The last couple of weeks have been spent up in the heads of the rock area of the Escalante area in the Grand Staircase.  Lots of local history can be found in the area.

It’s easy to see after visiting the Escalante area, that the settlers of the area must have been dumfounded when they looked out across the slick rock of the area.  Surely they had never seen nor imagined land like this.  To them, the world was green hills of England and woodlands from the East Coast.  How does a pioneer cultivate land like this for farming?  Usually they would plant their crops next to the few rivers and streams that dot the area.  Only to find flash floods wiping them out by mid summer.  To really harness the land, large canal systems had to be built to pull the water away from the flood channels.

The area is home to two small towns, Escalante and Boulder.  These towns are unique in that they were separated by some significant canyon systems that impeded travel from one to the other.  Eventually some early wagon roads were created to bridge the two settlements.

One attempt at a wagon road was called the Boynton Wagon road.  It is a small narrow trail cut right into the Navajo Sand Stone as it weaves its way down a very steep 1000 ft drop all the way to the Escalante River, then up and out over the slickrock plains to the settlement of Salt Gulch and eventually Boulder.

To walk down the Boynton Wagon Road is exciting because it makes you think just how wild and indomitable this land is.  The road was only used for a few years before rock falls and washouts made it impossible to use.  Nearby another attempt at a road is called the Cream Cellar road.  For a while, the ranchers were convinced that they could make extra money if they could sell the cream from their cows to a local creamery in a settlement called Antimony.  They built a better road to get the cream there sooner, but it too was washed away and abandoned.  An interesting side note is that the Cream Crocs would shake in the back of the wagons and tied to the animals that were carrying them, so the cream would turn to butter mid trip.  Some would expire from the heat of the sun and explode scaring the animals and spilling over the wagons contents, this happened quite a few times and the settlers abandoned their hopes for the cream.

Call today at 435-689-1884 and explore with us the exciting history of the area.