Utah Centennial County History Series - Piute County 1999

EXPLORING THE LAND I n 1827 mountain man Jedediah Smith and his trapping party picked their way south past Big Rock Candy Mountain to the mouth of Marysvale Canyon where the cliffs push against the Sevier River, causing it to rage and foam. Finding the canyon impenetrable, Smith and his men retraced their trail north to Clear Creek. There they cut west around Clear Creek Canyon into the vast desert regions of the Great Basin, which Smith described as "a Country of StarvationSandy plains and rocky hills.'"

Had Smith and his men persevered over the mountain to the east side of Marysvale Canyon and the Sevier River rapids, as had the Spanish and Mexican traders before them, they would have found that the boulder-strewn channel widens and the steep cliffs roll down into the lush green river bottom flanked by sagebrush-covered foothills. Here the river quietly wanders, twisting and turning for miles-at times almost resting-before plunging northward through the canyon.

Three years later, in 1830,William Wolfskill and George C. Yount led another group of twenty trappers the entire length of the Old