Gateway to Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Monument, Cedar
Breaks, Kaibab Forest, North Rim Grand Canyon National Park
All automobile tours start at Cedar City, Utah, a prosperous and
picturesque Mormon city of 3,000 inhabitants, on the edge of the
Escalante Plain, at the foot of the Markagunt Plateau, at an elevation
of 5,750 feet. Coming from Lund, one may glimpse in the distant east and
nearly 5,000 feet above him, some of the rosy palisades of Cedar Breaks.
Cedar City has a good hotel, water system, electric lights, a bank,
photoplay theatre, well stocked stores, hospital, Carnegie Library,
Mormon Tabernacle, a branch of the State Agricultural College, and a new
and handsome railway station. On the edge of the town is a band of Piute
Indians, the original inhabitants of the country, who sell buckskin
gloves, moccasins and other articles. The prosperity of Cedar City is
derived from sheep, wool, cattle, agriculture and the recent development
of vast deposits of iron in the Iron Mountains, twelve miles away. The
community, founded by Mormon leaders in 1851, was named from the
abundance of cedar trees in the vicinity.