Hole-in-the-Rock Expedition

Five miles east of town, a dirt track called Hole in the Rock Road peels off Highway Twelve and runs southeast toward the Colorado River country. It follows one of the most audacious pioneer routes in Western history. In the fall of eighteen seventy nine, a company of Mormon pioneers gathered in Escalante, roughly two hundred and fifty men, women, and children, with dozens of wagons and hundreds of head of livestock.

Their church had called them to establish a settlement in the far southeastern corner of Utah, near the San Juan River. Rather than take a long, known route, they chose a supposed shortcut straight across unexplored canyon country, expecting a journey of about six weeks. It took six months.

When they reached the rim of Glen Canyon, they faced a sheer cliff plunging to the Colorado River far below. The only way down was a narrow crevice, a hole in the rock. For weeks they blasted and chiseled that slot wide enough for wagons.

In January of eighteen eighty, they began lowering wagons through the gap, brakes locked, teams of men gripping ropes to keep them from plunging. Every wagon made it. By the traditional telling, no one died on the entire ordeal, and babies were born along the way.

The company reached the site of Bluff that spring, too exhausted to go farther, and founded their town there. The trail they carved remains one of the most improbable feats of frontier grit in America.