Zion Canyon was known to the Indians from time immemorial, but its
discovery by white men, so far as is known, dates only from the middle
of the 19th century. However, the series of explorations in this region
which finally led to its discovery cover the period of three quarters of
a century beginning in 1776.
In that year a party of Spaniards passed through the region and crossed
the Virgin River within twenty miles of Zion Canyon without knowing of
its proximity. This was the remarkable expedition led by Fathers
Dominguez and Escalante through portions of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah
and Arizona. The object of the expedition was two-fold. The Spanish
government desired a direct route from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the
Presidio of Monterey, California, and the priests themselves had dreams
of founding new Indian missions in the unexplored territory beyond the
Colorado River. The governor of New Mexico furnished provisions, Father
Dominguez provided the horses and mules and Father Silvestre Velez de
Escalante was the diarist of the party.[7]
The expedition set out July 29, 1776 from Santa Fe, passing through
explored territory as far as the Gunnison river in southwestern
Colorado, whence it struck out into the unknown. The priests were
fortunate in finding a couple of young Ute Indians from Utah Lake, who
acted as guides and who led them safely across the Colorado (Grand) and
Green Rivers up the Duchesne to its headwaters and across the Wasatch
Range to their home on Utah Lake.
Obtaining fresh guides, the party proceeded about two hundred miles into
the deserts of southwestern Utah to Black Rock Springs near Milford,
heading for the Pacific coast. They had been longer than expected on
their journeyings. Fall was rapidly advancing. A snowfall on October 5
dashed their hopes of being able to cross the great Sierras still
blocking their path to Monterey. Provisions were getting low and they
were a long way from either Monterey or Santa Fe. Casting of lots
determined that they should go back home.
Instead of retracing their circuitous route, they determined to take a
short cut. They turned southeast, coming out of the desert that now
bears Escalante’s name, a few miles west of Cedar City. The high
mountains to the east forced them southward nearly a hundred miles along
the foot of the rough and rugged escarpment known as the Hurricane
Fault. This deflected them far from their intended course.
It was on this detour that they discovered the Virgin River and came
closest to Zion Canyon. The party left the vicinity of Cedar City,
crossed over the rim of the Great Basin at Kanarra and descended Ash
Creek, tributary of the Virgin. A short distance below Toquerville they
passed the three Indian cornfields with well made irrigation ditches, to
which reference has already been made, and reached the Virgin River at
the point where Ash Creek and La Verkin Creek joined it. Escalante
called Ash Creek the Rio del Pilar. The main stream of the Virgin River
above this point he named the Sulphur River because of the hot sulphur
springs that flow into the stream about a mile distant from the point
where the great Hurricane Fault crosses the river.
The party climbed out of the canyon alongside a volcanic ash cone or
crater standing north of the present town of Hurricane. While some of
the members of the party probably lingered to investigate the hot
sulphur springs, others went ahead across the Hurricane bench and
striking some Indian tracks, followed them out of the proper route and
found themselves in the midst of an area of red sand dunes several miles
in extent, sometimes called the Red Desert. This may be seen from the
road approaching Zion from either St. George or Cedar City.
The sand dunes made traveling very difficult and by the time the party
had plowed its way through and stood on top of a high bluff overlooking
the corrugated valley below, both the horses and men were so tired they
could scarcely make their way down the bluff to water at the site of old
Fort Pearce. Here they found a desert shrub, the creosote bush
(_Hediondilla_) and tamarisk trees (supposed to have been introduced
from the old world).
Here their provisions became exhausted, and from then on they had to
subsist largely upon horse flesh and such food as they could procure
from the Indians. The next morning, as they started on their journey,
they met a group of the Parrusits Indians who were living in scattered
bands along the Upper Virgin River, forming one of the dozen or more
clans belonging to the Paiute tribe, and who warned them that they were
headed toward the Grand Canyon at a place where it could not be forded.
After much persuasion they agreed to show the explorers a route by which
they could climb the Hurricane Fault and proceed eastward toward a ford
of the Colorado.
The Indians led them four or five miles up a narrow canyon along a
footpath that became so steep and ledgy that the horses and mules could
not follow. Perceiving this, the Indians fled and the party was forced
to retrace the rocky trail to the foot and press southward again,
crossing the present line into Arizona. They became suspicious that the
Indians were purposely misdirecting them.
That night they made a dry camp, and having neither food nor water, both
men and animals suffered intensely. Early next day they found water but
after traveling about twenty-five miles some of the men were so weak and
hungry they had to stop to rest. After ransacking their camp outfit,
they found odds and ends enough to satisfy their worst needs.
At this point they found a way to climb the bold face of the Hurricane
Fault. Hungry and thirsty, they headed for rough country to the
southeast where they found water after about eighteen miles. They also
found Indians from whom they procured some food. Again being warned by
the Indians of the great impassable Grand Canyon ahead they swung off
sharply to the northeast.
Continuing the journey, guided only by the vague directions given by the
Indians, the party spent several days during late October and early
November in crossing the Arizona Strip and southern Utah before they
found a ford of the Colorado, a few miles upstream on the Utah side of
the state line, since known as the “Crossing of the Fathers.” The
hardships of the party in traversing Northeastern Arizona and
northwestern New Mexico to get back to Santa Fe, however, are not a part
of this story.
The journey lasted from July 29, 1776 to January 2, 1777. It covered a
circuitous route through four states and the priests had been
pathbreakers in new and unexplored territory. One objective, the route
to the Pacific coast, had not been attained, but the other, that of
locating sites for missions, had been abundantly fulfilled. Many
possibilities were marked along the route, but apparently none gave the
Fathers more satisfaction than the prospects among the Parrusits Indians
on the Pilar River (now Ash Creek and Virgin River) who were already
farmers.
On finding the cornfield and irrigation ditches of the Parrusits,
Escalante remarked:
By this we were greatly rejoiced, now because of the hope it gave of
being able to take advantage of certain supplies in the future;
especially because it was an indication of the application of these
people to the cultivation of the soil; and because we found this much
done toward reducing them to civilized life and to the faith when the
Most High may so dispose, for it is well known how much it costs to
bring other Indians to this point, and how difficult it is to convert
them to this labor which is so necessary to enable them to live for
the most part in civilized life and in towns.[8]
The Spanish Fathers never fulfilled their dreams of missions beyond the
Colorado, but they explored an uncharted area, into which other
Spaniards followed. The records, however, are meager and information
incomplete about these later expeditions. Two other Spaniards, Mestes in
1805 and Arze and Garcia in 1812-13, seem to have penetrated as far as
Utah Lake and perhaps southward, but so far as is known, their trips had
little significance.[9]
Still later, other Spaniards developed the route from Santa Fe to the
Pacific coast which the Fathers had failed to do. Known as the Old
Spanish Trail, this passed northwestward from Santa Fe through
southwestern Colorado and central Utah and then southwestward to Los
Angeles. It crossed Escalante’s trail near Cedar City. But before this
route was developed, other explorers had opened the way.
After Dominguez and Escalante, the next pathbreaker of importance to
enter the region was Jedediah Strong Smith, a trapper and trader bent on
expanding his fur business. He was probably the first to finish the task
started by Escalante, that of finding a route to the coast, which he
traversed in 1826 and again in 1827. Smith’s epochal explorations, like
Escalante’s a half-century earlier, were circuitous in nature and his
first trip covered an area now embraced by four states, Utah, Arizona,
Nevada and California. The eastern side of his loop overlapped the
western side of Escalante’s and probably their trails coincided for
short distances where they crossed.
Smith belonged to the firm of Smith, Jackson and Sublette, which had
purchased General Ashley’s fur interests and was trapping through the
region southward from Montana through Idaho and Wyoming to northern
Utah. The summer camp or rendezvous of the firm was at Bear Lake near
the Utah-Idaho line and most of the trapping grounds were to the north
and east. Knowing nothing about the region lying south and west of the
Great Salt Lake, Smith fitted out a party of about sixteen men to
explore and trap the unknown region.
He left the shores of the Great Salt Lake, August 22, 1826, and
proceeded south and west to Los Angeles, arriving there late in
November. His exact course through Utah was long a matter of
controversy[10] but with the discovery, by Maurice Sullivan, of an
additional letter[11] written by Smith, the controversy was settled. It
now seems certain that he followed the route proposed by the author to
Maurice Sullivan (ibid.) from Utah Lake Southward to Sevier River in the
vicinity of Fayette, followed it up to the mouth of Marysvale Canyon,
and mistaking Clear Creek for the head of the river (evidently not
recognizing the stream coming through Marysvile Canyon), passed over the
divide at the head of Clear Creek and down by Cove Fort, south along the
west foot of the mountains to Beaver River (which he called Lost River),
on past the present site of Cedar City to the rim of the Great Basin,
thence to Ash Creek along the route Escalante had taken to the Virgin
River, down the Virgin to the Colorado River and across the Mojave
Desert to the Coast.
[Illustration: Sulphur Springs on stream called Sulphur River by
Escalante (1776). Adams River by Jed Smith (1826), and Rio Virgin by
the Spaniards (1840’s) emerging from canyon near Hurricane.
_Photo by U. S. National Park Service._]
[Illustration: Flood plain of the Virgin River at Grafton.
_Photo by U. S. National Park Service._]
[Illustration: Carvings by prehistoric Indians in Zion Canyon.
_Photo by U. S. National Park Service._]
[Illustration: Carvings by white men on a cliff two miles south of
St. George (below). Message below plant reads: Jacob Peart Jr. I was
sent here to raise cotten March 1858.
_Photo by U. S. National Park Service._]
Smith called the Virgin the Adams River in compliment to President John
Quincy Adams, although it was in territory then claimed by Mexico. At
the mouth of Santa Clara Creek, he fell in with a group of Paiute
Indians (his printed word is Pa Ulches, probably a misprint for Pa
Utches), who wore rabbit skin robes and raised a little corn and
pumpkins. He called the Santa Clara, Corn Creek.
On his first trip of 1826, he followed the Virgin River down through the
narrows below the mouth of the Santa Clara, a hazardous undertaking
since most of the channel is barely wide enough to accommodate the
stream. This would have involved much wading of the stream over shifting
quicksand, through deep holes and around giant rocks and boulders. On
his second trip, a year later, he avoided these narrows by going up Corn
Creek (Santa Clara) about twenty five miles, crossing over a pass to the
drainage into Beaver Dam Wash which he followed down to the Virgin,
rejoining his old route about ten miles below the narrows.[11]
These pioneering trips of Smith’s not only opened two new routes to the
Pacific, westward and southwestward, but his reports of his travels and
stories of adventure undoubtedly incited others to follow. One of these
was George C. Yount, who was in the mountains with Smith for several
months. Smith’s stories inflamed in him a desire to visit California. In
the fall of 1830, Yount joined a party organized by William Wolfskill at
Santa Fe for the purpose of reaching the coast. Coming up through the
corner of Colorado and eastern Utah, they reached the Sevier River,
probably through Salina Canyon, arrived at the Virgin River and followed
it down to the Colorado. The story of this trip was told by Yount in his
old age and the details of the route are not precise, but it appears
that his party must have attempted to follow Smith’s trail.[12] It is
probable that these explorations had a great deal to do with the
development of the Old Spanish Trail, then in its formative stages.[13]
Subsequently, the Old Spanish Trail became a regular overland route,
following the Sevier River nearly to Panguitch, then over the Bear
Valley pass to Paragonah, across the desert to the Mountain Meadows,
down the Santa Clara past Gunlock, over the divide to Beaver Dam Wash,
paralleling the Virgin River, across desert hills to the Muddy River and
thence across toward Los Angeles via Las Vegas.
By 1844, when Captain John C. Fremont of the U. S. Army came over the
route from the coast to Paragonah, this was a well defined trail, over
which annual caravans traveled back and forth from Santa Fe to the
coast.[14] Untold numbers of Spaniards may have traveled the route that
Escalante had tried vainly to find, leaving their impress along the way
in the Spanish names given to many of the important places, several of
which have persisted to this day. The names, Rio Virgen (River of
Virgins), Santa Clara Creek and La Verkin Creek, all probably originated
with the Spaniards, between the time of Jedediah S. Smith and John C.
Fremont.[15]
Fremont followed the route from the coast past Las Vegas and encamped on
the Muddy River after a fifty to sixty mile jaunt across the parched
desert, sixteen hours of uninterrupted traveling without water. The
Indians were numerous and insulting, evidently intent upon raiding the
camp and stealing anything they could. Horses fatigued and left behind
the night before were found butchered the next morning. The party
remained in camp all day on May 5, 1844, to let their animals recuperate
from the hard trip of the day before. They remained constantly armed and
on watch. Fremont called the natives Digger Indians. They fed largely
upon lizards and other small animals of the desert. Many of them carried
long sticks, hooked at the end for extracting lizards from the rocks.
As Fremont traveled up the Virgin River, the Indians followed stealthily
in the rear and quickly cut off any animals that were left behind. While
encamped near the present site of Littlefield, Arizona, one of the men,
Tabeau, was killed by the Indians when he went back alone a short
distance to look for a lost mule. The party that went in search of him
found where he had been dragged by the Indians to the edge of the river
and thrown in. His horse, saddle, clothing, arms, and the mule had all
been taken by the Indians.
The two thousand-foot mountain gorge above Littlefield forced Fremont to
leave the Virgin and turn off to the north where he regained the Old
Spanish Trail which he had lost in the sands of the desert. Surmounting
a pass, he reached the Santa Clara and followed it up to the Mountain
Meadows where, he states:
We found an extensive mountain meadow, rich in bunch grass, and fresh
with numerous springs of clear water, all refreshing and delightful to
look upon. It was, in fact, that las Vegas de Santa Clara, which had
been so long represented to us as the terminating point of the desert,
and where the annual caravan from California to New Mexico halted and
recruited for some weeks. It was a very suitable place to recover from
the fatigue and exhaustion of a month’s suffering in the hot and
sterile desert. The meadow was about a mile wide and some ten miles
long, bordered by grassy hills and mountains.... In passing before the
great caravan, we had the advantage of finding more grass, but the
disadvantage of finding also the marauding savages, who had gathered
down upon the trail, waiting the approach of their prey.... At this
place we had complete relief from the heat and privations of the
desert and some relaxation from the severity of camp duty.[16]
After a day of rest (May 13) at the Meadows, Fremont pushed to the
northeast across the south end of the Great Basin until he reached the
Little Salt Lake near Paragonah. Here he left the Old Spanish Trail and
cut off to the north along the edge of the desert at the western foot of
the mountains. On May 20 he met a band of Ute Indians under the
leadership of the well known chief, Walker (Wah-kerr), journeying
southward to levy the annual toll upon the California caravan. Fremont
says, “They were all mounted, armed with rifles, and use their rifles
well.... They were robbers of a higher order than those of the desert.
They conducted their depredations with form and under the color of trade
and toll for passing through their country. Instead of attacking and
killing, they affect to purchase, taking the horses they like and giving
something nominal in return.”