In April 1880, the last wagon train of 258 pioneers arrived at Bluff after a 6-month almost impossible journey from Cedar Flats (a town west of Cedar Breaks) to reach out to Navajo and Ute tribes in the Four Corners area. To reach this location on the San Juan River, they had to descend a deep gorge to cross the Colorado River. This 2000-foot descent is called The Hole-in-the-Rock. This journey is one of the most challenging of the all the wagon trains in the 1800s.
An hour or so northeast of Monument Valley was Bluff Fort Historic Site. This could have been a day trip, but since we were going this way already, we decided to stop as we were traveling along. Let’s go exploring.
While areas north of here had been settled already and the railroads where making their impact, the Four Corners area where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona meet had not been settled. The Ute and Navajo tribes lived here, and the Mormon Church wanted to reach out to them. Under the direction of Church President John Taylor, these men, women, and children were sent out.
We hadn’t known anything about this journey so were amazed by the intelligence, strength, and perseverance of these men and women. Not only did they have to figure out how to get here, when they did arrive, they had to create a place to live, endure, and reach out to the tribe members who were suspicious of white people who had a history of broken promises. I think you’ll agree that this is a story worth telling of these 43 men, 29 women, and 120 children under the age of 18.
just getting to Utah
Just to get to Utah, early Mormon immigrants (and probably all immigrants) had to face harsh conditions as they crossed the United States.
Winter conditions hit, and rations were reduced to 4 oz of flour per day. Jens and his wife Elsie buried their only son and a young girl traveling with them in a common grave with 11 others. Jens were crippled the rest of his life because of his badly frozen feet.
the challenge in 1880
In this map, the lines in blue were scouted ways to get to Bluff on the San Juan River—where they finally stopped, but these routes were too long and just didn’t work well. Instead, the plan was to go almost straight across the state (red dots), but the Colorado River was in the way.
In case you thought that taking this route would be easier than going around, look at this topographical map highlighting the mountainous areas next to Kelly, a helpful docent in the museum. The Colorado River is the wider body of water that starts in north central Colorado, and the San Juan River is the smaller river going from Bluff to Medicine Hat just north of Monument Valley and finally ending up in the Colorado River flowing through Hoover Dam (remember those pictures outside of Las Vegas?) to the Gulf of California that separates Baja Peninsula from Mexico.
It took the wagon train months just to get to Colorado River gorge, one of the most isolated and dangerous sections of the U.S. The cleft was really a narrow crack—too narrow to allow passage for more than 1 man, any of the 83 wagons, or any of the 200 draft animals or 1800 loose stock (approximate for both). Between the top and the river was a drop of 1800 feet, the average slope of 25 degrees, and steepest slope of 45 degrees (steep!). Pioneers documented that the distance was 10 miles. Once they got to the bottom of the cleft, they had to build a ferry to carry everyone, every wagon, and every animal over the Colorado River. A trip that they thought would take 6 weeks really took 6 months.
A later drawing of a man and wagon finishing the trip down the gorge makes the trip look easy. But we know better.
an original wagon
tribes they met
Navajos lived in hogans (like in Monument Valley) 
they were short (or I’m really tall)
first structures
When the group decided to settle at Bluff, their first 2 structures were a meeting place for themselves and a co-op so they could interact with the tribal members.
The meeting house, the center of all public gatherings, was along the north wall of the fort. It served as a chapel, courthouse, ballroom, concert hall, schoolhouse (120 members of initial group were children and teenagers under age of 18), and place of worship and learning. When needed, it sheltered families whose mud roofs had started leaking.
co-op store
The original building was replaced at the turn of the century with a 2-story stone structure that provided them with an upstairs large room for community dances. In 1925 a bank robber used too many sticks of dynamite to open a safe, causing the end of the co-op and the robber.
building the fort
As they began getting settled into this location, they had a definite plan for the buildings so they could stay in community. This was never “intended to be a fortress but rather a place where security was achieved by all living in close proximity to each other and united in a common goal.”
cabins and center square
Each cabin on the outside of the fort was a replica of the original rectangular building. A sign like this was was out front giving information about the family who had lived here.
In 1881 he returned to Parowan, Utah, to marry Ency and return to start their family. Eventually they moved on to establish other communities. She died in childbirth one night after popping corn for their 7 children; the baby also died. She was only 33. One year later he remarried and served his community for many more years.
their family supplied items 
to decorate this cabin
family with plural wives
You probably know that Mormon men often had (still have today in some cases) plural wives. One cabin had information about such a family.
He was a carpenter and built and operated a sawmill. He was also a farmer and a mail carrier in Salt Lake City. He loved to read and advocated for education. Sam and his first wife, Jody, came to Bluff in 1882. In 1906-1907, they moved to Monticello, Utah, to encourage those there. He died in 1910 and was 57 years old.
After coming to Bluff, Aunt Jody became the community’s midwife. Of their 10 children, 5 died in infancy. Jody moved with Sam to Monticello and died in 1909 at age 55.
Emma also lived in Bluff for 20 years when she moved to Provo, Utah, with their 2 children for the sake of their education. There she opened a boarding house to hep pay the expenses of their education. In 1909 she returned to Monticello the year that Jody died. When Sam died a year later, she lived as a widow for the next 45 years.
my questions
So my question is, how did they live? Were all three in 1 cabin with their children, or did each wife have a cabin with her children and Sam lived between them? I know I really don’t need to know, but I am curious.
I sure don’t understand plural wives, but both of these women and their shared husband seem like people I’d like to know. Perhaps the times were so hard physically on men that they died early and plural wives were a way to take care of the women who lived longer lives. Regardless, these were wonderful people who cared for those around them and developed this part of the American.
water
As we’ve seen in other places, access to water is crucial for a community’s growth. So let’s look at how these pioneers solved their challenge of how to get water. Remember the picture of us earlier in this post on a wagon? In the background was a water wheel that these people used.
Water from the San Juan River was their greatest challenge.
First they tried using a ditch for irrigating farm fields by building a canal between Bluff and a location on the river far upstream—an engineering and labor intensive feat. The first day after arriving, every man when to work on this ditch because it was so important (must have had this plan in place). But the banks would frequently break, and dredging sediment from the ditch was never ending because of the river currents. This ditch was considered to be a complete failure, so plan B.
To overcome the problem of the river currents, the settlers built 100 connecting log cabin-like structures that extended far into the river and filled them with rocks (referred to as cribbing). These structures required thousands of cottonwood logs, possibly more than were ever used for the log cabins in Bluff. Year after year, they had to work on the ditch because the river currents would undermine all they had done.
Other settlements along the San Juan river constructed water wheels to lift the water into smaller ditches for individual farms. This process didn’t work at Bluff because of their need for irrigation water and lack of a sandstone base along the river to anchor water wheels.
The settlers determined that a major settlement couldn’t be built at Bluff because of the irrigation challenge, so they started searching for land with better irrigation options, resulting in the towns of Blanding and Monticello. The ditch at Bluff continued to be used by the few remaining farmers into the 1940s.
water for drinking
At first the pioneers carried water for cooking and drinking from the San Juan River, but it “was so hard and muddy [that] cottonwood ashes were put in it to stand overnight, thus cleaning and settling it for morning use.
14-20 feet. This large well was built in the center of the fort to initially supply culinary water for all.
As pioneers moved out from the fort, they built wells wherever they went. In 1906 an artesian well was drilled east of town that delivered water throughout Bluff.
building cabins
Some information in front of the Barton’s cabin helped us understand how they built this community.
The Barton cabin, like all the others, originally was 1 room with a dirt floor. When they were allowed to move to their allotted town property, they added on 1 more room and connected these 2 rooms with another cabin that was already built by using a breezeway. Eventually they had a 5-room cabin, including a framed kitchen that’s no longer here.
To keep ground moisture from rotting the base logs, cabins were built on foundations of large sandstone rocks.
Each cabin’s roof was covered using lightly laid limbs that spanned the cabin’s central beams and the outside walls. Over the limbs were burlap, straw, and a thick layer of sand. These roofs provided good insulation from heat and cold but did little to keep the rain out.
homes got larger
niceties
accomplishments
A brochure on the San Juan Bluff Mission gave us these amazing facts taken from Lamont Crabtree’s work in 2005.
- The last organized wagon train of its size in the U.S.
- No wagon road was built through rougher country than was Hole-in-the-Rock trail.
- Due to the harsh terrain, it took twice as long for these pioneers to travel the 250 miles to Bluff as it took some of the same pioneers to pull hand carts 1300 miles from Winter Quarters [Nebraska] to Salt Lake City.
- The first and probably only settlement purposely placed adjacent to 2 Indian nations with the goal of establishing better Indian relations.
- Total average age of the missionaries at the beginning of the trip was 18. Average age of adults only (18 or older) was 28. Children and teenagers under 18 made up 120 members of the group; 25 of the children were between 2 weeks and 1 year. Over 38 members were single adults.
- Trail covered about 250 miles for most of these pioneers. All traveled the 60 miles from Escalante to the “Hole” (Colorado River) and the 120 miles from the river to Bluff.
- Trail provided a crucial supply and access link between Four Corners area and western Utah settlements. For 1 year the Hole-in-the-Wall trail was used for bidirectional travel. In 1881, part of the original route (and the Hole-in-the-Wall) was bypassed in place of Halls Crossing. In 1886, the trail was discontinued as a supply route when the rail heads reached southeastern Colorado.
- Through their adversities, this group of missionaries were forged like fine steel for the formidable task of establishing a livelihood in a harsh, desolate country where they wanted to nurture peaceful relations with Indians, establish law and order among the lawless of the region, and open the are to future colonization.
- Today the Hole-in-the-Wall Trail is the most preserved wagon road in the West. Many of its challenging sites are virtually untouched from when the pioneers blasted and cut their path. The trail is a testament to their fortitude and convictions.
