Mike Ford and I came back to Torrey and Capitol Reef in the summer of 1991. He had never been up into Cathedral Valley, so that was one of our goals. We went in by a new way, at least it was for me. Instead of crossing the Fremont at the river ford, we drove on a few miles farther to Caineville before turning off to the north on a graded dirt road. For the first eight or nine miles this followed the route of the old original 1880s wagon road that led over Thousand Lake Mountain from the town of Fremont, across The Hartnet, and down along Caineville Wash to the lower Fremont River settlements.

Just past Willow Seep a rough, four-wheel-drive track took off to the left, which is the old Hartnet Road, but Mike and I continued straight ahead through a region known descriptively as the Middle Desert. Soon a large embayment opened out from the bordering cliffs to the west. Where a side stream had come down from the higher elevation of The Hartnet, erosion had left two towering and free-standing monoliths known as the Temples of the Sun and of the Moon. These gave the area its name of Lower Cathedral Valley, to distinguish it from Upper Cathedral Valley several miles farther on towards Thousand Lake Mountain. This is the area that is often seen in travel photographs of “Cathedral Valley.”

Just before reaching Upper Cathedral Valley, where my wife and I had driven back in 1972, the cliffs off to our left again were broken down by a small side drainage leading down off of The Hartnet. A long, narrow ridge had thus been left that early writers in the 1940s called the Walls of Jericho. At the end of the ridge, three cone-like spires have been left standing, which early Mormon stockmen in the valley referred to as Ma, Pa, and Little Henry. It was these three spires that gave historians and park service personnel the important clue in identifying the route through the area of explorer John C. Fremont in 1854.

Ma, Pa and Little Henry, Lower Catherals, 1991

It had long been known that Fremont’s party, searching for a possible route for a transcontinental railroad, had crossed the Green River and traveled south and west around the uplift of the San Rafael Swell. It was also known that they had arrived in Rabbit Valley, near the headwaters of the Fremont River in western Wayne County, before crossing the high plateaus to the southwest. But how they got from the southern end of the San Rafael to Rabbit Valley was a matter of some conjecture. The trip was made under severe and very trying conditions during the winter of 1853-54, and of at least this stretch of the journey no accurate accounts were kept.

One of the members of Fremont’s party was Solomon Carvalho, artist and photographer for the expedition. One of his daguerreotypes was thought by photo-historian Robert Shlaer to be from the Capitol Reef area, and in 1995 it was identified by National Park Service employee Kent Jackson as the formation known as Mom, Pop, and Henry; obviously identical with “Ma, Pa, and Little Henry.” This was the first actual proof of Fremont’s exact route. He must have followed the curve of the Moroni Slopes around the southern flank of the San Rafael Swell into the upper reaches of today’s Middle Desert, past the trio of spires pictured in Carvalho’s daguerreotype, and into Upper Cathedral Valley. From there they crossed the heights of Thousand Lake Mountain before descending into Rabbit Valley near the present town of Fremont.

When Mike and I drove up to the ridge separating Cathedral Valley from the South Desert, we found a couple of new park service additions, at least since I had been here last. A short spur road led off to an overlook of Cathedral Valley to the north, and a primitive campground (meaning no water!) had been put in. Here we took advantage of the picnic tables and had our lunch. Now early in the afternoon, it began to cloud up. The peaks of the Henrys, far to the south, and the much closer Thousand Lake Mountain, because of their much greater elevation, were both getting dumped on pretty heavily with rain. But down where we were, there were only a few fat raindrops. The quickly moving clouds with their occasional breaks served to create weird shadow-effects over the expanse of South Desert below.

We returned south to the Fremont River and Highway 24 by way of The Hartnet and Bentonite Hill. I stopped and showed Mike the abandoned truck and drilling rig that my brother and I and Mike Martin had sought shade beneath back in 1968. In the intervening twenty-three years, the entire rig had slowly sunk down into the soft soil and clay, leaving no room to crawl under it any longer. But it certainly brought back memories, not all of them pleasant!   Jim and old drilling rig, North Blue Flats, 1991

In 1872, Almon H. Thompson headed a small party of Major John Wesley Powell’s Colorado River expedition overland from Kanab, Utah, to the mouth of the Dirty Devil River, where one of their boats had been left the previous year. In the course of their journey, they traveled directly through the heart of the Capitol Reef region. Following the general course of the Andrus expedition of six years before, Thompson’s party crossed the southern and eastern flanks of the Aquarius Plateau, which they named. Their view to the east, over the Waterpocket Fold to the Henry Mountains, was the same as Andrus’. Somewhere between Bowns and Chokecherry points, they descended the mountain eastwards down Pleasant Creek, which they also named, and on through the cliffs of Capitol Reef by way of its canyon.

Like we had done up at Grand Wash four years earlier, Mike let me off on the western side of Capitol Reef and then drove around to pick me up on the east. I wanted to hike the four or five-mile length of Pleasant Creek’s canyon to search for old, historic names and/or dates left by earlier travelers. Maybe I could even find one from the 1872 Thompson party, though that was rather unlikely. My drop-off point was also the location of an historic early settlement in the region.

In August of 1882, Ephraim K. Hanks and his family settled here on Pleasant Creek, just west of where it cuts through the upturned cliffs. Their first home was a dugout built into the side of a bluff with a second room of logs added on. By 1888, a four or five-room frame house had been built. The Hanks family raised some crops, had some pasturage for a few livestock, and also set out an orchard of about 200 fruit trees, which they cultivated. During their first spring at Pleasant Creek, when the fruit trees came out with thousands of blossoms, Mrs. Hanks gave the area a new name – Floral Ranch. The limited amount of water and arable land available restricted settlement, and the area never supported more than a few families. Even these residents were related either by blood or marriage to E. K. Hanks.

Site of Floral Ranch, Pleasant Creek, 1991

Hanks died in 1896, but Floral Ranch remained in the family until 1916. The ranch then passed through several hands until 1940, when it was sold to Lurton Knee. It was renamed Sleeping Rainbow Guest Ranch, and after World War II additional cabins and a small motel were built to accommodate tourists. A variety of jeep and horseback tours were offered throughout Capitol Reef and the surrounding scenic regions. After Knee acquired the property, the Hanks’ frame house was intentionally burned, and all of the other original buildings, granary, stable, corrals, etc., were knocked down and removed.

With the creation of Capitol Reef National Park and its subsequent enlargement, the main portions of the Sleeping Rainbow Guest Ranch property were purchased by the government in 1974 and 1978, except a small portion granted to the Knees as a life residency. Following Mr. Knee’s death in 1995, the National Park Service acquired the remaining acreage, and the guest ranch facility is now used as a university-operated environmental education and research center.

Not a half-mile from the vehicle, I came upon a huge cliffside covered with prehistoric petroglyphs, as well as old, historic inscriptions, several of them predating 1900. The oldest was one left by “J. L. Ivie” and dated “1876.” Along here there were also some fence remains, possibly from the old Floral Ranch, as they were not the modern kind, but the old “rip-gut” style of criss-crossing juniper and pinon tree trunks and branches.

Pleasant Creek was running a good flow of water, which meant many trees and much vegetation along its course. The abundant water, in fact, is what made Pleasant Creek more popular for some early travelers than the shorter, but dry, Capitol Gorge route. I succeeded in finding two or three more old inscriptions and a set of prehistoric petroglyphs. These latter figures were unusual in that they had not only been incised into the cliff wall but had also been “painted” in. A couple of them still had traces of red and yellow coloring remaining in them. Near this point the stream cuts down through the sandstone bedrock forming miniature “slot” canyons and two small waterfalls.

After picking me up on the eastern side of the reef, Mike and I returned to our camp. But we still had one more day to spend, and the next morning we drove into Torrey to the home of the Roylances. Ward Roylance is a self-described “Utah specialist,” having devoted most of his adult life to traveling, writing about, and photographing this state. Originally from Salt Lake City, he and his wife Gloria first came to Torrey in 1969, though they did not settle permanently until 1976. “Torrey epitomized the redrock country for us,” said Ward. “It was surrounded by the most gorgeous earth colors imaginable, and erosional designs of such wonder and exquisiteness that just looking at them could make a person weak.”

Their lot was bordered on two sides by irrigation canals, which watered a lush overgrowth of cottonwood trees, rabbitbrush, alfalfa, and flowers. It was vacant when they purchased it, and the Roylances spent several years in building their unique home before moving from Salt Lake City. Basically, the house is a five-sided tepee or pyramid, with steeply sloping roof sides. A sunroom annex was on one side, and a kitchen-bath-utility annex on another. The bedroom area was partitioned off from the central tepee area, which rises to an open peak some twenty feet above the floor.

I was acquainted with Ward from having corresponded with him for a number of years, and he had offered to take me to a unique area I had long been aware of, but had never seen. Fish Creek Cove, about five or six miles south of Torrey, is a beautiful area enclosed by yellow and cream-colored sandstone cliffs up to 300 feet high, and today is covered with native grasses, sagebrush, rabbitbrush, juniper, and in sheltered nooks, Ponderosa pine. It was at one time known as Bullard Cove, as between 1880 and 1884 the Bullard brothers, Will and Ezra, pastured their cattle here.

In the summer of 1928, Noel Morss, of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum, spent several days excavating a site in Fish Creek Cove. Numerous pictographs and petroglyphs of the prehistoric Fremont Culture adorned the walls of one particular shelter. This was what I had read about in archeological reports and that I wished to see. The principal feature of the shelter is a line of large red animals, perhaps deer, without heads. There is a large shield figure, half red and half white, with red legs, but no head or arms. Another large circle, outlined in red, is decorated with red and white vertical lines. There are also many pecked and carved figures, including sheep, a buffalo-like animal with short horns, wavy lines, circles, and dots. As an added bonus, as far as I was concerned, we also found scores of early historic inscriptions left carved into the rock of the alcove by settlers and stockmen.

In June of 1996, I had one of my most unusual experiences in Capitol Reef. I had come back and driven down to Pleasant Creek to reexamine some old inscriptions that I had already seen but also to look for a couple of more that a friend of mine had told me about. Everything went fine, and I was lucky enough even to find four names and dates from the 1880s that I had never heard about, much less seen before. But that is not what was unusual.   Fish Creek Cove, South of Torrey, 1991

I had noticed that it had clouded up to the north and west, and I could also see some lightning and hear some thunder far in the distance. But all I got were a few big raindrops. However, when I got back to Capitol Wash, I found it running about two feet deep, whereas normally it was just a couple of inches, if that. With my four-wheel drive, I got across with no problem, but when I went around the first turn in the road I met three or four vehicles off to the side of the road. Upon inquiry, I learned that huge flashfloods had come down both Capitol Wash and Grand Wash just a couple of hours earlier, while I was down at Pleasant Creek. For the time being, the way ahead was blocked. Water was still rather deep at one narrow place, and a large RV had gotten mired down at Grand Wash.

So we all proceeded to wait for the next hour or two. Two rangers finally came in their National Park Service vehicles and I talked with one of them for awhile. He said that most of the visitors had gotten out of Capitol Gorge okay, but a few had been trapped for a short time. His fellow ranger was going down now to check on any more. Finally, the three or four waiting cars were allowed to go on, after the RV had been towed out of the way. The ranger asked me to go last, as I had the only four-wheel drive vehicle.

By this time it was about seven o’clock in the evening, and the campground was full. I drove east on Highway 24 until I was out of the park, then pulled off on a side road near the Fremont River and camped for the night. The river was running like I had only heard about before, but never seen: blood red with mud and silt.

In the morning I drove back to Capitol Reef. I went in and visited with the Chief Ranger, and he informed me that the Capitol Gorge road was still blocked, which was where I had planned on going next. I also learned that the previous day’s flashflood had been the largest in many years. He termed it “the mother of all flashfloods.” Thirty vehicles and a dozen hikers had been temporarily trapped. As of last night, two cars were still at the Capitol Gorge parking area, and an undetermined number of people missing. Several days later I read that three people had spent the night in the gorge until the water finally receded.

The road through Capitol Gorge has always been subject to flashfloods, which can come roaring down the wash from the heights of Miners Mountain to the west. It is remarkable that no one has ever been killed in one of them through the gorge. In the early days, local people made up most of the traffic. They could judge the weather conditions and avoid entering the gorge until the danger had passed. With the creation of the national monument, however, there was an increasing number of out-of-state visitors. The risk was much greater that someone would ignore or misjudge weather conditions and get caught in the gorge during a flashflood. In 1951, it was noted by National Park Service officials that one such flood in Capitol Gorge had stranded nine cars just short of The Narrows. If there were other close misses, they were not recorded by park service personnel.

I spent the entire day at the park picnic grounds, waiting for the Capitol Gorge road to be reopened. Actually it was kind of nice to just sit around in the cool green grass under the shade of the huge cottonwood trees. I alternated between reading, napping, eating, listening to the quiet murmur of the stream and the rustle of the leaves in the trees, and simply gazing at the towering stone cliffs to the east and north.

Also, this was a rather historic spot that I was taking my ease in. All of the surrounding area was part of the original homestead of the Fruita settlement’s first permanent resident, Nels Johnson. It was actually first taken up as a squatter claim by one Franklin W. Young about 1878 or 1879, but he soon sold and transferred his rights to Johnson in 1880. That year Johnson built a small one-room cabin and a more substantial frame house in 1886. He is also credited with planting the first orchards about that same time.

Johnson was killed in 1902, and his widow soon moved away. By the 1920s, his original cabin and house had fallen into ruins, and when the property was sold by the Johnson children and heirs to William Chesnut in 1927, the structures were demolished. Chesnut’s son, Clarence, eventually sold the property to the National Park Service in 1962, and the house and out-buildings existing then were torn down and removed in 1964 and 1965. The grassy, tree-shaded field and picnic area lying between Sulphur Creek and the Fremont River on one side and the Scenic Drive on the other, where I passed the day, was a good portion of the original Johnson property, while the smaller picnic area just on the west side of the drive marks the site of Nels Johnson’s cabin and house.

By evening the Grand Wash and Capitol Gorge roads were still closed. Trucks, road graders, and other equipment had been passing back and forth all day, but it was proving to be a rather big job. I camped by the river east of the park boundary, and once again the next day I came back to await the reopening of the Scenic Drive. By ten o’clock, however, the chief ranger finally said that it looked like it was going to be closed indefinitely. I learned the following year that it turned out to be almost four months. At any rate, I headed back home to Missouri.

From a report made in 1945, by Charles Kelly, the then national monument’s first superintendent, I knew there were supposed to be some names and dates from the late 1800s located “along the road just east of Twin Rocks.” We carefully searched the entire area from Twin Rocks eastward for close to a mile. There were very few cliffsides or large boulders suitable for carving close to the highway. Those we did find were examined to no avail. After backtracking to where we had left our vehicle, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that the old inscriptions were no longer there.

We scrambled down and began to follow the trace. Almost immediately we could tell that it was, in fact, the route of an old road. Returning to the car, we quickly grabbed some cameras and canteens. Perhaps a quarter-mile or so beyond, the wash made its first substantial turn, leaving a sizable cliff on the outside edge. There, about twenty feet above the bed of the dry wash, were the inscriptions we had been searching for. Mike and I found at least a half-dozen names dating from the 1880s and 1890s, including a pair that indicated they were on the way to “San Juan – Gold.” Like Call and Bateman down in Capitol Gorge, these two men were undoubtedly prospectors on their way to the San Juan River in southeastern Utah during the gold boom there in the winter of 1892-93.

We continued to follow the wash for over two miles. Every so often there were still traces of the old road, especially where it would take a short cut and cut off a bend of the wash. Eventually, the track led up a short side wash and back to the present highway just slightly west of Chimney Rock. Mike and I found four other inscription sites along this two-mile stretch beyond that first cliffside. Again, several of the names were from the 1880s and 1890s.

"D. Fairbanks, T.T. Howe, San Juan Gold", S.E. of Twin Rocks, 1997

This, then, was a portion of the old original road between Torrey and Fruita. It followed this winding, unnamed northern tributary of Sulphur Creek until that stream course began to canyon deeper and deeper above what has become known as The Goosenecks. The 1941 WPA Utah state book refers to this stretch as Granite Wash, though no examples of that type of igneous rock are in evidence anywhere in the region. Its eastern continuation followed pretty much the same route as today’s Highway 24, which was paved and given its present alignment from Chimney Rock to Fruita in 1957. Even now, especially where the highway traverses what is called Whiskey Flat, off to the north there are glimpses of short stretches of the old route, and some of the rock embankments and stone bridge-culverts that were put in in 1938.

When Mike and I returned to our vehicle at Twin Rocks, and after consulting a map, the western continuation of the Torrey-Fruita road was even more obvious. It bore off to the southwest, and this we were able to drive, as it is still used today by local ranchers. It wound generally westwards around hills and down a bluff, crossing Sulphur Creek just above a working ranch. On the opposite side it struck southwest, finally coming back out to and intersecting the highway not far south of the Rim Rock Motel and Restaurant. The old original road, still a dirt track, continued westwards up the valley of Sand Creek, and came into Torrey from the north. The alignment and paving of today’s “modern” highway from Torrey to Twin Rocks was accomplished in 1954 and 1955.

The aim and intent of highway engineers has always been to shorten both the distance and time of travel between two points. Between Fruita and Torrey the old road, as well as the new, climbs some 1,400 feet in about a dozen miles. The two-mile stretch following the northern tributary of Sulphur Creek was always subject to washouts after a particularly heavy rainfall, and like Capitol Gorge down in Capitol Reef, was often closed for periods of time until road crews could clear out flood debris. In 1900 it might have taken close to half a day for a wagon to wind its way those eleven or twelve miles. By 1938, an automobile could make the trip in a little over two hours, road conditions being optimal. Today, if a person follows the speed limits, they can leave the park service Visitor Center at the Fruita Rural Historic District and pull up to the Chuck Wagon General Store in Torrey twenty minutes later.

My latest, but hopefully not my last, visit to Torrey and Capitol Reef was in late September and early October of 1999. Every one of my previous thirteen trips had been during the summer months. People that I have been friends with out in southern Utah have consistently said, “You ought to come out in the spring, or better yet, in the fall. It’s beautiful here then!” But being a high school teacher, that was just when I had to be in the classroom. However, at the end of the 1998-99 school year, I retired after thirty years. Mike Ford, my friend and hiking buddy for the last twenty years had retired from teaching in 1993.

So, here the two of us were, driving westwards along the Fremont River valley from Hanksville towards Capitol Reef. The tamarisk, or salt cedar, bordering the stream were already turning color, and the cottonwoods were beginning to do so. As we passed through Capitol Reef, the air had a coolness to it even at midday, and the rock cliffs looked somehow sharper and more distinct. And if it was possible, the Utah sky was a deeper, brighter blue than ever before. Climbing up towards Torrey, distant Boulder Mountain appeared to have yellowish-orange rock flows awash down its flanks, but upon closer inspection these turned out to be huge groves of golden-leaved aspen trees. I had literally been waiting for this day for forty years!

We did not linger in either Capitol Reef or Torrey this trip, simply passing through to and from the Escalante River canyons to the south. But as this decade, this century, this millennium draws to a close, I am confident that I will be drawn back many more times in the future.