation to President Traft for the creation of Mukuntuweap National Monument. President Taft signed the proclamation the same day-31 July 1909.3 With the stroke of Taft's pen, southern Utah was changed forever. The national monument designation was amazingly uncomplicated. It preceded the creation of the U.S. National Park Service but came at a time when several people in Washington, D.C., particularly Stephen T. Mather and Horace Albright, were anxious to designate scenic lands for national preservation. These two men became the founding director and assistant director of the United States National Park Service. The national monument label came without a long lobby from local folks; in fact, it came almost effortlessly because naming the monument did not require an appropriation or congressional approval. In 1917 Horace Albright visited Mukuntuweap National Monument. Albright, like other early visitors to the area, was taken with Mukuntuweap's scenic beauty and grandeur, and he moved quickly to expand the acreage of the monument and to change its name. He later recalled in a report to Stephen T. Mather, director of the National Park Service, that "Mukuntuweap National Monument was too small and the name was too hard to pronounce, and the people there called the place 'Little Zion'...." Albright returned to Washington to begin work to enlarge the monument and to change its name. Former governor Wdliam Spry and church leader Heber J. Grant were strongly supportive of the name change and the campaign to include the monument in the national park system. Senator Reed Smoot from Utah agreed to sponsor the bdl expanding the size of the monument and changing its name to Zion National Park.4 Over time, several people were appointed as park superintendents over time but the one consistent person to carry on the work of developing the park was Springdale resident Walter Ruesch, who 218 HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY C. Y. Rozencrans and William L. Crawford standing on a platform of the upper cable frame which was built by David Flanigan between 1888 and 1901. (Photograph by Putnam 8c Valentine, Los Angeles, California, J. L. Crawford Collection) END OF ISOLATION, 1930-1960 219 began as custodian of the park in 1917 and remained at his post under various titles, constructing many trads and buildings untd his retirement in 1948. Friends of Zion National Park enjoy early park stories such as those of Nephi Johnson and the Indians who were hesitant to enter the canyon with him because they felt the canyon was the dwelling place of the spirits; Isaac Behunin's farming in isolation near the present- day lodge; David Flanigan's famous cable to bring lumber from the upper mesa down into the canyon for mdling; and especiady the building of the Zion Tunnel in 1930. This latter development was a major factor in opening the canyon to automobile traffic, thereby encouraging that new phenomenon-the tourist. Utah Parks Company The designation of the monument as a national park and resultant nationwide publicity of Zion and the other scenic and geological wonders of southern Utah and northern Arizona increased the number of visitors to the park following World War I. The National Park Service quickly found itself unable to provide adequate accommodations for the growing number of visitors to the park. The Union Pacific Railroad and its newly-established subsidiary, Utah Parks Company, agreed to provide high-quality accommodations at Zion National Park and the other national parks in the region. Tourists traveling by rad were brought to Zion by a radroad spur from Lund to Cedar City where a fleet of orange buses owned and operated by Utah Parks Company transported visitors to Zion, Bryce, and Grand Canyon national parks. By 1923 the Union Pacific Railroad had absorbed the LA & SL Railroad, established the Utah Parks Company, and taken over Wdliam W. Wylie's and Parry Brothers' Zion operations. A new lodge with separate guest cabins was opened for business in 1925, retiring the Wylie tents as guest housing, though they were kept as employee housing until about the beginning of World War II. The new cabins were built without bathroom facilities, making a chamber pot a necessity in each room. Showers and other modern appurtenances were provided at the lodge center. By 1929 there were nearly 150 220 HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY Opening Day at Zion Lodge, 20 May 1925. (Photograph by Harold Russell, J. L. Crawford Collection) "standard" rooms and twenty "deluxe"-the deluxe including "comfort stations." The Great Depression of the 1930s spurred the addition of a different type of facility near the south entrance to the park. A cafeteria and less-expensive cabins operated from 1935 to 1973, at which time the cafeteria was closed and the cabins were removed. To accommodate increased tourism and to meet the needs of the Utah Parks Company, the National Park Service budt a bridge across the Virgin River at Rockville. The relationship between the National Park Service and the Union Pacific Railroad was not always an amicable one. One early conflict was over roads and 200 acres owned inside the proposed Bryce Canyon National Park. The radroad agreed to sell the land to the Park Service, which in turn agreed to build the Zion-Mt. Carmel highway and tunnel to accommodate Utah Parks Company buses.5 The cooperation between the Utah Parks Company and the National Park Service did encourage more tourists to visit Zion Park and the other wonders of the region. In 1924 there were 8,400 visitors to Zion Park, double the number of the previous year. The figure continued to multiply until the hard times of the Great Depression when the number of visitors leveled off at about 55,000. END OF ISOLATION, 1930-1960 221 In 1995 there were nearly three million visitors to Zion Park, adding greatly to the economy of Washington County. The tunnel shortened the distance to Bryce Canyon by seventy mdes and to Grand Canyon by twenty. A significant concession had been made previously when, in 1924, the Park Service went outside its boundary to install a bridge across the Virgin River at Rockvdle, bypassing Hurricane and shortening the distance to Zion National Park by thirty-three miles, a crucial benefit to the Utah Parks Company and its buses which took tourists to all three national parks. National Park Service Director Stephen Mather donated $5,000 of his own money to that project. Utah Parks Company officials underestimated the impact of the private automobde. They believed that the remoteness of the national parks in the southwestern United States would convince most people to take the train and be guided through the parks on buses. The company invested in rustic lodges, cabins, and dining facdities and provided memorable entertainment. In actuality automobiles came regularly from early days, and by the outbreak of World War II, the majority of visitors were coming to the parks by automobile. From 1943 to 1945, the parks company closed its facilities because of the war. When they re-opened, the automobde was king. Soon both train service to Cedar City and connecting bus service to the parks were abandoned. All of this changed Washington County. People from throughout the nation and some from beyond its borders were coming to the land of red sand and considering it not as primardy desolate and dry but as profoundly beautiful. After years of exporting a modest volume of agricultural goods and struggling with a life of scarcity, Dixie residents had a new product: beauty. It took some time for local businessmen to realize the significance of this shift. Here was something that did not need to be shipped away; the consumers came to the source and, when they left, the beauty remained. The visitors also served as word-of-mouth advertisers. There were new outside allies to help in this trade-the Union Pacific Radroad, the state of Utah, and the National Park Service. Here was the outside capital that had long eluded county developers. Southern Utahns could develop a 222 HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY new source of employment for their sons and daughters and there were new opportunities for entrepreneurs. Zion Natural History Association Zion National Park benefited greatly from public-spirited citizens, including Juanita Brooks, Herbert E. Gregory, and Arthur Bruhn, who responded to requests for volunteer service to promote it. This was facditated through the Zion Natural History Association that was organized in 1929 as the Zion-Bryce Natural History Association (ZNHA) but split in 1961 to become independent. ZNHA is a non-profit organization chartered by the National Park Service and incorporated under Utah law for the purpose of supplementing interpretive activities of the park through the publication of books, maps, guides, pictures, and documents. ZNHA budt a visitors center within the park where publications and other items were sold. This arrangement ensured that the federal government was not in competition with local businesses. By the 1970s, the volume of tourists to the park was enormous and the sale of tourist materials substantial. Because of the weight of association duties, the National Park Service required boards of directors to assume management of aU business, freeing the chief naturalist for official government business. Victor Jackson remained as coordinator between the park and the board of directors. Under the direction of the board chairman, St. George community leader Robert N. Sears, the board assumed a much more independent role, increased the size of the board of directors, opened membership to the public, and hired a professional executive director, Jamie Gentry. Sears also organized "The Friends of Kolob" as a fund-raising effort which was successful in encouraging people to donate $100 or more to become life members. The "Friends" group was later absorbed into ZNHA. A mdlion-doUar addition to the visitor's center was built in the 1980s. An additional visitor's center was constructed at the 1-15 entrance to the Kolob section of the park. One of the most memorable projects of the association was to sell the forty-seven tourist cabins that were being replaced by permanent and updated facilities. Sears and J. R. Madsen spent hundreds of hours supervising their removal and sale, and the men were able to END OF ISOLATION, 1930-1960 223 raise $48,000 for the park with this project. A recent project of ZNHA was to budd a new visitor's center, just outside the park in Springdale, adjacent to the Zion Canyon Cinemax Theater. ZNHA is one of the most successful services of its kind throughout the national parks system. It is a member of the Conference of National Park Cooperating Associations (CNPCA) which holds biennial conventions and whose 1996 national convention was held in St. George. Automobiles The Washington County News in the 1930s was replete with advertisements enticing county residents to purchase Chevrolets and Fords at prices ranging from $475 to $675. Half-ton, 1-1/2 ton, and large chassis 1-1/2 ton trucks were also popular. Those vehicles soon made peddling and freighting a big business in Dixie, overcoming some of the drawbacks of the lack of a railhead in the county. Though oiled roads were rare, auto buyers were soon found in the county, and travelers from outside came in ever-increasing numbers in private automobdes. Service stations appeared, as did restaurants. Local merchants became seriously involved in the trucking business. By 1 Aprd 1928 there were 490 cars and trucks licensed in the county. This was the beginning of something more profound for Dixie than the railroad was for neighboring Iron County because it was a mode of transportation that would only grow. National and local automobde clubs took to the road promoting tourism by automobde, endorsing hotels, and lobbying for good, all-weather roads. Nationally, the Lincoln Automobde Club, with a growing membership of automobile owners, and the Arrowhead Trail Automobile Association lobbied Congress for the construction of a national highway linking the east coast with the west coast. In Utah, the Arrowhead Trail Automobile Association was active in promoting the Salt Lake City to Los Angeles route, passing through Washington County. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Arrowhead Trail from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City was a project that brought national attention to Washington County. It was part of the national promotional campaigns developed by the automobile industry to increase the average American's desire to own automobiles. The 224 HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY Early automobile travelers in Washington County faced many difficulties. (Lynne Clark Collection, donor-Orpha Morris) famous race driver, Charles Bigelow, was particularly effective as an automobde lobbyist and developed close ties in St. George.6 He was close to Warren Cox who budt the Arrowhead Hotel in St. George. Cox's hotel became a haven for travelers on the Arrowhead Trad, as did Snow's and the Liberty Hotel. Partly because of Bigelow's effectiveness, there was a growing interest in automobile tourism to the national parks in southern Utah and northern Arizona. The Salt Lake City Commercial Club organized an automobde expedition of five cars and seventeen people in September 1914 to demonstrate the viabdity of auto tourism to southern Utah. The automobde expedition invited Warren Cox of St. George to join the group as its travel guide from Salt Lake City to St. George.7 Meetings were held along the route to encourage local townspeople to sustain this new economic venture and support improved roads in the state. The expedition was not without incidents, however. At many locations in Washington County members of the expedition were forced to "camp out," there being no adequate facilities. Breakdowns occurred frequently, and the lack of gasoline facilities required the expedition to place tanks of gasoline along the route in advance. END OF ISOLATION, 1930-1960 225 Roads in the county and south to the north rim of the Grand Canyon were difficult for the automobdes. The drive up the Hurricane Fault to Kanab was much more difficult than anticipated, resulting in the temporary abandonment of two of the five cars. The expedition brought further attention to the scenic wonders in the county and southern Utah while also demonstrating that tourism by automobile was possible. On the heels of this first and successful tourist expedition, ambitious businessmen in the county built sleeping and eating establishments for weary tourists and service stations for their automobdes. Roads Any significant automobile travel in Washington County depended on there being oiled roads. Crusading automobile club members braved gravel roads, but normal high-volume auto traffic depended on hard-surfaced roads. The Zion Tunnel road provided a case in point. It opened Zion National Park to a whole array of visitors and created a major tourist business. The development of other such roads was necessary to transform Utah's Dixie. Roads had been a challenge from the earliest arrival of white set-tiers. The first roads began as rude wagon trails in the same general routes that the main routes foUow today: down the Black Ridge from Harmony to Toquerville, then on to Washington through challenging sand deposits and finally to St. George. This road would later become Highway 91 and eventuady Interstate 15. Very early a trail was hacked into the Hurricane Fault above Toquervdle so that settlers could settle the upper Virgin River vaUey at Grafton, Virgin, Rockville, Springdale, and Shunesburg. A road later would be built up the hill outside Grafton to Kanab. That in turn was replaced by the Rockvdle mountain road. Another series of roads led toward Pine Valley, Mountain Meadows, and Hamblin (with connections to Gunlock), and later extended from Central to Enterprise. A road from Washington, called the Warner Valley Gap Road, went out through Fort Pearce, up the Hurricane Fault, and on to Pipe Spring, Moccasin Springs, Kanab, and Long Valley. Wagons that went to the Muddy River settlements lumbered from St. George to Beaver Dam and then over difficult terrain, either crossing the 226 HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY Virgin River many times or taking a dangerous alternate route over the desert sands. County road development and maintenance was the responsibd-ity of the three elected county selectmen (county commissioners) and the probate judge-codectively known as the county court. The court hired superintendents of roads (or several superintendents for different roads) to supervise their development and maintenance in the county. The county court levied taxes and labor assessments for the maintenance of county roads. It was not unusual for Mormon ward congregations to obligate themselves to road budding. It was also possible to pay church tithing or delinquent taxes by working on the roads.8 John R. Young was appointed superintendent for the St. George and Pine Valley Road in the 1860s. Young reported to the court in June 1867 that he coUected, through donation of labor on the road, $907.85 of the $978.50 that was needed for its improvement.9 From the outset Latter-day Dixie Saints in Washington County were able to persuade the territorial legislature to appropriate modest sums toward road building. This made it possible to pay workers a doUar or two a day for hard labor on roads, but the allotments were always merely a portion of the cost. For example, in 1878 the legislature appropriated $3,000 "for widening of the dugways, removing rock from the road, and graveling or otherwise covering what is known as the Grapevine Sand, and generally repairing and straightening the Territorial Road from the head of the Black Ridge Dugway . . . through Bellevue and Leeds, to St. George,.. ."10 After the turn of the century, it was a common practice for inmates from the state prison in Salt Lake City to work on major road-building projects. Zion National Park benefited from such labor. J. T. Woodbury reported in the Deseret News of 18 October 1913 that convicts would be working on a road to the county line toward Cedar City. State appropriations grew over time so that by 1936 the state made $60,000 available for another project, the Snow Canyon road. Improved construction machinery, technology, and engineering, as well as stronger bridge materials, greatly improved county roads and bridges at the turn of the century. In 1924 the county con- END OF ISOLATION, 1930-1960 227 This 1915 camp at Anderson's Ranch accommodated prisoners constructing a state highway. (Mildred Larch Collection, in the possession of Harriet Leavitt) structed a steel bridge over the Virgin River near Rockville which greatly improved access to Zion National Park by Utah Parks Company buses. This sturdy bridge is still being used by travelers today. Equally important to the transportation needs of the county was the erection in 1925 of a steel bridge a few miles south of the Iron-Washington county line on the newly-established road called the Arrowhead Trail. Other bridges were also built by the state to serve the transportation needs in the county. In 1934 a bridge was erected between St. George and Hurricane, considerably shortening the route between the two communities. In 1937 a steel bridge was erected over the gulch near Pah Tempe, improving the road between La Verkin and Hurricane.11 The link of St. George with Las Vegas had historic roots back to the days before the Utah War when Las Vegas was a Mormon outpost. Because Washington County, Utah, and Clark County, Nevada, share comparable elevation and other physical simdarities, travel and trade between the two areas developed easdy. The connection between St. George, Cedar City, and beyond to Salt Lake City was politicady and 228 HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY culturally essential to Washington County residents, so St. George was a vital point along the proposed Arrowhead Trad to Los Angeles. Completing an oil surface road all the way so automobiles could travel easdy was of prime importance.12 The St. George Chamber of Commerce undertook an aggressive advertising campaign, especially in the California press, presenting St. George as a tourist mecca and also as a good site for conventions. In the late 1920s, segments of the Arrowhead Trail (later designated U.S. Highway 91) were oded. The last segment to receive od was completed in early January 1931. The Washington County News reported: "With the completion of this seven mde stretch (Harrisburg to Anderson's Ranch) the last unimproved link on the Arrowhead Trad in this County wdl be finished."13 State funds were used to make improvements to Main Street in St. George because it was part of the Salt Lake to Los Angeles highway. This oding greatly reduced the dust kicked up by increased automobile traffic and was a blessing for residents living nearby. It also benefited downtown businessmen. Tourism Completion of national and state highways brought a transformation almost unimagined to Washington County. A new zest infected businessmen; motor courts, restaurants, and gas stations were budt. The challenge at first was to attract people to stay a night instead of driving through. That was the initial vision; later, ideas would surface to attempt to entice visitors to stay longer than just one night. The eastern half of the county became involved in the tourist trade as soon as Zion Canyon became an attraction. J. L. Crawford, one of the advisors for this history, contributed the foUowing synopsis of early tourism connected with Zion National Park: When Zion National Park came into being in 1917 there were three hotels in Hurricane (Isom, Reeve and Bradshaw). At least two hotels were doing business in St. George (the Arrowhead and Snow's) and certainly drew part of their clientele from the Arrowhead Trail (later U.S. Highway 91), some of which could be classified as "tourists." Those three establishments in Hurricane can attribute their beginnings to the sheep industry; and specifi- END OF ISOLATION, 1930-1960 229 William Wylie operated this tourist camp in Zion National Park from 1917 until 1923. (Photo by Putnam and Valentine, Los Angeles, J. L. Crawford Collection) cally to the Gould's Shearing Corral which began operation in 1910. That huge sheep-shearing establishment naturally drew buyers and salesmen to die area and die need for accommodations was apparent. The exact year the hotels came into being isn't known and each was most probably a home turned into a boarding house, but each acquired the name "hotel" and stayed in business for many years.14 Director Stephen T. Mather of the National Park Service, seeing the chaos that existed in the tourist industry around Yellowstone, took steps to eliminate business competition in the parks, turning concessions into virtual monopolies. That year the Parry brothers- Gronway, Whitney and Chauncey-who owned the Cedars Hotel in Cedar City made application to operate transportation and hotel services in Zion National Park and at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. About the same time, Douglas White, passenger agent for the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Radroad, made a similar application for his company. An agreement was reached whereby the railroad 230 HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY The Bradshaw Hotel in Hurricane, c. 1910. (Photograph by Wdliam L. Crawford, J. L. Crawford Collection) company would operate the hotel services whde the Parrys ran the stages from Cedar City to Zion and Grand Canyon's North Rim. W. W. Wylie, although aging, was hired by the radroad company to budd camps at both Zion and Grand Canyon national parks, patterned after the Yellowstone operation for which he had become famous. The camps provided tents stretched over wooden frames and floors, a modest accommodation that was better than camping but not as expensive as park hotels. The camps were open for business by the spring of 1917. Wylie's brother-in-law, Robert McKee, managed the Grand Canyon camp. Wylie and his wife remained in Zion. The Wylies gained a reputation as excellent hosts, serving appealing meals and providing clean sleeping quarters-no smaU accomplishment since they had to contend with box-elder bugs, caterpdlars, skunks, and sand. Most of their foodstuffs were purchased locally, thereby helping to establish a fine rapport with the local residents, several of whom were hired to help run the camp. These accommodations were END OF ISOLATION, 1930-1960 231 somewhat primitive by today's standards, although water was piped to the kitchen and a centrally located shower bath. One or two outside taps and privies took care of other needs. In 1972 the Utah Parks Company was disbanded and the Union Pacific radroad company donated its property, less rolling stock, to the National Park Service which planned to close all overnight facd-ities inside the park except campgrounds. Because of objections from the public, however, it found a new concessioner, TW Services. Although bathrooms had been added to the standard cabins following World War II, by 1984 they had been replaced by modern motel-type, multi-room structures. The Utah Parks Company had a franchise that constituted a monopoly within the park boundary. There also was little competition from outside for many years. The smaU operations that began in nearby communities had little or no effect on business inside the park. The Utah Parks Company ultimately failed because of the demise of radroad passenger business as the American traveling public turned to automobdes. Whether Wylie set the pattern for future tourist camps or not, the many that sprang up in the vicinity-and all over the country- provided similar accommodations, except they were wooden structures instead of tents. A typical camp, or "tourist court," consisted of single, plain, frame cabins with bare essentials such as bedstead with mattress, a chair or two, a table with a washbasin and pitcher. An outside tap provided water. Todet and bathrooms were located centrally. There were four such courts in Springdale and two in Rockville, beginning about 1927. The two in Rockville didn't survive, but one is still in use in Springdale. It began as the Olsen Tourist Camp but has changed hands several times, being upgraded in the process. Another court, the most successful, was built by John A. Alfred, who also operated a restaurant. Although his rooms were the old single-cabin type, both rooms and restaurant were considered to be rather high class. None of the establishments took on the name "motel" untd after World War II. By 1970 Adred had sold out, and the modern Pioneer Lodge and Restaurant now (1996) occupies that location. |
