San Juan: A Hundred Years of Cattle, Sheep, and Dry Farms Charles S. Peterson
More than a hundred years ago a construction crew of young Utahns made their way across San Juan County from the southeast. Among them was William T. Tew, my wife's grandfather, who kept a journal of their trip. They entered the county somewhere west of present Dove Creek, worked their way down a rugged drop known as Three Step Hill into Dry Valley, paused at Cane Spring, passed through Moab, ferried the Colorado River, and proceeded on to their homes at Springville and Nephi. Like thousands of other Utahns that year, they had been grading railroad. Unable to find farms as their pioneer fathers had done and with the doors of the educational frontier as yet unopened, they were the "drawers of water and choppers of wood" who opened the plateau country of the Four Corners area, grading and laying much of the track for both the Denver and Rio Grande Western and the Santa Fe railways. This particular crew had been in the railroad camps all winter. Their diet had consisted mainly of cornmeal, and as they worked their way north they tried to relieve the tedium of their limited menu. Some stopped at roadside saloons and others fished for the so-called white salmon of the San Juan River and hunted deer, all with poor success. But their luck seemed to change on Thursday, April 7, 1881, as they ground their way up the slope of the La Sals to Coyote Springs, near which several case-hardened families had made the first 171
