Blanding: The Making of a Community Gary L. Shumway
In the early spring of 1905 young Albert R. Lyman stood near where the Parley Redd Merc is and watched a herd of mustangs emerge from the trees that then covered the land. Breaking into a spirited lope as they started down the hill where the high school now is, they followed the draw toward the southeast, crossed it near the Utah Navajo Development Council offices, and disappeared into the taller sagebrush covering a large Anasazi ruin where my parents later built their home. That moment — when this land still belonged to such free spirits — is not really separated so long from this moment in time, yet this day and that are separated by a long series of experiences, each destined in an inexorable way to turn a sagebrush flat possessed by wild horses into a thriving community with a red stoplight in its navel. The founding and settlement of the town of Blanding is at least chapter two of the community history of this site. In another day, there was another people who loved this land and had faith in its ability to sustain them and received inspiration from the beauty of these same mountains and canyons. It is intriguing to realize that those people had a name for this community, although it probably was not Blanding, and the name probably was not changed to obtain a library. They also had a name for Blue Mountain, Elk Mountain, the Knoll, Westwater, Lem's Draw, and Recapture. While there is much not known about the Anasazi, there is a great deal known, and every person who ever lived in Blanding has been richer because of them — richer not only 131
