Escalante

This Friday the 13th, we traveled from Torrey, south and west to the little town of Escalante.  There is a river nearby called Escalante, named for a Spanish Franciscan missionary/explorer, Silvestre Velez de  Escalante.  The town is named after the river.

The drive down followed the very scenic Highway 12.  Along the way, we passed through Boulder, and pulled the little trailer over mountains in the Dixie National Forest, including a 9,600 ft summit, and then down some fairly hair raising ridge tops, with great drop offs at each side.   There were many amazing overlooks on this drive, and the scenery was breathtaking.

Just outside the town of Escalante are a couple of back country drives.  One heads north and is called Hell's Backbone, which we intend to try in the morning.  Another, probably more famous, is the road southeast to Hole in the Rock.  Unfortunately, the road condition for that drive would not permit our truck to make it.

Hole in the rock is significant historically.  It is said to be the scene of the last major wagon train trip in America.  250 Mormon settlers, (men, women and children) in 1879 were finding their way southwest from Escalante to establish a new town on the San Juan River in Southeast Utah.  Their travel from Escalante was tough enough for the first 55 miles, but they never expected the 1,800 ft vertical drop they would  have to make when they reached the Colorado River gorge.  They found a vertical crack leading down, which they widened with hand picks over a six week period, making it barely passable for a wagon, and only if you took in the wagon's water barrels from the sides.  On January 26, 1880, leaving the children at the top, the wagons were lowered with horses, and with 20 men struggling at the back of each wagon holding ropes, trying to keep it  from falling the near vertical drop.   After getting a wagon down, they went back up to help the children down. Once they got all the wagons down, the party faced crossing the untamed Colorado.  After that, they spent the next 2 months and 140 miles crossing frozen slickrock, cedar forest, muck, cactus and snow before reaching their destination on the San Juan River.  There they established the new community of Bluff.

I was disappointed that I could not drive there to see the drop down into what is now Lake Powell, but maybe another time.  The pictures below were taken from the internet.

Hole In The Rock, today

Hole In The Rock, today

In Escalante there is a special Heritage Center dedicated to the Mormon Settlers who established southern Utah, (as well as many other areas of the Southwest), including their trials at Hole In The Rock. There we met two kindly and well informed gentlemen, and saw a brief film.  The Heritage Center gave me a glimpse of the tenacity and bravery of the Mormon settlers. Had I known the whole story of how folks came to settle Bluff, I would have paid more attention when we drove through that town a couple of weeks ago.