Utah's Spanish Trail

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 47, 1979, No. 4

Utah's Spanish Trail

BY C GREGORY CRAMPTON

THE SPANISH TRAIL, OFTEN CALLED THE Old Spanish Trail, ran between Santa Fe and Los Angeles over a long 1,200-mile northward-looping great circle course traversing six states, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California. Traveled by traders, trappers, horse dealers, Indians, and slavers, the trail was in use from 1829 to 1848 when it was the main corridor (hostile Indians blocked a more direct route farther south) through the Southwest. It was the first and most extensively used commercial route to cross the region now within the boundaries of Utah. The trail was a trail; it was not used by wheeled vehicles until after 1848 when the early Mormons developed the western sections for wagon travel between Salt Lake City and southern California.

In their fine background book, Old Spanish Trail, LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen have cast the subject in broad historical perpective, but an on-the-ground, detailed retracing of the trail itself all the way from Santa Fe to Los Angeles has been put off too long. The challenge appealed to me. What follows here is my own interpretation of the actual route of the trail through the Utah sector, the longest that can be claimed by any of the trail states. These findings come from the documents and books, and from many glorious days spent with good companions exploring the old trail, and from informed and knowledgeable persons met along the way.

To THE GREEN RIVER CROSSING

Crossing the Great Sage Plain, a lofty, open, undulating, southwardtilting plateau stretching from Mesa Verde and the Dolores River to the Abajo Mountains, the Spanish Trail entered Utah in section 35 T42N R20W, New Mexico Principal Meridian, near the site of the first settlement of Ucolo, located on Piute Creek about two miles below Piute Spring. Then, following a course north and west, the trail continued across the plateau for about twelve miles before dropping down into the spectacular red-rock country drained by Hatch Wash.

Caravans crossing the Great Sage Plain in Utah found the going easy but monotonous. Covered with sagebrush, pinyon, and juniper, the landscape was unrelieved save for the great laccolithic mass of the Abajo, or Blue, Mountains standing high on the western skyline some fifteen miles away. Today the plain is checkered with dry farms of beans and wheat, and many segments of the Spanish Trail have been ploughed under the deep, red soil. Still other segments have been destroyed by the trampling feet of range cattle first brought into the region in the late 1870s.

Trail research in areas like this is difficult, but here we are helped along by a body of records and reports produced by the military exploring expedition commanded by Capt. John N. Macomb of the War Department's Corps of Topographical Engineers. In 1857-58, when conflict between the United States and the Mormons seemed possible, the army found itself with no reliable information about the southeastern approaches to Utah Territory. In April 1859 Aiacomb was ordered to fill in the blanks on the map and to locate the best and most direct route between the Rio Grande and Utah's southern settlements. To that end, among other assignments, he was to examine the region traversed by the Spanish Trail.

Leaving Santa Fe, the expedition was in the field until the end of September 1859. Aside from one notable detour from New Mexico into Colorado, Macomb followed the Spanish Trail from Abiquiu, New Mexico, to Ojo Verde in Hatch Wash, Utah.

With the records of the Macomb expedition at hand one may trace the explorers' route—and the Spanish Trail. The party made two camps on the Great Sage Plain (which the explorers named) in Utah, one at Guajalotes, where a large pool of bad surface water was found in a natural reservoir of rocks, and the second at Ojo de la Cueva (Cave Spring), a sulfurous spring. These names do not appear on modern maps, but data in the Macomb records indicate that the former must have been Piute Creek near the first site of Ucolo, about two miles below Piute Spring. According to Herman U. Butt of Monticello, Utah, the spring was an important watering place on the Spanish Trail. He filed on a homestead around the spring in 1913 and lived there until 1942.

Herman Butt knows the regional history well; he has lived through much of it. His knowledge of the Spanish Trail extends all the way across the Sage Plain from Dolores, Colorado. When taken to the field he pointed out the trail's course from old Ucolo to Piute Spring and on to the Summit area, the extreme northwestern part of the Sage Plain plateau, drained in the main by the headstreams of East Canyon. Although it has not been located precisely, the Macomb camp at Ojo de la Cueva was probably located on East Canyon Wash. 3

From the Summit area the Spanish Trail dropped down a thousand feet to the nearly level floor of East Canyon, a nine-mile-long gash in the northwestern corner of the Sage Plain plateau. These were the "longest & steepest mountains yet over," wrote Orville Pratt on September 13, 1848. The Macomb party camped on the canyon floor, andgeologist Newberry, who had a fine eye for scenic as well as geological landscape, found delights in the brilliant coloring of the canyon walls. "the lower half composed of strata which are bright red, green, yellow or white." The brilliant coloring suggested the name Canon Pintado (Painted Canyon), a name which, unhappily, never got beyond the pages of Newberry's "Geological Report."

From the mouth of East Canyon, or Canon Pintado, the Spanish Trail crossed open Dry Valley, a drab name for a great basin hollowed out of predominantly red rock. Drained by Hatch Wash and stretching away north and west toward the Colorado River, it has been a winter range since the early 1880s when the big cattle outfits first came into southeastern Utah. About seven miles from its camp in Canon Pintado the Macomb party reached La Tinaja (The Tank), probably located near the base of Casa Colorado (Red House). This prominent landmark, a striking red sandstone rock rising two hundred feet above an elevated base, was so-named because its several sculptured caves and alcoves resembled the windows of a giant house.

Newberry found La Tinaja to be a "deep excavation in red sandstone, which retains so large a quantity of surface water and for so long a time, as to become an important watering place on the Spanish Trail." In a region typified by Dry Valley, where one seldom finds living, running water, these natural rock reservoirs, taking the forms of tanks, potholes, basins, and cavities, were a boon to desert travelers, providing them water for drinking and even bathing.

From La Tinaja the Spanish Trail followed down Hatch Wash to the vicinity of the mouth of Hook and Ladder Gulch where it turned north. The Macomb expedition continued on down the wash about three miles to Ojo Verde where camp was set up as a base for further explorations.

From Hatch Wash to the crossing of the Colorado River, the Spanish Trail followed a course closely parallel to U.S. Highway 163, one dictated by the topography and shape of the land. From the mouth of Hook and Ladder Gulch the trail stayed to the west of the highway and passed to the east of Looking Glass Rock, a lone monument over a hundred feet high, perforated by a natural window which (the namer must have thought) resembled a mirror. Two miles north of Looking Glass the trail reached West Coyote Creek near La Sal Junction. Here, service stations and cafes on U.S. 163 mark a crossroads important to the region since the first settlers arrived in the late 1870s.

From the junction the old trail closely followed the present highway past (at 1.8 miles) a huge mass of rocks on the east, four hundred feet high, surmounted by rocks in rounded shapes which early travelers named the Nipples. At four miles the highway bridges a sharp-edged canyon about fifty feet deep. Here the Spanish Trail looped sharply upstream half a mile to a place where the canyon walls were low enough to permit a crossing, and then the trail looped sharply downstream. The first wagon road and the first highway followed the same course, the shape of which suggested a muleshoe, and someone gave that name to the crossing and the canyon it crossed. Three miles from the Muleshoe the trail reached Kane Springs in Kane Springs Canyon, a major stopping place on the Spanish Trail where the bountiful springs have served travelers ever since. The state of Utah maintains a highway rest stop there. The dark green of trees and lawn stand out in pleasant contrast to the red rock of a massive promontory towering 1,300 feet above the historic site.

Leaving the springs behind, travelers on the trail faced a rough haul of three miles. A steep, narrow trail carried them out of Kane Springs Canyon to the top of Blue Hill, and a long, rocky descent brought them to the head of Spanish Valley. This stretch has been something of a challenge to modern road builders. One may count three different highway alignments in Kane Springs Canyon. A long section of the Spanish Trail, which was later widened to make the first wagon road, may still be seen just to the east of the present highway.

In fourteen miles the trail passed through Spanish and Moab valleys (actually one continuous valley) to reach the Colorado River northwest of the city of Moab. This is one of the most scenic places along the trail. A steep wall of red rock 1,500 feet high flanks the valley on the southwest, but the opposite wall is much lower, permitting views of the laccolithic peaks of the La Sal Mountains towering over 12,000 feet on the southeastern skyline some fifteen miles distant.

The level valley floor, about two miles wide, was easy going and the early travelers on the trail found good grass and pure water in Pack Creek and Mill Creek which head in the La Sals and flow through the valley (confluent below Moab) to the Colorado River. During the trail days Pack Creek was called Salt Creek, or Little Salt Creek, a name derived from La Sal (Salt) Mountains, not from its salty taste.

Right on the Spanish Trail, a county seat, a bustling trade center and tourist capital, Moab was founded in 1855 as the Elk Mountain Mission by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In that same year, when Ute Indians killed three of the missionaries, the Mormons pulled out. Permanent settlers did not return until the 1870s. Thereafter, Moab became a supply point for much of southeastern Utah and adjoining sections of Colorado. Traffic through the region passed over sections of the Spanish Trail, a fact known to early settlers who gave it the name Spanish Valley.

C. S. Cecil Thomson of Moab, long a prominent figure in the history of regional transportation, can locate sections of the trail from Dry Valley to points across the Colorado north of Moab. He related that, according to local tradition, the trail passed directly through the city to the crossing of the Colorado River. Probable location? About half a mile downstream from the highway bridge on U.S. 163. There the river is about two hundred fifty yards wide, but an island appears at low water and the bottom is firm. Fording may have been possible at lowest water; however, most travelers, like Orville Pratt in 1848, found it necessary to swim the men and animals across the river and raft the goods and equipment. The right bank approach to the crossing lay somewhere between the storage yard of the ore reduction mill operated by the Atlas Corporation and the mouth of Courthouse Wash.

From the Colorado to the Green River, about fifty-five miles, the Spanish Trail, following a northwesterly course, crossed a wide, open desert country, a land of sparse vegetation and little water. For twelve miles beyond the Colorado River travelers on the trail with an eye for beautiful landscape could have enjoyed the exposures of deep red rock cliffs on the west, eroded and sculptured into castellated formations so characteristic of the canyon country of southeastern Utah. These same sensitive travelers might have noticed the arches and windows in the Windows Section of Arches National Park visible off to the east nine miles away.

At twelve miles the trail crossed Courthouse Wash at the point where Lower Courthouse Spring provided a "small, run of living water" according to Pratt. Now on the northwest beeline course the trail passed through open, barren country. Pools in the bedrock of Thompson Wash, or in Ten Mile Wash, a tributary, provided a limited water supply. Three miles beyond the water holes in Thompson the trail reached a low divide between Thompson Wash and Little Grand Wash.

Here the trail research is helped along by the report of John W. Gunnison, captain in the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, who had been commissioned by the War Department to undertake a railroad survey across the West along the 38th and 39th parallels of latitude. Antoine Leroux, the old mountain man who guided the surveyors through the Colorado Rockies, told them that near the Green River they would reach the Spanish Trail which "is broad, well-marked and easy to follow." The Gunnison train, which included eighteen supply wagons, reached the trail just beyond Thompson Wash on September 29, 1853; and for the next three weeks, with some detours, the explorers followed it all the way to the Sevier River. With the Gunnison report and maps in hand one can, with tolerable accuracy, follow the Spanish Trail across the Green River, the San Rafael Swell, and the Wasatch Plateau.

After reaching the Spanish Trail the Gunnison party traveled twenty miles west and north to the Green River crossing. The trail followed down Little Grand Wash for about three miles before striking off across lots. Passing through the army's Green River missile test complex of the White Sands Missile Range, the trail crossed the tracks of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad about one mile east of Elgin. Then it turned north for three miles to the crossing area which must have been in section 32 T20S R16E Salt Lake Meridian, two and a half miles north of the city of Green River, where an island divides the river before it makes a swing to the southeast.

Located near the old trail, Green River's history can be told mainly in terms of its crossroads location. The coming of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad brought it to life in 1881, and it is nourished by one of the nation's major freeways, Interstate 70.

To JUNCTION ON THE SEVIER RIVER

From the Green River crossing the Spanish Trail swung away from the river on a southwestern course to Saleratus, or Cottonwood, Wash; and then, generally following the wash, it turned northwestward to Trail Spring, known as Green River Spring in the trail days, about fourteen miles from the river. Now within the rugged San Rafael Swell, the trail went due north up an unnamed wash about four miles where it veered off to the northwest to enter Lost Spring Wash. At that point Gunnison left the trail to carry his railroad survey around the northern end of the Swell. He returned to it again in Castle Valley.

For about nine rough miles the Spanish Trail was confined by low canyon walls to the bed and banks of Lost Spring Wash. Then, crossing open country for a short distance, it headed up Big Hole Wash to Cement Crossing on the original line of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, a line surveyed and graded but over which tracks were never laid. The Big Holes, in Packsaddle Gulch, about three and a half miles from Cement Crossing, was one of the best and most reliable watering places along the way. Water flowing over bedrock has created a series of natural tanks much used today by local stockmen.

From Big Holes the trail crossed open country for twenty miles to Red Seep. Halfway, and under the thousand-foot-high cliffs of Cedar Mountain, it reached Little Holes where water was to be found in natural rock reservoirs, a source, however, far less reliable than that at Big Holes. 18 From Red Seep the trail wound through the low Black Hills and then dropped down to Huntington Creek in Castle Valley. Here Gunnison returned to it after his detour around the San Rafael Swell. In the Black Hills the trail reached its northernmost point at approximately 39° 12' north latitude.

Castle Valley, watered by streams (the upper tributaries of the San Rafael River) falling from the high Wasatch Plateau immediately to the west, was settled in the 1870s by Mormon pioneers from central Utah who followed Gunnison's wagon tracks—and therefore the Spanish Trail—across Wasatch, or Emigrant, Pass to their new homes. Public land surveys followed settlement, and one must be especially grateful to those government surveyors, Augustus D. Ferron among them, who very carefully laid down "Gunnison's Road" on their township plats, further identified in their notes as the "old Spanish Trail."

That Gunnison had little difficulty in following the Spanish Trail is evident from reading what he wrote about one section in Castle Valley: "The Spanish Trail though seldom used of late years, is still very distinct where the soil washes but slightly. On some such spaces today wc counted from fourteen to twenty parallel trails, of the ordinary size of Indian trails or horse paths, on a way barely fifty feet in width." Although most vestiges in Castle Valley have disappeared, John L. Jorgensen, long a resident of Castle Dale, teacher and student of history, knows the course of the old trace through the valley. He generously pointed out sections in the Black Hills, at the site of old Wilsonville on Cottonwood Creek, near the Paradise Ranch, on Ferron Creek, and elsewhere.

Beyond Castle Valley the Spanish Trail crossed Muddy Creek and its upper tributaries, and by way of Oak Spring Ranch ascended one of them, Ivie Creek, to the summit of the W T asatch Plateau. The Ivie Creek way is now taken up by two parallel slabs of concrete, Interstate 70.

Going up Ivie Creek (to which he gave the Indian name Akanaquint) Gunnison came to a fork in the trail at the mouth of Red Creek. The "southern branch" split off here. Going by way of Fish Lake and the East Fork of the Sevier River, this was the shortest route, but it reached elevations in excess of 9,000 feet, and it probably saw less use than the longer "northern branch" (Gunnison's route) which crossed Wasatch, or Emigrant, Pass on the divide between the Great Basin and the waters of the Colorado River at an elevation of approximately 7,880 feet. Both tracks joined again at the confluence of the Sevier River and its East Fork.

Crossing the open pass Gunnison headed down Salt Creek (now Meadow Creek), the natural route—the Salina Canyon route now followed by Interstate 70. Gunnison's Ute guide, Tewip Narrienta, said this was the direct route to the Sevier but that a narrow, rocky canyon below would stop wagons if not animals. There was a horse trail through it, he said, and this may have been the main line of the Spanish Trail. 23

To avoid the narrow reaches of Salina Canyon, Gunnison turned west at a point five miles below Wasatch Pass to detour around it. To make matters more complex, he identified this route with the Spanish Trail. This alternate trail carried the explorers across Yogo (Gunnison's Swambah) Creek, up Niotche Creek, across a divide (a thousand feet higher than Wasatch Pass) to Gooseberry (Gunnison's Un-got-tah-li-kin) Creek, and then over a low divide to Soldier Canyon which they followed to its mouth at Salina Creek. At a point six miles before reaching the mouth of Soldier Canyon, Gunnison noted that the Spanish Trail turned off to the west to reach the Sevier River some distance above the mouth of Salina Canyon.

After the rough country behind them, westbound travelers found good going for about thirty miles up the valley of the Sevier River (the Rio Severo of the trail days). There was plenty of water and grass, if little wood, along the meandering stream. Orville Pratt was mightily impressed with the valley's ambience in late September when he wrote that "it was truly the loveliest spot, all things considered, my eyes have ever looked upon.

From the Salina area the trail probably kept to the west of the river paralleling U.S. Highway 89. The alternate route branching from the Gunnison trail in Soldier Canyon would have come in to the main trail just above Sigurd. Passing through Richfield and Elsinore the trail left the river above Joseph to detour to the east around narrow, rocky Marysvale Canyon. The trail returned to the Sevier near Marysvale after crossing the Antelope Range at a point over a thousand feet above the river, but the way was open and presented few obstacles to passage. Again in an open valley, the trail continued up the Sevier about eighteen miles to its confluence with the East Fork, about a mile east of the town of Junction, near the point where the Fish Lake branch joined the main Spanish Trail.

To THE UTAH-ARIZONA BOUNDARY

During the Spanish Trail days the Sevier above the East Fork was known as the Rio San Pascual. The trail followed it for about twenty-three miles through Circle Valley and Circleville Canyon, where there was no obstacle to passage, to Bear Valley Junction where it turned abruptly to the west. The way thence was across the northern end of the Markagunt Plateau by a natural route following up Bear Creek through Lower and Upper Bear Valley. Crossing a divide the trail then headed down Little Creek, a rough and rocky route which passed through the upthrust Hurricane Cliffs before dramatically breaking out in the open near the town of Paragonah in Parowan Valley.

Passing near to the eastern shore of Little Salt Lake, travelers had an easy time of it for twenty miles as they crossed the open valley to the Ojo de San Jose, or San Jose Spring, "one of the finest fountains and streams of water on the entire route," wrote Orville Pratt. This watering place is identical with the once-bountiful springs bursting from the ground near the town of Enoch, first known as Elkhorn Springs.

From this point to the Utah-Arizona boundary and beyond there is much more documentation to assist in locating the Spanish Trail. Coming from California on his second expedition in 1844, John C. Fremont followed the Spanish Trail to Saint Joseph's Spring before turning northward. His diary and map of the route provided guidance for the Mormons who, shortly after founding their wilderness kingdom on the shores of Great Salt Lake in 1847, turned the old trail into a passable wagon road all the way to Los Angeles. Thus, after 1848 this section of the trail came to be known as the Mormon, or Salt Lake, Trail. The journals of Fremont, early Mormon travelers, and others who knew they were traveling on the Spanish Trail, make up an impressive body of primary documents. With these sources at hand one can, with considerable confidence, follow the Spanish Trail throughout the remainder of its course in Utah.

Staying in open country for approximately forty-five miles, the trail from Enoch crossed Cedar Valley and the southern edge of the Escalante Desert to the mouth of Holt Canyon. Throughout this entire distance, S. Alva Matheson of Cedar City served as a guide for the trail researchers. He pointed out important places, including the key watering holes at Iron Springs, Antelope Spring, and Pinto Creek at Newcastle.

Riding southward up Holt Canyon for six miles, the early travelers came to Mountain Meadow, a cool (elevation about 5,900 feet) open area of abundant grass and water four or five miles long on the divide between the Great Basin and the Colorado River drainage. This was a favorite resting and recruiting place especially for those eastbound parties pulling up out of the desert country below.

Leaving Mountain Meadow the trail generally paralleled Utah Highway 18 to Central where it turned southwest down a tributary to Magotsu (pronounced locally, Magotsie) Creek, then down that stream to Moody Wash, then down that stream to the Santa Clara River, a major tributary of the Virgin River. For about eight miles, the trail followed along the bed and banks of the Santa Clara, the home of many Paiute Indians who were frequently victimized by slave traders, and who, in turn, attacked passing caravans. Today, the village of Gunlock, founded in 1857, is a reminder of early Mormon settlement in southwestern Utah. Downstream, the Shivwits Indian Reservation serves as a reminder of the region's first inhabitants.

In order to start the climb over the Beaver Dam Mountains, the trail left the Santa Clara River, pulled up to Camp Spring, a favorite stopping place, and then followed a course practically identical with that of old U.S. Highway 91. Crossing a pass at an elevation of about 4,800 feet, it started dow r n the long "Utah Hill," best known in the early highway days as the place on the upgrade where radiators always boiled.

The Spanish Trail left Utah in section 31 T43S R18W Salt Lake Meridian. Then it cut across the northwest corner of Arizona, traversed southern Nevada, where the good springs at Las Vegas stopped every caravan, and crossed the Mohave Desert to southern California. Threading Cajon Pass, caravans reached San Gabriel and, finally, Los Angeles, at the end of the 1,200-mile-long Spanish Trail. The distance in Utah totalled approximately 476 miles.

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