The Communitarian Road in Pioneer Utah By
To d d
Co mp to n
The Black Ridge—a formation of jagged volcanic rock that fills Ash Creek Canyon for some three miles north of Pintura in Washington County, Utah—was one of the legendary barriers that made traveling to and from Southern Utah’s “Dixie” difficult, if not impossible.1 Crossing the ridge became almost a rite of passage for the region’s pioneers, as evidenced by several accounts of Dixie’s settlement. Maureen Whipple’s great Mormon novel, The Giant Joshua (1942), opens with a company of pioneers struggling to navigate the Black Ridge. Likewise, George Hicks, one of the early settlers of Washington, wrote a poem on life in Dixie that highlights the geological formation: 1 Halka Chronic, Roadside Geology of Utah (Missoula, MT: Mountain Press, 1990), 244. A volcanic eruption about two million years ago caused lava to flow down present Ash Creek Canyon. After it hardened into black basalt, it eroded much more slowly than surrounding rock and so became a ridge. The Black Ridge basaltic rock is of “the same age and composition” as that on top of the Hurricane Cliffs to the east. The history of the Black Ridge road has been told in such sources as James Bleak, “Annals of the Southern Utah Mission,” holograph, MS 318, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter CHL); Richard E. Turley Jr., ed., Selected Collections from the Archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2 vols., 74 DVDs (Provo, UT: BYU Press, 2002), 1:19; Andrew Karl Larson, “I Was Called To Dixie”: The Virgin River Basin: Unique Experiences in Mormon Pioneering (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1960), 514–19; Janet Seegmiller, A History of Iron County: Community Above Self (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Iron County Commission, 1997), 380; Douglas D. Alder and Karl F. Brooks, A History of Washington County: From Isolation to Destination (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Washington County Commission, 1996), 225–26. Of special value are the writings of Morris Shirts, a descendant of Peter Shirts. See Morris A. Shirts, “The Black Ridge: Extracts from ‘Peter’s Diary’,” typescript, M277.9248 B627s 1970, CHL, and “Black Ridge Mountains,” typescript, F 832.S68 S54, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University, Cedar City, Utah (hereafter SLSUU). None of these accounts covers the important Hamblin-Judd expedition in 1856.
3 n o . ı 8 2 v o l . U h q
ı
Conquering the black ridge
221
