Hole-in-the-Rock, 1879–80

In the winter of 1879–80 about 250 Mormon settlers cut a wagon road down a crack in the wall of Glen Canyon, ferried 83 wagons over the Colorado and spent two and a half more months building road across slickrock to the San Juan, where they founded Bluff. They had planned on six weeks; it took nearly six months.

The mission

1. Dec 1878Church leaders announced a mission to settle the San Juan country of southeastern Utah at the Parowan Stake conference.^5,9
2. WhyA settlement in the Four Corners was meant to build better relations with the Navajo and Ute, and to hold the corner against outlaws and non-Mormon newcomers.^5,2
3. Apr–Jun 1879An exploring party under Silas S. Smith took twelve wagons the long way, south through Arizona, reached the San Juan and started Fort Montezuma near the mouth of Montezuma Creek. Two families, the Davises and Harrimans, stayed on.¹⁰
4. Oct–Nov 1879The main company, about 250 people with 83 wagons and over 1,000 head of livestock, set out from southwest Utah by way of Escalante on a shorter, untried route straight east across the Colorado.^6,2,1

Through the Hole

1. Late Nov 1879At Forty Mile Spring the wagons stopped for weeks while men built road to the canyon rim and leaders decided whether the route could work at all. Dances in a sandstone amphitheater, Dance Hall Rock, kept spirits up.^6,11
2. Dec 1879–Jan 1880Four scouts, George Hobbs, George Morrill, Lemuel H. Redd Sr. and George Sevy, crossed the country beyond the river to find a way on. Lost on Cedar Mesa and out of food for their last days, they found the trail to the San Juan, reached the families at Montezuma Creek, and were back at the Hole on January 14.^12,9
3. Dec 1879–Jan 1880The Hole was a narrow cleft in the rim, too steep and tight for a wagon. Men were lowered over the edge in half barrels to drill holes for blasting powder and widened the top by hand. Below it they cut a ledge for the wagons' inside wheels, Uncle Ben's Dugway, named for Benjamin Perkins, a Welsh coal miner who showed the men how to blast.^13,14
4. Jan 26, 1880The first wagons went down: rear wheels locked, with up to twenty men and boys holding back on ropes. The drop to the river is about 1,000–1,300 feet, with grades near 45 degrees in places. Accounts say all 83 wagons reached the bottom without losing a person.^13,14,2
5. Jan–Feb 1880Charles Hall built a ferry that carried two wagons at a time across the Colorado.⁶
6. Feb–Apr 1880On the far side came another two and a half months of road building: up Cottonwood Canyon, across Grey Mesa, over Comb Ridge by San Juan Hill, and down Butler Wash.^6,15
7. Apr 6, 1880Worn out, the company stopped on the San Juan short of Montezuma and founded Bluff.^4,5

“It is the roughest country you or anybody else ever seen; it’s nothing in the world but rocks and holes, hills and hollows.”

Elizabeth Morris Decker, letter to her parents, 1880¹

“If you ever come this way it will scare you to death to look down it.”

Elizabeth Morris Decker, of the Hole, in the same letter¹

What worked, what didn’t

Worked

• Every wagon came down the Hole and over the river; no one died on the descent.^2,1
• Bluff, the first Anglo-American town in southeastern Utah, still stands; its fort is rebuilt as a historic site.^3,4
• The settlers turned to cattle when farming failed; their cooperative, the Bluff Pool, formed in the late 1880s, let small owners compete with the big ranches.³

Didn’t

• Six weeks became nearly six months, and they stopped short of the place they were sent to.^1,5
• The road through the Hole was given up: once an easier way to the river was found down Harris Wash, Hall moved his ferry upstream to what is now Hall's Crossing.⁶
• The San Juan would not stay in its ditches. The first summer's ditch failed; in 1884 floods tore out every water wheel on the river and much of the Bluff ditch, and wiped out Montezuma.^7,8
• That year church leaders Erastus Snow and Joseph F. Smith told the discouraged settlers they could leave. About half chose to stay. Platte D. Lyman was released and Bishop Jens Nielson was set apart to preside over those who remained.^8,9

Today

1. The roadThe Hole-in-the-Rock Road runs south from near Escalante across the desert to the rim, past Dance Hall Rock; the trail is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.^6,15
2. The HoleThe cleft can still be climbed from the rim. Lake Powell now covers the lower part of the trail when the lake is high.^16,6
3. BluffBluff Fort Historic Site has replica cabins around the fort square, an original cabin and an expedition wagon.³

More pictures

On the rivers: Escalante River · Lake Powell · San Juan River

Southwest River Watch · River histories · Terms