Tales from Torrey
and of Capitol Reef
by James H. Knipmeyer

Part I — 1963: The First Visit

Following raids by small bands of Navajo and Paiute Indians in the spring of 1866, a force of the Utah Territorial Militia, led by Captain James Andrus, was sent into the field in August. Working their way northward from the town of St. George, they ultimately reached their farthest point on the eastern edge of what would later be named the Aquarius Plateau. There they had a tremendous view of a sweep of land stretching from the southeast to the north, and encompassing much of what is today Capitol Reef National Park. Adjutant Franklin B. Woolley wrote the expedition’s report and said, “….wilderness mesas, upthrust mountains, and intricately carved canyons lay spread out below….” Boulder Mountain 1999, just the same as it was in 1963

This was the same view that I had almost a century later in June of 1963. The “wilderness mesas” of the Waterpocket Fold, the “upthrust mountains” of the Henrys, and the “intricately carved canyons” of Capitol Reef still “lay spread out below” the wondering gazes of myself, my mother and father, and my brother. It was between my sophomore and junior years in high school, and the four of us were on our annual summer vacation trip. My dad was big on visiting any and all national parks and monuments, and we were on our way from Bryce Canyon to Capitol Reef.

That morning we had left the small town of Escalante, Utah, and headed north. From the even smaller town of Boulder, we started up and around what showed on our Rand-McNally road atlas as the Aquarius Plateau. What was then designated State Route 117 (today’s State Highway 12) was simply a graded dirt road that climbed and wound its way between thirty and forty miles over the tree-covered eastern shoulder of the plateau-mountain to the Fremont River valley beyond. Descending the bumpy and slow-going road, we finally encountered pavement again at the little town of Teasdale in Wayne County. Proceeding eastward on Highway 24 we came to Torrey, where we stopped and had lunch. To be honest, I cannot now remember just where we ate, but it was my first, albeit brief, visit to that community. After lunch the four of us drove on to Capitol Reef.

The town of Torrey stretches for about three-fourths of a mile along Highway 24. It occupies part of a benchland between the valley of Sand Creek about one mile to the north and the valley of the Fremont River about one mile to the south. A U.S. Geological Survey marker on the western side of town gives an elevation of 6,843 feet above sea level. The town is on a frontier of sorts, being situated in a low-lying area on the western margin of the Canyonlands region and the eastern margin of the High Plateaus region. Beyond Sand Creek the so-called Torrey Breaks are the highly eroded, red sandstone cliffs running along the base of Thousand Lake Mountain eastward toward the upthrust rock domes of Capitol Reef. To the south rise the forest-covered slopes of the Aquarius Plateau, locally known as Boulder Mountain, while westward stretches the open valley of the Fremont.

Torrey is a small town, its population during most of its history not being much over one hundred persons. In fact, in the latter part of the 1960s when I happened to mention to a local resident that the population was listed at 128, she replied, “That must have been counting all the dogs, cats, and chickens, too!” Until fairly recent years, farming, stockraising, and orchards provided a meager livelihood, but those activities could not support a large population. Many young people moved away and the older ones died.

In the late 1870s and early 1880s, a few people came to the valley of Sand Creek, mostly to run livestock. It was not until December of 1886 that the families of John W. Young, his son Alma Young, and George D. Morrell became the first settlers to locate up on the benchland which came to be called Poverty Flat. In the spring of 1887, they made ditches, brought water onto the flat, and raised crops.

By the winter of 1889-1890, the number of settlers in the area had increased, and a plan was made to build a canal to bring water from the Fremont River onto the bench. When the canal was not built, however, most of the families gave up and moved away. Only George Morrell remained. But resettlement soon began, and the townsite was officially surveyed and laid out in 1896. In 1897 a new survey was run for a canal from the Fremont,and construction actually started the following year. However, work on the canal was often discontinued as people moved in and out of the town. Not until 1910 did flowing water finally reach the community.

In the beginning the settlement was sometimes referred to off-handedly as Youngtown, after one of its first pioneers. Torrey did not become the official name of the town until a post office was established in 1898. At that time the exploits of a certain Colonel Torrey from Wyoming, who was in command of a contingent of “Rough Riders” during the Spanish-American War, was then in the news, and the townspeople choose to name the town for him.

Torrey began to come into its own as a community when in 1957 the paving of the highway from Torrey eastward to Fruita was completed, and Capitol Reef consequently began attracting many more visitors. Two service stations, a small owner-operated motel and store, and two cafes typical of rural America were situated along a half-mile stretch of highway through the center of town. Torrey also began drawing the attention of “outsiders” who wanted to stay permanently or at least build a vacation summer home. With the huge cottonwood trees arching above the main street, towering poplars lining many of the side streets, and the colorful red cliffs to the north contrasting sharply with the green foliage, the scenery in and around Torrey, said one newcomer, “was just plain breathtaking.”

When my family and I arrived at Capitol Reef that day in 1963, the first thing we did was find a camping place in the National Park Service campground. The sky had been clouding up since noontime, and just as we finished getting our tent put up, it began to rain. But it was just a brief June shower, and soon the sun broke through the overcast. I vividly remember the rock formation known as The Castle rising above the campground and blazing a brilliant orange in the afternoon light. The present campground loops were not put into operation until the following year. Also on this, my first visit, Capitol Reef was still a national monument, not a national park as it is today. The idea to have some sort of a “park land” established had first begun many years before. Following World War I, tourism began to rapidly develop in southwestern Utah, especially to Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon. Two brothers-in-law, Ephraim P. Pectol and Joseph S. Hickman, both of Torrey, became determined to gain a share of the tourist dollars for local businesses by publicizing Wayne County’s spectacular scenery.   The Castle from the old National Monument campground

Accordingly, in 1921 a local Boosters Club was organized in Torrey with Ephraim Pectol as president. A little later Joseph Hickman succeeded in forming a larger collection of county organizations under the name Wayne Wonderland Club, and became its president. After Mr. Hickman was elected to the Utah State Legislature in 1924, he successfully introduced an act to create a state park commission which would have the power to set apart recreational areas. Believing that Wayne Wonderland would now become Utah’s first state park, county residents immediately made plans for a dedication ceremony to be held near Torrey.

Soon after, Mr. Hickman tragically lost his life in a drowning accident, and while this event dropped enthusiasm for a time, the county people began to turn to E.P. Pectol as the logical person to carry on the movement. By the end of the 1920s, however, there was still no state park in Wayne County. When state efforts finally died out, local attempts continued, but were shifted to attract federal attention. In 1932, Mr. Pectol became a member of the State Legislature and petitioned Congress to have the “Wayne Wonderland” area set aside as a national park. Final action came in August of 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the area Capitol Reef National Monument. It was not until December, 1971, that an act of Congress changed it to national park status.

The remainder of that first afternoon my family and I drove down the newly designated Scenic Drive along the western escarpment of the Capitol Reef cliffs. We continued to follow the graded dirt road as it turned eastward into the gaping mouth of Capitol Wash. We twisted and turned along the bed of this wash as the walls of the gorge on each side increased in height. Where the road was blocked with a barricade we walked a short distance farther on to some prehistoric petroglyphs, which had been carved into the rock on the north side.   Capitol Reef Road 1963 (now the paved Scenic Drive!)

I remember distinctly that in 1963 these ancient Fremont Culture figures were easily seen. Today, however, they are very faint and difficult to make out. Partly this is due to the effects of time and weathering over the ensuing years, but according to the National Park Service, vandalism by visitors has also played a part. Though I did not make any note of it then, I now wonder if the petroglyphs in 1963 had been highlighted or “chalked.” This was a relatively common practice at that time to make them show up better in photographs. Today this is frowned upon, as it greatly hastens the natural weathering process.
Though I did not know it at the time, the Scenic Drive we had followed, and even the short route we had walked deeper into Capitol Gorge, just the previous year had been part of Highway 24. When the first government explorers and scientists came into this region in the 1870s, they found that the upthrust cliffs of the Waterpocket Fold, stretching from the high plateaus southward all the way to the Colorado River, proved an effective barrier to east-west travel. They discovered that these cliffs between Thousand Lake Mountain and south of Oak Creek could only be broached at four points, the one through “Capitol Canyon” affording the “smoothest road.” By 1880 settlers had begun to come into the region, eventually establishing small settlements along the Fremont River on both sides of the Fold.

In 1883, tired of the difficult, treacherous, and sometimes impassable route down the Fremont River to their new settlement of Caineville, Elijah Behunin and a few other men spent some eight days clearing rocks and grading a road through Capitol Gorge. For the next eighty years the Capitol Wash “road” was the principal route through Capitol Reef. This road was part of what was eventually designated State Route 24, which led from the “upper” settlements in western Wayne County as far as the town of Hanksville in the east. But it was not until 1957 that pavement was extended as far as Capitol Reef. During the years 1961 and 1962, the highway was routed and paved through the Fremont River canyon as far as the eastern boundary of the national monument.

Once past the eastern boundary of the monument, the pavement abruptly ended, and our new Highway 24 reverted to gravel and, soon, dirt. This latter is the so-called “blue clay” of this region, and when sufficiently wet becomes a thick, slick mud known as “gumbo,” treacherous for driving. Luckily for us, the previous day’s rain had not soaked the blue clay to a dangerous point, and even though the road was now dirt, it had been “graded.” Huge pieces of road construction machinery lined the route for a mile or more, and from what we understood at the monument Visitor Center, pavement was to be put down to Caineville and beyond by the coming fall. Five years later we subsequently learned that the paving had progressed slower than expected, only extending the ten or so miles to Caineville by the end of the year and not reaching its ultimate destination at Hanksville until 1965.

Introduction
Part II — 1968: The Three Nephites
Part III — 1969: Home
Part IV— Early 1970's: The Prodigal Son Returns
Part V— 1967-1987 Interlude
Part VI — 1990's: The Last Years
Epilogue— 2000: Interlude