When I was a very little boy growing up on 600 South in St. George, I’d step out my front door and look eastward down the dusty street to where it disappeared into dense brush and creosote. Sometimes I’d walk to that ragged edge of town where the thicket began and look beyond it to the long flat ridge stretching north and south on the east rim of the valley. I was reluctant to enter into that desert jungle, but I dreamed of someday getting to the foot of that black ridge and climbing to the top. I wondered how many days it would take me. I was consumed by the mystery of what might lie on the other side.
A million years ago, a volcano erupted just north of St. George. Of course, St. George was not St. George at the time. In fact, the picturesque little valley where the heart of the city now sits lay deep beneath multiple layers of sedimentary rock. Molten lava flowed southward through two wide gullies then stopped, hardened into shiny black basalt rock, and sat firm through the ages as water, wind, and time stripped away the surrounding landscape. These days, those hard-capped ridges form the east and west rims of the St. George valley and have become the firm foundation for homes with views unrivaled in all the world.
I was not the first to look upon that black ridge on the east side of St. George and rub my chin. Well over a century and a half ago, when my ancestors ventured into the Virgin River Basin, they had to figure out a way to get wagons across it. At some point between the mid 1850s and late 1861, when the company of more than 300 families arrived, some sort of road must have been roughed out over
the ridge. Later, in the early 1900s, a tunnel was built through the ridge north of where Interstate 15 cuts through it today. The tunnel was used for decades, but its importance began to decline about the time my earliest memories kicked in. When the cut that we pass through today was blasted out of the ridge and the highway was rerouted through it, the tunnel became a relic.
As I grew older, my friends and I began to venture further into the thicket along the foot of the black ridge. We could have never imagined a Target, a Lowe’s, the headquarters of an airline, or a sprawling and towering Intermountain Regional Medical Center in that enchanted forest where we wound our way through the maze of brush, chasing rabbits the day long. Sometimes we would venture up the side of the ridge and find a spot with a fine view of the valley. We would build a sturdy fort of basalt rock and catch lizards and horny toads. But by then we were mostly on the lookout for Russian tanks. As I grew older, I began to wonder where it was that the pioneers first crossed that ridge. From history, I knew it was somewhere down toward the southern end. I knew the first few wagons came over the ridge in late November 1861, and most of the rest of the long caravan arrived on December 1.
On a bright winter day several years ago, a friend called wondering if I knew where the pioneers had crossed the ridge when they first entered the valley. I told him I thought I had a general idea, but I certainly could not pinpoint it. He said he’d just made a wonderful discovery and wanted to show it to me. We agreed to meet in the Medical Center parking lot on the morning of December 1.
Over the Ridge By Lyman Hafen
38 www.saintgeorgewellness.com
