A History of Grand County

Renewed White Settlement

IN THE 1870s AND 1880s A no ld Mormon story related the opinion that ~ ofidlled southern Utah with the rocks and other debris left over after the Creation. A more serious editorial in the Deseret News of 11 September 186 1 claimed that the plateau land of southeastern Utah was "one vast 'contiguity of waste' and measurably valueless, except-ing for nomadic purposes, hunting grounds for Indians, and to hold the world together." Almost twenty years passed before there were any known attempts of whites to settle the area that was to later become Grand County. It is possible-even likely, in fact-that with the gold fever of the period an occasional prospector ventured into the La Sals or the Book Cliffs, and it is likely that travelers made some use of the Old Spanish Trail; however, the historical record has not been aug-mented by such information. The country was essentially conceded to be the domain of Native Americans, who in general were not par-ticularly friendly at the time. Besides the Elk Mountain troubles, Utes in Colorado had risen up in anger against the white newcomers in 1854 and 1855, raiding extensively in southern Colorado and even attacking a U.S. Army fort there. Western immigration continued, both Mormon and gentile, and the lands of Utah Territory and the West in general were gradually being settled by white Americans. The discovery of gold near Denver in 1858 led to a general influx of people into Colorado, and the Utes in the Rocky Mountain area were pushed west. Colorado Territory was established in 1861 and the present western state boundary was established at that time, taking the huge area that is now western Colorado from Utah Territory. Native Americans must have faced the tide of immigration with dismay-their lands and lifeways were disappearing and there seemed to be little or nothing that could be done. Anger erupted into violence all too often, but that violence was met with the heavy fist of the U.S. Army. Some citizens claimed to befriend the Indians; but too often it was merely a case of gaining some advantage through the supposed friendship that ended with eventual fraud or betrayal of the Indians' trust. The federal government endeavored to enter into treaties and other arrangements with the Native Americans, many of which were intended to establish them on protected reservations. Sometimes the intentions were good, other times it seems that the white treaty makers were dishonest from the start; but always the result was an ever-shrinking domain for the Native Americans. In Colorado and Utah, increasing immigration led to concerted efforts to restrict the region's Ute Indians to reservations. The Uinta Valley of northeastern Utah was loosely set aside as a Ute reservation by President Abraham Lincoln in 186 1. By 1864 whites in Utah were agitating for the removal of the Utes to those lands, and the Uintah Reservation was actively established. A treaty was signed in which the Utes gave up their lands in Utah and Sanpete counties (in the latter of which both present-day Emery and Grand counties were included) in exchange for removal to the Uintah Reservation and a payment of $1.1 million to be paid over a period of fifty years-approximately sixty-two cents per acre of land. According to historian Fred A. Conetah, however, the Indians didn't even receive this-Congress never officially ratified the treaty and so the Indians were not paid, though they were forced to move to the reservation.' RENEWEWDH ITES ETTLEMENMTO: ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 97 In Utah the Black Hawk War later erupted throughout the cen-tral part of the territory in the mid-1860s. Black Hawk was a Ute leader who included among his followers Indians of various bands living in the central part of the state. His influence extended to south-eastern Utah once the Indian troubles of that period began. His fol-lowers were resisting the forced move of Ute Indians to the newly established Uintah Reservation in northeastern Utah, but they were also reacting to the immediate threat of starvation of their people who had been displaced from their lands as well as from access to their traditional resources. During the harsh winter of 1864-65 the Native Americans were faced with severe food shortages. White set-tlements in the Sevier Valley and other areas of south-central Utah were raided, and some of the settlements were abandoned by the whites, who fled to more secure "forted up" locations. A follower of Black Hawk told Daniel Jones in 1870 that it was hunger and starvation that caused the raids. He maintained that Indian agents stole the goods sent by Washington for the Indians and that for their part the Mormons had stolen the Native Americans' land and then forced them off of it: "When they asked the Mormons for some of the bread raised on their lands, and beef fed on their grass, the Mormons insulted them, calling them dogs and other bad names. They said when the Mormons stole big fields and got rich, other Mormons, who were poor, had to buy land from them, they were not allowed to steal it from the first owners same as the first Mormons stole it from the Indians.'" Other Indians soon joined the rebellion, using it as a catalyst to express their own frustrations, anger, and resentment. There were no white settlements at the time in the Grand County area, but the war is mentioned here because the Elk Mountain Utes were said to be among Black Hawk's most important supporters; it is one of the few times they are mentioned in historical literature before they disap-peared entirely from the pages of history. Although it seems likely that Utes of the Sheberetch band from the area that was to become Grand County did aid Black Hawk, reports from the time were often exaggerated. In 1866, Superinten-dent of Indian Affairs for Utah F. H. Head reported: "Black Hawk, having secured a sufficient number of recruits among the Elk Mountain Utes to swell his force to three hundred warriors, was then setting out from the Elk Mountain country to attack the weaker set-tlements in Sanpete County." Head greatly overestimated the Elk Mountain Utes, calling them "the most powerful tribe in the Territory who can bring into the field upwards of four thousand war-rior~." T~h is at a time when others have estimated that there were barely that many Utes in the entire territ0ry.l Whatever their numbers, which could never have been large due to the limited resources of the land (and which is further believed to be small due to their rapid disappearance-and limited mention-in the historical record), the Utes from the Elk Mountain area were still angry in the 1860s-they continued to raid white settlements and the livestock herds of those whites. The continuation of the Black Hawk War in 1868 was due to their activities; Black Hawk himself kept the peace. In August 1868 a group described as Elk Mountain Utes agreed to go to the Uintah Reservation-there were twenty-six warriors and approximately seventy women and children in the group. However, in 1870 the new superintendent of Indian Affairs, J. E. Tourtellotte, would write: "The Elk Mountain Utes, Fish Utes, Sheberetches, and Yam Pah-Utes, are the most wild and disorderly Indians of this superintendency. On their hunting expeditions they sometimes visit frontier settlements, for purposes of begging and stealing. . . . They continually promise to cease depradations, but they do not keep such pr~mise."N~o te that he listed the Sheberetch as being distinct from the Elk Mountain Utes, though most historians have equated the two when they have mentioned the Sheberetch at all. It indicates, if nothing else, how little is known about the mixed group of people in the area that was to become Grand County. Sheberetch Utes were described by various observers as being in Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. They were also said to be well fed, well dressed, and excellent horsemen-"their isolation from white intru-sion probably being the rea~on."I~n a report of 1873 John Wesley Powell described the Utes of the region as being "a wild, daring people, and very skillful in border warfare. It may be stated that for the last ten years they have subsisted chiefly on the spoils of war."' It is believed that an epidemic struck the Indians of the Grand County area in 1873. The ravages of disease and warfare, coupled RENEWEWDH ITES ETTLEMENMTO: ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 99 with increasing pressure to remove to reservations, resulted in the loss of a separate identity of the Sheberetch Utes (if they ever really had one apart from the ideas of white observers). One study con-cludes: "Not a great deal is known of this band except of its conflict with the whites and its struggle for existence which failed. In the 1870s and 1880s it was scattered and became part of neighboring bands of Utes."* Another adds: "Whoever the Elk Mountain Ute People were, they had completely lost their identity by 1880 and were never referred to again as a separate group. Perhaps they became part of the Uintah Band. Perhaps the name was never more than a catch-all for traveling Ute People who appeared from time to time at one or another of the settlements or agencieslJ9 Aside from Utah militia efforts against the warring Indians, people from agencies of the U.S. government, a few prospectors, and occasional travelers on the Old Spanish Trail were the only ones to have anything to do with Grand County lands or peoples during the years of strife from the abandonment of the Elk Mountain Mission in 1855 to the mid-1870s. In 1859 Captain John M. Macomb led an exploratory party into the region of southeastern Utah to find the confluence of the Green and Grand (Colorado) rivers and to study the geology and lifeforms of the area. The group followed the Old Spanish Trail to Dry Valley in present San Juan County, where they discovered petrified dinosaur bones while conducting other scientific observations. They then headed southwest and claimed to have suc-ceeded in viewing the confluence of the two rivers, the first white men known to have made such a claim. However, with the extensive fur trapping in the area earlier, they were probably not the first to reach the confluence-many authorities claim that Denis Julien had traveled along the river at least as far south as Cataract Canyon in 1836." In fact, most scholars, including Frederick Dellenbaugh (who traveled the rivers with John Wesley Powell), doubt that the Macomb party actually reached the confluence of the two great rivers." It is known that the party of explorers, including noted expedition scien-tist John S. Newberry, didn't quite enter the area that was to become Grand County, restricting their studies to the south of the present county in what is today Canyonlands National Park. The famous claim of James White that he had traveled the Grand River from above the confluence all the way through the length of the Grand Canyon by raft in 1867 was believed by many people in the years after he was pulled from the Colorado River near Callville at the mouth of the Virgin River in what is now Nevada. Though since dis-credited by Frederick Dellenbaugh and others, the story had its ori-gins in Grand County, where White claimed that he and two companions were attacked by Indians." One of the men was killed and White and the other retreated down a side canyon to the Grand River where they constructed a crude raft of cottonwood logs and set off on their attempted escape, which turned out in White's telling to be an epic adventure. His companion drowned, but after the requi-site trials he made it through the great river gorge alive. The incon-sistencies in the story and its disparity with what was later learned of the nature of the river channels led eventually to the discrediting of White's account." One item that Dellenbaugh failed to discredit was the claim by White that he and the others were prospecting in south-western Colorado; White's mileage estimates on the river would have placed them in Grand County, giving the county some notoriety in the tall-tale department of the Old West. One item that would not be discredited, however, would be such an attack by Indians in the area. It is likely that some unfortunate prospectors did meet the fate of White's companions in the future county. Indian agents and peace commissioners in Colorado and Utah endeavored to control and restrict Ute and other Indians in Colorado and eastern Utah through the establishment of treaties and reserva-tions. A treaty signed in 1868 essentially gave the Utes the western third of Colorado, although miners were to be allowed in the reser-vation territory. However, gold was then discovered in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado and agitation to remove the Utes from Colorado Territory continued. In 1873 the Brunot Agreement took the San Juan Mountains away from the Utes. The various Ute bands were becoming increasingly weakened and were further decimated by disease and periodic starvation while also being confused and betrayed by broken treaties and promises. As men-tioned in an earlier chapter, various bands frequented or made occa-sional use of Grand County lands: Yamparika, Parianuche, Weeminuche, and Uncompahgre (Tabeguache) Utes are all men- RENEWEDW HITES ETTLEMENMT:O ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 101 tioned in historical literature as being in the area. Reservations were established in areas outside of Grand County, so that sad tale must come to focus elsewhere than in these pages. However, the lands of the county continued to be frequented by Indians of various tribes and bands, including some of the more rebellious and angry who either escaped the reservations or resisted confinement and found in the isolated, sparsely populated, and rough land of Grand County and southeastern Utah some respite from white domination. In 1875 two survey parties with the regional surveying expedi-tion led by Ferdinand V. Hayden for the U.S. Geological Survey joined together on the east side of the range and were subsequently able to complete their work in the Elk (La Sal) Mountains. The groups, a combined thirteen men strong, led by James Gardner and Henry Gannet, entered the La Sals from the east and spent two weeks in the area, surveying and naming many of the mountain peaks (including Mount Peale, Mount Tukuhnikavats, and Mount Waas) after themselves and other associates. Although they were aware that the local Indians-Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos-could be hostile, they were not molested or bothered by Indians while they were in the La Sals, but they were forced to flee for their lives and abandon their equipment, many of their records, and the expedition itself when they were attacked on 15 August by Indians as they journeyed south to the Abajo (Blue) Mountains of San Juan County.14 The other major government-sponsored exploration parties of the period in the area were led by Major John Wesley Powell, who subsequently achieved a measure of immortality in Western history due to his two journeys down the Green and Colorado rivers-the first in 1869, the second in 1871-72. His observations relating to Grand County are limited to his comments on the Green River and surrounding areas as his exploratory parties passed through Desolation, Gray, and Labyrinth canyons, and the open area of the Green River crossing of the Old Spanish Trail between the latter two canyons. His parties had no trouble with Indians while they were on the rivers-Powell was adept at cultivating good relations with these people, who sensed his respect for them-although three members of his first expedition were killed in southern Utah or northern Arizona when they left the expedition in the Grand Canyon and attempted to walk to the Mormon settlements. It has been claimed for years that the men were killed by Shivwits Indians, although recently this conclusion has been called into some question, with cer-tain whites in the region being considered possible culprits.15 Although Powell and his men named some of the features of the county, and their findings were of great importance to later travelers, and though Powell's own reflections on the land and its management were farsighted and of value to those who would try to settle the land, the direct impact of his expeditions on Grand County was mini-mal- basically there was no one except the Indians to impact. Also, he did not travel along the Grand River, restricting his voyages to the Green and the Colorado below the confluence-thus he only skirted the western margin of the future county. Therefore, although the area was becoming somewhat better known by white Americans, in the mid-1870s it was still essentially unknown-a rehge and domain of Indians who were not known for their friendly attitude towards whites. Events were transpiring to change much of that, however-if not the attitude of the Indians, at least the familiarity of white Americans with the area. Western immi-gration was proceeding rapidly; in fact, the transcontinental railroad had been completed and joined at Promontory, Utah, to the north just a few years before, in 1869. This facilitated immigration but also had a tremendous impact on local manufacturing, mining, and agri-culture, making it possible not only to import heavy machinery more easily but also to export the ores, produce, livestock, or other goods produced in the area. Expansion of mining and livestock production was an immediate result. Colorado had achieved statehood in 1876, and pressures not only continued but increased to remove all Ute Indians from the new state. Tribes were lumped together indiscriminately-friends and foes of each other and of the government-and were being forced onto reservations in the Uinta Basin and in northwestern Colorado. The gold discoveries in the San Juan Mountains in the 1870s brought hundreds of miners to western Colorado, and camp followers were not far behind, bringing goods and services for the prospecting camps. Cattlemen were quick to see opportunities to supply the RENEWEWDH ITES ETTLEMENMTO: ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 103 camps, and livestock began to be trailed into the general area of the northern Colorado Plateau. Utah's population also continued to grow rapidly; pressure to expand the ranges increased as available grazing, farming, and tim-ber lands were appropriated and/or depleted. The Great Basin was rapidly becoming overstocked. Enterprising cattlemen in central Utah and western Colorado began to be curious about the land between, and, with the increased demand from the miners of west-ern Colorado, beef prices rose, a fact that soon tempted Utahns. Charles Peterson reports that in the late 1870s cattle that sold for ten dollars a head in Utah fetched between twenty-five and thirty dollars in Colorado. This fact that was not lost on Utah cattlemen, enticing many of them to consider ways to transport their stock to Colorado.16 The land that was to become Grand County, lying as it did between the Mormon cattle ranges and the Colorado market, began to be a subject of increased interest. Rumors and stories (many orig-inating with Mormon Elk Mountain Mission members and exagger-ated by those who retold the tales) were told of land in southeastern Utah where the grass grew as high as the belly of a horse, enticing some to brave the attendent dangers presented by hostile Indians. Perhaps as early as 1874 whites again entered Grand County seeking to gain a livelihood from the land. Some descendents of Crispen Taylor claim that he journeyed from Juab County to the Moab area in 1874 to look the land over after hearing about it from John and James Ivie, members of the Elk Mountain Mission. The next year, accompanied by two nephews, Taylor is said to have brought a herd of cattle to the area. Ute Indians drove the men from the valley and the cattle were lost to the Indians. Also in 1875 (per-haps as early as 1874) two brothers, George and Silas Green, came from Levan, Juab County, with a herd of about 400 cattle. They lived in or near the old Elk Mountain Mission fort. Some accounts claim that they arrived before Taylor and were among those who told Taylor of the area." The Green brothers continued to graze cattle in the Moab Valley area until the winter of 1876-77 when they were both killed, prob-ably by Indians. One of the brothers, Silas, had led a group of cattle-men (reportedly including Crispen Taylor) to the Green River area Early Moab, 1888-1 889. (Dan O'Laurie Museum) that winter. The men wanted to winter their cattle there, and Green left the company to meet his brother around Christmas in the Moab area. Neither was ever seen alive again: the body of Silas was found in upper Spanish Valley by a prospecting party the following spring; the body of George was never found. The tragedy and mystery of the Green brothers did not long, if ever, deter others from coming to the area of the future county. Even before the Greens died, a Texas cattleman by the name of George Winters met them when he passed through the area, looking it over. The next known residents of the area were a black, William Granstaff (known as Nigger Bill), and a French-Canadian whose name has not come down through the historical record.'' "Frenchie" and Bill were prospectors who came together with their burro to the area, probably early in 1877. They took up residence in the old fort and reportedly were saved from starvation by finding one of the Green brothers' cows. They likely found more than one, for Granstaff was later said to have run a number of cattle (none of which are known to have RENEWEWDH ITES ETTLEMENMTO: ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 105 been purchased) in the canyon north of Moab that now bears his nickname. The men reportedly raised garden vegetables, including melons, squash, and corn, and each laid claim to half the fort and a section of the valley. They were well established when others began trickling into the area, their fresh produce a welcome change of diet to the newcomers, according to a story told by Fred Powell, who arrived in 1878. Powell related that the flour his party carried was used to make flapjacks, for which the two inhabitants of the fort were happy to exchange some of their produce-both groups well satis-fied with the trade and change of fare. Tom Ray and his family came through the area from Mount Pleasant, Utah, perhaps as early as the spring of 1877 but more likely in October of that year. They arrived with a herd of about sixty dairy cows. Although the chronological order of many of the early events seems confused in the various retellings over the years, and though some of the journeys were perhaps conflated or omitted, the Ray family seem to have met Granstaff and his companion on 11 October at the old fort, where they remained till New Year's Day 1878 while they checked out the area. They then proceded south to the La Sal area over the hill on the south side of the mountains where they established their homestead. It is possible that some members of the Ray family arrived in the spring and that it was other members of their family in company with the Maxwell and McCarty families who followed that fall, crossing the Grand River on 11 October and remaining in the valley at the old Mormon fort till New Year's Day 1878, at which time they continued to the La Sal area." Although most accounts report that the Rays were the first to pass through the area, it has been written that in the autumn of 1877 three families-the Maxwells, the McCartys, and Neals Olsen (some also say the Rays)-with five wagons and some livestock stayed briefly in MoabISpanish Valley (then known as Grand Valley) before continu-ing up the valley and over the hill to what came to be the town of La Sal in future San Juan County. One of the party-Cornelius Maxwell-reportedly had been through the area about 1873. Philander Maxwell and Dr. William (Billie) McCarty, who were with the group, were said to have brought 2,000 head of cattle to establish cattle operations at La Sal. Whether they brought them initially or later is not clear; I sus-pect that they were not all brought initially. In his excellent book Look to the Mountains: Southeastern Utah and the La SaI National Forest, Charles S. Peterson quotes portions of a journal kept by Arthur Barney of Sevier County, who was hired by Billie McCarty to help the latter move supplies to McCartyYs ranch on what he called the "LaSalle Mountain in Colorado." Although Peterson seemed to conclude that this was part of the above-men-tioned Maxwell party, I believe it must have been some time after that date, due to confusion of dates and the fact that McCarty already had a "ranch" established to which to move supplies. Nevertheless, Barney's account must have been of events in 1878 or soon thereafter. Barney wrote in his journal that "at that time it was a wild unsettled country from Salina, except 3 or 4 families on Grand River." When the group got to the Colorado (Grand) River they found a sign on the northwest bank with the words "No Camping Allowed." The sign was promptly thrown in the river and two of the group proceeded to cross to the other side where they found the whole country covered with grass about a foot high. We looked up the valley about a half mile and seen a house, so we headed for the house. When we got to it a woman came out. We passed the time of day with her, and as she seemed to be in a talk-ing mood, I asked her how it was that there was no camping allowed on this side of the river, she said "This is a free country and you can camp where you please." So I told her about the notice on the other side of the river. [The woman said that] You ought to have throwed the notice into the river, which seemed to ease her a little. When we started back she hollowed after us and told us to come over and stay just as long as we wanted to. So we recrossed the Grand river and started over with our wagons. They camped there that night and continued up the valley the next morning." I believe that Peterson is correct in maintaining that the incident reveals that even at that early date some settlers already objected to newcomers and were endeavoring to claim the land for their own. Who the woman was is not known, nor is it clear that her home was the old fort. Her welcoming attitude in contrast to the exclusionary RENEWEWDH ITES ETTLEMENMTO: ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 107 one expressed by the sign illustrate the contradictory attitudes that have characterized area residents ever since: those who want to keep the numbers of inhabitants of the area small and those others who are continually trying to swell the ranks of those upon the land. In the spring of 1878 A. G. Wilson and his son Alfred came to the valley while they were scouting the general area for cattle range. They made a trade with "Frenchie" for his land; however, when Alfred and Ervin Wilson returned that fall with their cattle, they reportedly found that the Frenchman had also traded or sold the same land to Walter Moore and then left the area, traveling down the river to trap.2' The remaining parties apparently concluded that there was land enough for both, as there is no record of any dispute between the two. Tanner reported that when the Wilson brothers arrived there were only three people at the fort, Granstaff, the Frenchman, and another, a man named White, who may have been a convict or felon, since he was taken away by two men from Ogden the next year. Others soon came: some to stay, some just drifting through the area. One claimed to have saved Granstaff's life from his old partner, who reportedly threatened the black before he left the area, claiming that it had become too populated. Most of the early settlers of southeastern Utah (other than the specific Mormon colonization efforts in San Juan County) came from central Utah or western Colorado, and cattle ranching was their primary focus. Many learned of the area from others who had passed through the region. Mike Molen of Lehi, Utah, attempted to drive a herd of cattle to Ouray, Colorado, in June 1879. By the time he crossed the Green River many of his animals had died and others were severely weakened. He reportedly drove the herd to the La Sal Mountains where they were grazed to recover their strength before he continued to his market de~tination.~~ Although it appears to be impossible to establish an accurate chronology of early events, as the examples above should indicate, the general pattern emerges that the land was gradually being settled by a variety of people-ranchers, farmers, prospectors, homestead-ers, drifters-who, whatever their feelings for their neighbors, did gain a measure of security from those same new settlers in the area. Indian troubles are not mentioned until the early 1880s; whatever the initial reaction of the Native Americans to the new settlement of the area, within a few months the strength of the white settlers was more than a match for that of the earlier inhabitants of the land, who seemed to have been pushed to the outskirts, looking there for opportunities to enrich themselves from the bounty of the new arrivals, who, though a definite threat, were also seen by the Native Americans as a rich resource for their own possible gain. The early days of Moab and the surrounding areas are recounted in more detail by Ms. Tanner in her two books, and these accounts are supple-mented by the reminiscences and accounts included in Grand Memories and other publications of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, Moab Chapter. The interested reader should be aware that the accounts may differ in particulars that have remained unexamined; however, the general history told helps give the reader an idea of the tenor of life in those times. Most of the early settlers of the Moab and La Sal mountain area were interested in ranching; however, a few attempted to raise crops. Fred Powell, who took up a 160-acre homestead between Mill and Pack creeks, planted vineyards; Oscar W. Warner and Randolph Stewart were among those who planted fruit trees. An enumeration of the early settlers will not be attempted here-many of the early residents are remembered in the above-mentioned books-suffice it to say that in the early 1880s newcomers were arriving regularly. There were Mormons and non-Mormons mixed together right from the first, and though the Mormons likely were always the more numerous of the two groups, the Moab area was never exclusively dominated by them. Mormons never came to the area en masse as part of a formal settlement directive from church leaders as they did in most of the other towns of the territory, including newly estab-lished Bluff to the south. At first, most settlers must have taken up unclaimed land as it suited them, an arrangement that was regular-ized in the early 1880s as society became more organized and newly established Emery County began to take control of its territory. It has been suggested that after the failure of the Elk Mountain mission and with the altered political conditions brought about by the so-called Utah War, the Mormons effectively abandoned south-eastern Utah to the Indians. This neglect, however, allowed for the RENEWEWDH ITES ETTLEMENMTO: ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 109 infiltration of the area by cattlemen from Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico with their livestock herds. As Mormon church leaders began to realize this, they attempted to gain control of the land. At the 1875 conference of the Sanpete Stake of the LDS church, it was decided that the church should endeavor to open and settle eastern areas of the county, which at that time included land that was to later become Grand County. Orange Seely was put in charge of the effort. Not much happened until the 1880s, although the Mormon church did encourage its members to settle the general area and actually issued a settlement call to the heroic Hole-in-the-Rock company that settled Bluff in 1880. No such official call was made for areas of Grand County, but the church was determined to have a voice in the area. In this it was supported by territorial officials, both Mormon and gentile, who had economic reasons to settle the area-the out-of-state cattle companies were escaping taxation, something no govern-ment can tolerate. To help control the situation and manage the territory's growth, new counties were created early in 1880. Emery County was created on 12 February 1880, essentially carved from Sanpete and Sevier counties, which had extended from the center of Utah east to the Colorado line. It was intended that Uintah County also be created at this time out of portions of Summit, Wasatch, and Sanpete counties, and that San Juan County be created in the southeastern corner of the territory. The latter county was to include most of what is today's Grand County east of the Green River and south of the summit (ridge) line of the Brown (today's Roan) Cliffs. However, on 13 February 1880, acting territor-ial governor Arthur Thomas vetoed the bill creating San Juan County, his reason being that the sparsely settled proposed county was too large to be properly administered or be convenient for its inhabitants, though it was intended to be defined and limited by the natural geo-graphical boundaries of the great rivers and cliffs. Legislative adjust-ments were hurriedly made, and on 18 February 1880 the territory east of the Green River, north of parallel 3g031', and south of the ridge line of the Roan Cliffs was added to Emery County. Uintah County was established to the north, and a reduced San Juan County was established south of parallel 38O3 1'. Thus, although for five days it was technically unaccounted for, the future Grand County became part of Emery County rather than San Juan County. The selection of this abstract parallel as the county dividing line put much of Spanish Valley south of Moab in a different county, dis-regarding its natural link with Moab and Grand County. It was a sit-uation that was not considered much of a problem in the sparsely settled area during the 1880s, but it has become more of a problem in succeeding years with the population growth of Moab and the sur-rounding area. The problems caused by abstract boundaries as they relate to more natural geographically defined areas are mainly polit-ical and economic-usually having to do with the collecting of taxes and the providing of services. Once they have been established, it seems that no amount of common sense or other rational considera-tions can avail to change the boundaries-entrenched interests are usually able to block readjustments. The situation is certainly not unique to Grand County. Fortunately, it rarely becomes too serious. The settlement pattern followed in MoablSpanish Valley was not the typical Mormon-village pattern of small town lots surrounded by farm and range lands, the whole enterprise supervised and directed by the local bishop. It is true that a basic grid system of city streets running north-south and east-west was established; but the main thoroughfare-called the Ouray Wagon Road- snaked sinuously through Spanish Valley unrelated to the residential street grid. Also, the homesteads that were granted and later patented in the town and valley ranged from 40 to 160 acres, and only as these large units of land were broken up by sale of parcels did the town begin to resemble the majority of the territory's settlements. In 1879 two ditches were dug from Mill Creek for general irrigation purposes; one was on the north, the other on the south side of the stream. The creek itself was named for an early flour mill. Nearby Pack Creek was first called Salt Creek, presumably from its proximity to salt deposits. Many of the earliest settlers moved to the upper part of Spanish Valley (much of it technically outside the area that was later to become Grand County and that even in 1880 was part of little-pop-ulated San Juan County). In fact, it was these settlers who first suc-cessfully petitioned for a post office-a petition granted in November 1879 for a post office to be named Plainfield. Tanner mentions that RENEWEWDH ITES ETTLEMENMTO: ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 111 although she was told that C. M. Van Buren was the first postmaster, another source claims that it was Cornelius Maxwell, who lived far-ther south in Coyote (La Sal)." A mail route served by rider and pack horses had been estab-lished in the spring of 1879-it ran from Salina, Utah, to Ouray, Colorado. The route included stops in Spanish Valley and La Sal, and it was considered one of the most dangerous in the country-some 700 miles round-trip through territory frequented by often hostile Indians. There was no regular schedule, winter storms could stop the rider for days, and it could take as much as six weeks for the mail to get through. On the positive side, there is no record of any loss of mail on the route. The coming of the railroad to the region in 1883 greatly improved postal service to the area and reduced much of the route; however, for many years to follow there still remained rough stretches of horseback mail service from Thompson through Moab to La Sal and then into western Colorado. The majority of the area's settlers soon came to live in the lower part of Spanish Valley, and the post office was moved to accomodate the people of the rapidly forming town of the lower valley. The Plainfield area was first renamed Bueno and later Poverty Flat by the valley residents as it became rapidly depopulated with the growth of the town lower in the valley. The new post office was officially estab-lished on 23 March 1880; its postmaster was William A. Pierce. The name of the post office was Moab. Much has been made of the name Moab and how it came to be given to the town. Faun M. Tanner treated the subject in detail in her books but was unable to arrive at a definitive answer. Briefly, one notion (which to me seems logical in essence if not in all details) is that the name was selected by a committee of some of the early set-tlers. William Pierce is said to have suggested the name, a familiar one from the Old Testament. Pierce fancied himself a student of the Bible, where the name Moab occurs frequently, generally referring to a rather dry and mountainous area east of the Dead Sea and southeast of Jerusalem. Thus far it would seem an. appropriate name for this region in both its basic geography and in its general relation to Salt Lake City and that city's neighboring alkaline lake. Ms. Tanner claimed (from other references to the name in the books of Ruth and Moab businessmen in front of Tet's Saloon about 1890. The group included Eck McCarty, Crispen Taylor, Tet Taylor, and Philander Maxwell. (Dan O'Laurie Museum) Jeremiah) that people of Bethlehem referred to Moab as the "Far Countrym-which phrase not only pleased the early settlers of the area but also became the title of her history of the town." Moab in other ways would be an unusual choice among biblical names, however. The name first occurs in Genesis 19:37 as that given a son born to one of Lot's daughters after she seduced and lay with her drunken father after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Afterwards, the people of the land of Moab (named after the son born of the incestuous relationship) seemed in the pages of the Bible to be almost continually at war with the people of Israel, and the land and its inhabitants were usually written of with opprobrium. However, there is also at least one positive association with Moab in the Bible. It was the homeland of Ruth, that heroine especially beloved by nineteenth-century readers. Like many tender tales of faith and fidelity, it has long appealed to certain sensibilities, and it could be that Moab as the homeland of Ruth who became part of the genealogical line leading to King David and Christ was either more familiar to a frontier student of the Good Book or else its merits in his mind outweighed its more numerous negative connotations. RENEWEWDH ITES ETTLEMENMTO: ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 113 Another (less accepted) theory for the name is that Moab was taken from a Paiute word for the area meaning "mosquito water." Those insects then as now flourished in the bottomlands near the Grand River where Mill and Pack creeks entered to form a marshy ground, and perhaps they were so bothersome that a practical and descriptive choice of a place name was felt to outweigh more roman-tic or favorable considerations-especially since such descriptive names for places were commonly used by Indian groups. However, there is no historical account of what the Indians actually called the location. As Jose Knighton has suggested in his Coyote's History of Moab, perhaps Pierce had heard such an Indian name for the area and that suggested the biblical name to him. The definitive answer will probably remain unknown-what is known is that both scrip-tural and Indian place names were commonly given to towns in Utah and throughout the West. One further item: Dimic B. Huntington, a brother of William and Oliver and an interpreter for twenty years, translated the word "mo-ap" in Ute dialect as meaning "~pirit."'~ Whatever its genesis and associated meanings or speculations, the word stuck as the name for the town, replacing earlier map des-ignations of Grand Valley and Mormon Fort. Perhaps it remained only because government bureaucracies are loath to change things: Tanner reported that in about 1885 postmaster Henry G. Crouse tried unsuccessfully to have the town's name changed to U~adalia.'~ Further, in 1890 a petition to change the name of the town to Vina failed for lack of signature^.^' It can be supposed that faced with such possibilities, many town residents would cling to what they had regardless of how it might be interpreted. And certainly the inhabi-tants of the town hoped to make Moab a name of renown. Civic order seems to have been first mentioned with the estab-lishment of the post offices in the valley. Though the area was tech-nically served by county officals from Emery County after 1880, the county seat of Castle Dale was far distant from Moab, forcing resi-dents of Spanish Valley and its environs generally to regulate their own daily affairs. Growth was now occurring by means other than immigration: William Pierce, the postmaster, was also the father of the first white child born in the valley-Hugh Pierce, born 4 December 1879. Thomas Pritchett moved to the area in 1880 and became the first local justice of the peace, performing the first mar-riage in the valley in the spring of 188 l. On 15 February 1881 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints organized the Mormons of Grand Valley into a ward of the Emery Stake. Randolph H. Stewart was called by church leaders as bishop of the ward and soon moved to the town. His counselors were A. G. Wilson and Orlando W. Warner. Church auxiliary organizations were created a short time later: Sunday school in August 188 1, Women's Relief Society and young men's and women's Mutual Improvement Associations in February 1883. Though Mormons never exclusively dominated the town of Moab, a fact that made it distinct from most other Utah towns, they were determined to have an influence in the area. By April 188 1 Pierce and Mormon bishop Randolph Stewart reported to the Deseret News that there were sixteen families residing in the town. They estimated that the town could support one hundred families-an open invitation to readers of the LDS paper to move to the area.'Wther families and individuals were scattered throughout the general region, trying their hand at farming, ranching, or prospecting. A drought at the time in northern Utah became a further inducement for ranchers and others to look to the southeastern part of the territory. In late October 188 1 the settlement of Moab experienced a great gain both in population and civic energy with the arrival of Norman Taylor and his extended family. The group came from Juab County and numbered more than thirty men, women, and children; it also included fourteen wagons and assorted livestock. Norman Taylor had been one of the original pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 and was still an active and enterprising man. He built and operated the first ferry on the Grand River a year or two after arriving at Moab. One of his two wives, Laurana, was the first schoolteacher in the val-ley and his daughter Augusta also taught school for a time, following her mother. Early residents recalled that the school was first taught in various homes, then moved to a tent, before a log building for school and public functions was built through public donation in 1881-82 at the southwest corner of what was called Courthouse Block. This indicates that the town might have been platted by that time, although the name of the block and construction of the build-ing could have anticipated the plat. This first public building was 24 RENEWEWD HITES ETTLEMENMTO: ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 115 by 30 feet, and Ms. Tanner tells the story of how the celebration at its completion turned from a dance into a drunken brawl." The prob-lem of controlling what seem to be propitious events or abundant resources is one that has continued to plague the area. Moab's school was part of the Emery County School District One, which was created on 6 August 1883. J. Alma Holdaway was the first teacher to teach classes in the new school building, the lumber for which was hauled from Thompson by J. H. Johnson and Jens Nielsen, according to Johnson's recollection^.^^ Holdaway was paid thirty dollars a month plus the provision that he could receive meals from the families of the schoolchildren attending classes. Other early teachers at the school were George McConkie and Hyrum Allen. Supplies were meager and the schoolroom consisted of only walls, a roof, and rough benches; but the citizens were rightly proud of their accomplishment. Within the decade, by 1887, there were more than eighty school-age children in the immediate area and the school board approved the construction of two new schoolhouses to replace the outgrown original building. The story is told that one of the lots for the new buildings was donated by a cowboy from Texas named Tom Trout who was in Moab at Christmas time in 1886 and won ten dollars betting on a horse race. He invested it in a town lot, which he later gave to the town for the school building. Trout later married and settled in Moab, his children making use of his contribution." The new Emery County (named after popular territorial gover-nor Alfred E. Emery) was an area of rapid growth in the 1880s; it soon became much more populous than San Juan County to the south. Cattle ranching remained the main attraction of many settlers in the early 1880s. The northern ranges of Utah Territory were over-stocked, prompting many to move their cattle south. The lure of Colorado beef prices also tempted many; and the lands of future Grand County not only provided for cattle on the trail but were seen to have merit in their own right as rangeland for cattle ranches. Many of the early ranchers had small operations, just a few head of cattle, but the profits to be made were being noticed by larger cattle opera-tions, which rapidly began to move into southeastern Utah. The isolated, small community of Moab and its environs contin-ued to grow, the ferry operated by Norman Taylor the only aid-a Grand River Ferry at Moab about 1900. (Dan O'Laurie Museum) rather primitive one, at that-to a difficult journey of more than 100 miles to Salina, Richfield, or Manti and then beyond to the other set-tlements in Utah. A difficult and dangerous route snaked over the foothills of the La Sals to Ouray and other Colorado towns to the east. The first ferryboat at Moab was a small, oar-powered, 28-foot-long craft; wagons had to be dismantled before they could be trans-ported by the boat across the river. Soon Taylor built a larger boat with the aid of John Gordon; the new boat, thought to have been constructed in 1884, was more than twice the size of the previous fer-ryboat and was able to accomodate a wagon and its team of horses or oxen plus additional people or animals. It was attached to a cable and was much safer and more reliable than the first boat, although it was still vulnerable to mishaps and accidents. The ferry was an important aid to transportation in the region of primitive roads and cattle trails. Drownings at both the Grand and Green rivers have been a frequent occurrence since the beginning of newspapers in the area-it is reasonable to assume that they also happened regularly before reporters noted them. In fact, it is said that when the Taylor family came to Moab they saw the corpses of two RENEWEWDH ITES ETTLEMENMTO: ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 117 men who had tried unsuccessfully to cross the river the day before-something which could well have prompted Taylor to consider estab-lishing his ferry. It is not known how many travelers made use of Taylor's ferry; but it is possible that some chose to take their chances with the river due to the high prices charged by Taylor for the service. Mormon church leader F. A. Hammond of San Juan County recorded that Taylor charged him $4.00 for ferrying him, his wagon, and five horses across the river." The river could generally be forded during times of low water; however, when the river was running high, most must have decided it would be prudent to pay whatever tariff was charged for the relative safety of the ferry. Taylor profitably leased the ferry operation to several individuals before the county finally took over the enterprise in 1897 and reduced the wagon rate from $2.50 to 50 cents for transport across the river. Norman Taylor may well have determined to make the most of his move to Moab; a descendant later voiced the opinion that Taylor ceased being active in the Mormon church because he was tired of being asked to relocate to other settlements after having helped estab-lish communities throughout the state." Certainly he and his extended family soon became (and remained) influential and respected community leaders in Grand County. Two of his sons, Arthur and Loren (Buddy), managed extensive cattle operations in the region; another son, Hyrum, managed the first general store in town; and a daughter, Addie, became Moab's foremost business-woman in the early days of the settlement. Other family members also made important contributions to the community. Within a few years most of the land of the lower Moab portion of Spanish Valley had been claimed. The land was originally taken up in a variety of ways: mining claims, cash land entry (or purchase), desert land entry, and regular family homestead entry being the most com-mon. The land laws of 1820 and 1841 allowed for what was termed cash entry-the cash purchase of otherwise unclaimed or unreserved public land, and the Homestead Act of 1862 provided for the acqui-sition of up to 160 acres of land, secured by one of two options: after living on and farming the land for six months, the homesteader could buy it at the price of $1.25 an acre, plus a filing fee; or he could get title to the land for just the price of the filing fee of fifteen dollars after hav- ing lived continuously on the land in question for five years. The Desert Land Law of 1877 applied to lands which "will not, without irrigation, produce some agricultural crop." Until 1890 up to 640 acres of this land could be patented if the land was irrigated within three years of application; or a purchase price of $1.25 an acre could secure title to the land. There was no occupancy requirement. After 1890 the amount of land permitted to be obtained was limited to 320 acres. Only one such patent was allowed each individual, although more than one member of a family could become eligible to patent land. The lower end of Moab Valley was first surveyed on 15 and 16 November 1878 by General Land Office (GLO) surveyor Ferdinand Dickert. This survey was limited to portions of four sections in the township range, and the survey map showed only a couple of cabins in the area as well as the old Mormon fort. A road--called the "Ouray Wagon Roadn-was also shown extending the length of the valley and crossing the Grand River to the north. In late November 1880 Ernst Buettner did some additional surveying of the lower part of the valley, according to a GLO map. The upper part of the valley was sur-veyed from 11-13 September 1894 by Frank Baxter. These General Land Office surveys made possible the application for title to the land. According to available records," patented land secured through homestead provisions began to be issued in 1887 and cash entry patents date from 1883, indicating that settlers were making official application for the land of Moab Valley by the early 1880s. The earliest record of a patent application that I have been able to find in the BLM records is for a 160-acre homestead claim of Thomas Pritchett at the north end of the valley. The application was dated 1 October 1881 and the land was eventually patented on 2 August 1889. These dates are likely representative for most of the land patented in lower Moab Valley. It also appears from the existing records that Leonidas Crapo and perhaps some others were able to gain title to land through cash entry, then sell the land and go on to patent additional acreage under the homestead provision.'' Once patent applications were secured, many of the patent and subsequent title holders began to sell real estate to the ever increas-ing number of people moving into the valley. Substantial profits were made even in the early days of settlement for those fortunate enough RENEWEWDH ITES ETTLEMENMTO: ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 119 to have land in demand. Leonidas Crapo and his family had arrived in the valley in September 1880. They took up land in what was to become the center of Moab (from Main Street to Fourth East on both sides of Center Street)-160 acres of land, for which Crapo paid $200 on 21 May 1883. Less than a year later, in February 1884, that land was sold for $1,000 to Randolph Stewart and Orlando Warner, who immediately began selling it in smaller parcels. The records of Crapo's transactions are found in Emery County records, which also list a few other land patents issued from 1884 to early 1888 (including patents for Charles Backerach, Alfred Wilson, and Nicolas Wilson). The earliest recorded patents in the Grand County Recorder's Office appear to be from 23 May 1888. Both seem to be Desert Land Certificates-ne for 160 acres to Orlando Warner; another for 40 acres to Randolph Stewart. The first regular (cash entry?) certificate patents were deeded to Arthur A. Taylor (40 acres) and John Shafer (80 acres) on 26 February 1889. These deeds don't reveal when the land was actually taken up (or contracted for) nor the price paid if they were cash entry patents. The earliest patent in Grand County records for land taken up under provisions of the 1862 Homestead Act seems to be 40 acres patented by William Pierce on 2 August 1889. This was recorded on a special certificate listing it as a homestead. Other land patents on similar certificates are recorded up to the mid-1920s, but the county patent records of the early period are incomplete and not listed in chronological (or any other apparent) order. A study of the abstract records enables one to trace the basic history of the transfer of prop-erty in the county, and this reveals that virtually all of the land in Moab/Spanish Valley had been claimed and patented by the 1890s. Early homesteads were often primitive dugouts or log cabins. One survives at 68 South 100 East in Moab, and was thought to have built in 1881 by Randolph Stewart. It was later used by Howard Balsley, an important figure in early uranium mining in the region. Most of the other early buildings in Moab that still survive are from the 1890s and early twentieth century; however, there are at least two important buildings from the 1880s that remain. One is the first LDS church building, built in 1888 from local rock and adobe. It now serves the Daughters of Utah Pioneers as a museum. The second is the oldest commercial building in Moab, the Hammond Store Building, which was constructed in 1887 to house a mercantile firm. This building also served for a time as a post According to information provided by the local museum, Moab town was platted in 1884, some nineteen years before the town was incorporated. The town plat featured wide streets and square blocks of the traditional Mormon town pattern though Moab didn't evolve from a traditional Mormon community structure. People improved their homesteads and living conditions as they were able, and over the years the town was graced with some substantial houses of qual-ity, many of which remain today. A recent survey indicates that there are some twenty-five buildings over 100 years old and 135 buildings more than fifty years old in Moab and its environs." Charles Peterson has written about the "independent" commu-nities of Vernal and Moab-communities which were not founded by Mormons and not established on the Mormon village pattern. Rather, they better fit the mold of the typical American frontier town of more haphazard, individualistic growth and unabashed booster-ism and materialism. Of these two Utah towns in particular he wrote that Mormons and gentiles joined together to create "chest-thump-ing, outward-looking communities, which found their interests in an expansive economy and their heroes among those who became wealthy and among the cowboys and badmen in which the Colorado Plateau abounded."38 Prior to the completion of the railroad in 1883, most of Moab's supplies from the outside world were brought by wagons from Salina or Richfield, Utah, more than 100 miles to the west along the old Gunnison Route across the Wasatch Plateau. Some goods would also be brought into the town by those traveling to and from Salt Lake City, Denver, or other settlements to visit family or friends; however, the items brought back from such trips were usually personal or lux-ury items. Moab was a very isolated settlement, and the settlers of the area rapidly learned to be essentially self-reliant and self-sufficient. Home industry was the norm, from the raising of foods to the mak-ing of soap and medicines to the construction and repair of struc-tures, clothing, and tools. In the first years of settlement those few retail establishments in the town featured little more than basic RENEWEWDH ITES ETTLEMENMTO: ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 121 necessities, re-stocked when the proprietors had the time and means to take a wagon to the settlements. Faun Tanner reported that wagon freighters made their trips in the fall, bringing in supplies necessary to last the winter. If early storms made travel impossible, people in Moab had to make do with what they had until supplies could be brought in. The completion of the railway some thirty miles to the north reduced the community's risk of being cut off from the rest of the world for any substantial length of time. In the early 1880s John Teusher had a tent store in which he made available a few items as he was able to provide them, and an early settler known as Dutch Charlie was also said to have had goods for sale on occasion; but it wasn't until September 1882 that a regular mercantile store was established by A. G. Wilson, Hyrum Taylor, and Norman Taylor.39T he men brought in a substantial amount of mer-chandise to begin activities, and kept the store as well stocked as their means would allow. Hyrum Taylor managed the store (known as Taylor Mercantile) and later bought out his partners. Taylor's sister Addie has been mentioned as Moab's first busi-nesswoman. She operated the first hotel in Moab, built in 1885 by her husband, Philander Maxwell. It was called the Maxwell House. Aunt Add, as Mrs. Maxwell was commonly called, also operated a millinery shop and a Navajo rug and curio shop in later years. The Maxwell House soon had competition for the trade of visi-tors or passing travelers. In 1887 a hotel known as the Darrow House was built of adobe brick in the center of the growing town by Marcus Henry Darrow and his wife Mary Adeline Lee Darrow. This con-struction is noteworthy for at least a couple of reasons. First, it indi-cates that the area had grown and had a sufficient number of travelers pass through to the point that a second hotel could even be considered, let alone be successful. Although it is true that hotels of that era were not the elaborate multiroomed structures of later years, nevertheless, both of Moab's hotels were large houses, each with a number of rooms to let. A second point of interest involves the land on which the hotel was built. This was originally part of the land patented in 1883 by Leonidas Crapo and sold to Randolph Stewart and Orlando Warner. In 1885 they sold this portion of it to William Pierce; a year later he sold it to George W. Stowell. That same year, in November, Stowell sold the land to the Darrows." Thus, in less than four years the land had been held by five different groups of own-ers- an active real-estate scene to say the least, and one echoed at least twice in the coming century. The two hotels were both successful establishments. It was said that "higher-class" clientele would stay at the Maxwell House, noted for its relative luxury, while the "lower" class, including outlaws trav-eling through the area, preferred the atmosphere and appointments of the Darrow House, which for a time with its eighteen-inch-thick walls was used as a jail. The Taylor Mercantile had competition from a store owned by Tom Farrar and operated by Randolph Stewart and William Pierce. Another early store, the La Sal Mercantile Company, is known from historical records to have operated in the town of Moab; however, most of Moab's earliest business establishments have been lost to the historical record. It can only be surmised that a grow-ing town with two hotels and a couple of general stores would also have livery stables, blacksmith shops, restaurants, other assorted crafts and service businesses, and, of course, at least one or two saloons-there are many references to the availability and consump-tion of alcoholic beverages in the town. Although Moab was known to some as a rough-and-tumble frontier cow town, and certainly did merit its reputation in many respects, there were some folks intent on making the place a respectable center of business and commerce. Cottonwoods and other trees soon graced the streets, homesteads, and yards of settlers, and, according to what one was looking for, the town offered both the promise of shade and rest or activity and enterprise in the midst of the rocky and wild plateau country. That the town was sufficiently large to generate competition for its basic services was a sure sign that it had passed the primitive stage of fighting for survival and that it was on the verge of becoming not only a commercial and social cen-ter but a political one, as well. In fact, Utah lawmakers were on the verge of creating a new county due to the rapid growth of the area. 1. Fred A. Conetah, A History of the Northern Ute People, p. 55. RENEWEDW HITES ETTLEMENMTO: ABIN THE 1870s AND 1880s 123 2. Daniel W. Jones, Forty Years Among the Indians ( 1890), p. 192. 3. Floyd A. O'Neil, "A History of Ute Indians of Utah Until 1890" (1973), p. 75. 4. Conetah, Northern Ute People, p. 42. 5. O'Neil, "History of Ute Indians," p. 96. 6. Conetah, Northern Ute People, p. 89. 7. J. W. Powell and G. W. Ingalls, Commission of Indian Affairs Annual Report-1 873, p. 4 15. 8. Floyd A. O'Neil, and Kathryn L. MacKay, History of the Uintah- Ouray Ute Lands (n.d.), p. 2. 9. Conetah, Northern Ute People, p. 89. 10. See Gary Topping, "History on the Rocks," Beehive History 15: 23-26; and Bruce D. Louthan, "Denis Julien Lecture," 7 May 1993 (type-script, BLM, Moab Office Library). 11. See F. A. Barnes, "Early Explorations of Utah," Canyon Legacy 9:2-9, for a detailed discussion of the Macomb Expedition. 12. See Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, The Romance of the Colorado River (1902), pp. 174-83. Dellenbaugh based much of his refutation on the pub-lished report of White's adventure by Doctor C. C. Parry, who recorded the story in 1868; it was published in William A Bell, New Tracks in North America. Some have claimed that White mistakenly noted the Grand River instead of the San Juan as the river on which his adventure began, but other scholars do not feel that this makes his story any more plausible. 13. Dellenbaugh, The Romance of the Colorado River (1902), pp. 174-83. 14. See Ferdinand V. Hayden, Ninth Annual Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey (1876); and Charles S. Peterson, Look to the Mountains, pp. 23-24 and 64-65. 15. See Wesley P. Larsen, "The 'Letter' or Were the Powell Men Really Killed by Indians?" Canyon Legacy 17: 12-19. 16. Peterson, Look to the Mountains, p. 81. 17. Accounts and reminiscences of the early years are found in the major histories of the area. Other accounts may be included in diaries and journals cited in Davis Bitton, Guide to Mormon Diaries and Autobiographies (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1977). 18. In her A History of Moab, Utah Faun M. Tanner reports that some earlier settlers of the Moab area had different memories of the Frenchman's name, one recalling it as Lurkin, another as Felippe Duran (p. 28). 19. Unfortunately, all the available general histories of the area (The Far Country; A History of Moab, Utah; Grand Memories, and other accounts published by the Moab Chapter of Daughters of Utah Pioneers, and Look to the Mountains) have inconsistent and differing accounts of the first settlers and their arrival in the area. The account presented here is my attempt to reconstruct the chronology, but the interested reader is referred to the above volumes (and their accompanying notes) for more information. 20. Peterson, Look to the Mountains, pp. 30-32. 21. Tanner, who reported the above story in her book The Far Country also reported a couple of pages later that Walter Moore didn't arrive in the valley until December 1878, so there is a distinct possibility that the story is apocryphal. 22. See Lloyd Pierson, Cultural Resource Summary, p. 153. 23. Tanner, The Far Country, p. 71. 24. Ibid., pp. 89-92. 25. See Gottfredson, Indian Depredations in Utah, supplement. 26. Tanner, The Far Country, p. 92. 27. Grand Memories, p. 50. 28. Deseret News, 17 April 188 1. See also The Far Country, p. 95. 29. Tanner, The Far Country, pp. 98-100. 30. Ibid., p. 269. 31. Ibid., pp. 316-17. 32. Ibid., p. 101. 33. D. L. Taylor quoted in Todd Campbell, "The Taylors: Five Generations of Ranching in Grand County," Canyon Legacy 1 1: 15. 34. Available patent records appear to be incomplete and are somewhat scattered as to their location between Emery and Grand counties as well as various federal and state collections including the Utah State Archives and the Bureau of Land Management. 35. See Emery County "Official Deeds and Records, 1881-90," and Emery County "Grantors Index, 1881- ," both in the Utah State Archives. 36. See articles by Jean Akens, B. J. Eardley, and Bette Stanton in Canyon Legacy, Number 21-an issue that has as its theme historic struc-tures in Grand County and nearby environs. 37. See "Moab Area Historic Walking Tour," a pamphlet published by the Moab Information Center and the Dan O'Laurie Museum under the aegis of the Grand County Travel Council (1993). It features information collected by John F. Hoffman and edited by Lloyd Pierson. 38. Charles S. Peterson, Utah, p. 137. 39. Tanner, The Far Country, pp. 100, 103. 40. Ibid., p. 252.