Hole-in-the-Rock

The morning sun has not yet crested the eastern horizon as I sit atop a low-lying hill overlooking the alpenglow on the Kaiparowits Plateau and a thin dusty road that twists like a ribbon over the desert. Somewhere behind me there is the distant howl of a coyote, and seconds later it is followed by a loud, deep bark just below. I scour the undulating hills with my eyes, but can't find a thing. The two coyotes exchange howls before giving up and going their separate ways.

Fifty-mile Mountain, which is part of the plateau, stretches as far as the eye can see toward the northwest. The white band along its sheer cliff appears impenetrable. It reminds me of how long we have driven to arrive at this point—forty miles on a very bumpy graveled road. The pioneers didn't have it so easy.

The sound here is silence. Beside the howling coyotes, the only noise comes from faint wisps of wind stirred up from the rising sun. Other than that, there is nothing. We are in a remote section of the world. In the distant north and east are the rugged canyons of the Escalante and Glen Canyon. A few short hills of Navajo sandstone heave from the desert floor. Miles of shadscale and rabbit brush dot the sandy earth.

The road to Hole-in-the-Rock is sixty miles on dirt roads.

One hundred and thirty-seven years ago, a group of two hundred and fifty hardy pioneers made a trek over this exact same land. They were called on a mission by the Mormon church to lay the foundation for future settlements, and to cultivate better relationships with the Indians. The men and women were called from young settlements in southwest Utah, primarily Cedar City, Parowan, New Harmony, Kanarraville, Paragonah, Oak City, and Holden.

Preparations for such an ordeal were immense. Each family had to carry enough provisions for six months, along with clothing, cooking gear, food, tents, and supplies. Wagons had to be sturdy, and horses young and strong. Some brought herds of cattle.

Most of these people left behind parents and siblings and comfortable homes to settle a rough and nearly inhospitable land. Their ultimate destination was the region near the San Juan River, on the border of Navajo territory. Until now, there were no permanent Anglo settlements, and much of the area was largely unknown.

The previous year, in 1878, an exploratory party was sent to find a route to the San Juan region via the south, crossing a vast area through Arizona inhabited by the Navajo. It was decided that this route was too sandy and too dangerous to bring such a large contingent of wagons and stock.

On their way back to Cedar City, they took a northerly route, crossing the Colorado River at Moab, and then through Green River and Salina before cutting back south. This route was determined to be too long.

It is ironic that they chose to take a route that had never been tested before. Riding on the advise of men who were “pretty sure” a middle route could be taken, it was decided to take a “short-cut” to San Juan. This alternate course would wend through some very rough and unmapped canyon country; but supposedly it would shave off enough time that it would only take them six weeks and allow time to reach their destination before winter.

The pioneers left their various towns during the fall of 1879, and rendezvoused at Forty-mile Spring during November. From my perch where I am watching the sunrise and listening to the howl of coyotes, Forty-mile Spring is about two miles to the southeast. I can imagine the isolation they must have felt. Even now, in the year 2016, this area remains extremely detached from civilization. The nearest town is Escalante (population 797), and it is an hour away on dirt road, impassable after major rainstorms.

Walter Joshua Stevens

For me, this trek along the “Hole-in-the-Rock Trail" is something of a pilgrimage. I have never been to this exact location before, yet I have heard the stories and know the importance of the history. The trek of 1879-80 was one that forever changed the destination of my own family.

Walter Joshua Stevens, my great-great grandfather, and his brother, Alma, were among those called to the San Juan Mission. Still a bachelor, young Joshua was advised to bring a wife, so he decided to marry his sweetheart, Elizabeth Kenney. The Hole-in-the-Rock trek was their honeymoon.

The couple left from Holden, Utah in the early fall of 1879 in company of his brother, David Alma, and uncle, Roswell Stevens. They rode in a new Bain Wagon that was a gift from Joshua's father.

Along the way, they stopped in Scipio to buy cattle, which they brought with them along the way. They likely rode south and continued along the Sevier River, passing Monroe, Marysvale, and Junction. Here they would have turned east along the east fork of the Sevier River, then through present-day Antimony, Widtsoe, over Escalante Mountain, and into Escalante town.

Elizabeth Kenney Stevens

On November 20, 1979, the journal of Platte D. Lyman reads: “Started on in company with two sons of Walter Stevens and his uncle of Holden. Drove 7 miles beyond Escalante onto the desert and made a dry camp, found some snow and good feed, have had good roads today.”

They drove three more miles to Ten-mile Spring where it was decided that the herd take an alternate route because of the scarcity of water. Eddy Lyman and Alma Stevens took the herd about seven miles toward the Escalante River, near the ranch of Llewelyn Harris. They continued in a southeasterly direction for five days, apart from the rest of the group.

[It is interesting to note that one of the great arches of the Escalante Canyons is Stevens Arch, located at the mouth of Stevens Canyon. It is a majestic arch which is very prominent on the skyline when you are near the Escalante River. According to Steve Allen's book, “Name Places in Utah,” it was named after a “local” rancher named Al Stevens. I can't find any information to clarify who this “Al Stevens” is, but logic would tell me that it could very well be Alma Stevens. He would have passed close enough to see it during this detour with the livestock.]

On November 25, Lyman records: “Joshua Stevens and I walked 4 miles to the main camp at 40 mile spring, spent most of the day there and walked back in the evening, found Eddy had come in from the herd.” (Of course, this may suggest that Alma Stevens stayed back toward the Escalante Canyons with the herd.)

Dance Hall Rock

Our arrival at Forty Mile Spring is at a much more opportune time than that of the pioneers. We are here in September, as compared to November when the first snow had already fallen. I am camping with a small youth group—just two leaders and three boys—and we are now rolling up our sleeping bags and moving down the road.

Dance Hall Rock is just a mile away and our first stop of the morning. This huge sandstone formation is located a mile or so up the wash from Forty-mile Spring, where the expedition spent three weeks. The rock has a naturally formed amphitheater that proved to be a perfect place for dances, and had great acoustics. It was a great way to lighten the load of a daunting trip.

We take our time exploring Dance Hall Rock. The sandstone floor isn't quite an smooth as I had imagined. Names are carved here and there on the walls, many modern and some old, but none that I can find date back to the 1800's. No doubt that this has been visited by numerous church groups and boy scouts.

If one peruses the back-side of the amphitheater, he can climb to the top of the dance hall. There are interesting geological formations in the rock, including large pits that appear as if they have been spooned from the sandstone. Most of them are so deep, that if you fall in, you're not getting out without a long rope.

Memorial to fallen Boy Scouts.

As we continue our journey, the road naturally becomes rockier and we find ourselves crossing more and more canyons. I have to remember, however, that when the pioneers passed through, they enjoyed little or no pathway.

At the bottom of a wash, before a steep grade in the road, there has been erected a monument. We pull over to read the plaque. On June 10, 1963, a group of scouts from Provo, Utah traveled this same road to run a stretch of the Colorado River just prior to its being filled by Lake Powell. As one of the trucks ascended this steep grade, its brakes failed and rolled backward, overturned, and rolled down the embankment, killing thirteen scouts and their leaders.

Being scouts and leaders ourselves, this hits very close to home, and to a small degree we are able to relate to them. It is also a sober reminder of this treacherous and rugged land. The pioneers didn't even have a road, but had to use their teams of horses or oxen to pull their wagons up the grade.

Moqui steps, corral, and name-etching near Fifty-mile Spring.

Down the road, we come to another sandstone mound that is similar to Dance Hall Rock. There is a spring nearby and it is obvious that it has been used by many people over several centuries. An old fence with cedar posts at one time enclosed a horseshoe-shaped formation in the rock that was used as a corral. Fragments of wire and a metal gate remain, as well as several names carved into the wall. I found one that dated back to 1930.

Moqui steps run up the slanted slope of rock, probably chiseled out by the Anasazi a thousand years ago. I test them out for about ten feet and they work really well, matching the movements of my hands and feet perfectly, as if I were climbing a ladder.

Our drive so far has kept us near the base of the Kaiparowits Plateau, but now the road takes a sharp turn toward Glen Canyon. For six miles we travel over slickrock and sandy pathways. It's not as bad as what I thought it would be—we don't need four-wheel drive, and we don't scrape bottom. (I think they've improved the road considerably in the last few years.)

Navajo Mountain.

Looming prominently on our right is Navajo Mountain. I can tell we are close now because Navajo Mountain is actually on the other side of Lake Powell. We take a closer look and can see the chasm of the Colorado River Gorge.

At last, our sixty-mile dirt road comes to an end. The terminus loops around like a lolly-pop, allowing enough room for a dozen or so cars to park. Just 100 feet in front of us is a long sandstone ridge, with a prominent gap cleaved through the center. We have finally arrived at the “hole.”

Hole-in-the-Rock.

The “Hole-in-the-Rock” was the only nearby location for the pioneers to descend into the Colorado River Gorge. When they encountered it for the first time in 1879, the hole was merely a crevice in the sandstone, barely wide enough—if that—for man or beast to walk through. With picks, shovels, sledge hammers, chisels, and a small amount of blasting power, the gap was widened so a wagon could make it through. One glance over the edge at the steepness of the grade, and one will be surprised that any wheeled vehicle could make it down.

Platte D. Lyman was the man who surveyed the crevice before work began on the road. According to Emma Hawkins, Joshua Stevens' daughter, Joshua “walked over to it with Platte Lyman, to measure the depth of the crevice and to decide just what would have to be done.” Even if the gap were widened for passage, it would be extremely steep and dangerous for a wagon to pass through. The pioneers were determined, however, and during December the work began.

Throughout the early stages of the road-building, people were either lowered down the cliff in a half-barrel, or else they accessed the bottom via a trail to the river some two miles upriver. Hawkins explains how her father lowered Charlie Walton: “He picked him up in this half barrel so he could stand and drill the holes. He put the powder in so they could shoot the cliff off there. . . . It was actually a barrel cut in two so that they had a tub to stand in for footing. . . . [My father] took the hide off of his beef with the feet on it for cinching. He fixed this barrel so it was safe for the boy to get in. [The hide was] tied around the barrel so there could be no accident with the boy working there. Charlie Walton was just a slip of a kid at that time. He was in his early manhood, anyway. He must have been just the right size to do the job for him. I have heard my father tell that so many times of how they drilled that down and made that road up wider.”

Much of the blasting through the hole was directed by Jens Nielson, Benjamin Perkins, and Hyrum Perkins. The Perkins brothers had migrated to Utah from Wales, where they had experience in the coal mines. Their proficiency in using blasting powder made them a logical choice to lead the work.

Joshua Stevens was also valuable from his past experience. He hauled rock for the building of the St. George Temple. The road (when building the temple) was so bad and so hard to get wagons through that they learned to build an overlay road so the wagons could make the turn without tipping over.

Two different camps were established, one near the Hole itself, and the other a few miles back at Fifty-mile camp. Those men at Fifty-mile camp would walk six or so miles to the river where they would be ferried across and work all week on a road that the wagons could use to exit the eastern side of the Colorado River Gorge.

Both camps suffered from fatigue and lack of food. Water was often obtained from natural rock tanks that collected rain water. In the absence of trees, fuel was procured by burning shadscale, a quick burning brush abundant in the area.

While many of the women camped further away to avoid the sound of blasting, Elizabeth chose to stay with her husband at the Hole on account that this was their honeymoon. Emma states that her mother was a great help in providing meals to the working men. Of the food and work Emma said:

“[My father] told me that they put barley and wheat in the beef soup for something hot so the men could have something to revive them. They would work a few hours, then they would come and get something to eat and then they would work again. My father was always up at four o'clock in the morning at work. I don't think the sun ever caught him in bed. This job was one that was urgent. He had to get through on account of the weather and there was no turning back. My father was a working man. He was the one that could see that the thing had to be done and knew how to get it done.”

For nearly two months, the workers labored at the hole, using hand-drills, chisels, and whatever blasting material they had to widen the crevice. They toiled from above and below the hole, all the way to the river, creating a road wide enough for a wagon. Much of the slot was strewn with large boulders and very uneven terrain that had to be filled with rocks, gravel, and sand. The labor was difficult, but these men were hard workers. Cornelius Decker, a member of the expedition, said later in life, “I don't think I ever seen a lot of men go to work with more of a will to do something than that crowd did. We were all young men; the way we did make dirt and rock fly was a caution.”

During their time at the hole, the expedition spent Christmas. Before the children went to bed on Christmas Eve, they sang carols and hung their stockings on wagon wheels. They were not disappointed when they woke up and found parched corn, and cookies in their stockings.

I assume that these hard-working pioneers worked every day except Christmas and Sundays. Being a devoted religious group, they held services on the Sabbath, which gave them an opportunity to rest, pray, sing, and worship together. Sermons were given and the group left edified and rejuvenated.

Illustration of pioneers coming down the Hole.

On January 26, 1880, the road through the hole was ready, and teams were poised to go down the treacherous track. Even though it was built to accommodate a wagon, the road through the hole was still dangerously steep.

In order to prevent the wagons from dashing to the bottom of the hill, or over a cliff, two of the wheels were rough-locked. This means that a heavy chain wrapped several times around the wheel and the felloe of the tire, and then the loose end attached to the box of the wagon. In addition to this, long ropes or chains connected to some part of the wagon ran behind, where a dozen or so men pulled in the opposite direction, playing tug-o-war with the forward momentum of the wagon. Some men tied large cedar trees to the rear.

In David Miller's authoritative book on the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition, he states that there is a little controversy as to who led the first wagon down the hole. He says that no fewer than six different people have been claimed to be the one, but concludes that it was probably Kuman Jones who rode down in Benjamin Perkins' outfit.

But according to Emma Hawkins, it was her father, Joshua Stevens, who drove the first team down the hole: “When I came to this country in 1914, Kuman Jones told me, 'Your father was the daredevil that took down the first wagon.' He wanted to be sure that this road was safe. There have been others claim the same thing, but this came to me from Kuman Jones and from my father too.” (It is interesting that Joshua Stevens is not included as one of Miller's six men.)

We descend the Hole.

Standing at the top of the hole, we are now planning to make our own descent. The crevice wedged out by the Mormon pioneers is an obvious break to an otherwise solid lip of sandstone at the brink of Glen Canyon. The chute runs steeply downward, perhaps wide enough for two men to stand side by side with arms spread. Below us about a mile are the beautiful blue waters of Lake Powell.

With no further fanfare, two leaders and three scouts begin the trek down the hole. The old road is non-existent, and it takes quite a bit of imagination to envision what it must have looked like. The pathway is now strewn with boulders and sparse growths of brush. We pick our way down the hill, climbing down rocks and balancing over boulders. There have been a few rock slides over the last 136 years, but most of the debris in the chute was here when the pioneers came through. They filled the gaps with sand and gravel, which has since eroded to its original level.

Name engraved is nearly twenty feet above the current floor.

"G.W." could be either George Westwood, or George Westover, both members of the expedition.

With a careful eye and a little imagination, you can guess where the level of the road once was. As we climb down, we notice some names etched on the wall, much higher than could be done now days without a ladder, thus showing the elevated level of the road. There are also scratch marks where the hubs of the wagons scraped along the wall.

But for the most part, it is difficult to find evidence of the original 1880 journey. There are names carved into the wall the entire way down, but they are of later origin, most probably making pilgrimages like ourselves. Even though I warn my scouts not to carve their names, I don't consider all of the writing as graffiti. Many of these people are descendants and the wall stands as a continuing saga of the same story.

Possible scratch marks from the hubs of the wagons.

Chisel marks in the rock.

A sample of  "modern graffiti" etched inside the Hole.

These stairs were carved about twenty years later to accommodate people of Escalante. 

Etched lines in the sandstone that look like claw marks or finger nail scrapes show evidence of chisel marks. These marks are fairly abundant—if you look—and are a testament of the immense amount of labor and sweat that was put into the making of the road.

About 1,000 feet down, the slot opens up, giving more room, but continuing on a very steep grade. Here, the pioneers chose to continue the road along the left wall. Along this section there are several steps chiseled into the stone. These were carved out some twenty years later by citizens of Escalante who ran a Trading Post at the bottom of the hole, near the river. They used the stairs to transport goods up and down to the store.

Looking up the Hole from the point where it fans out.

Uncle Ben's Dugway.

Drill holes at Uncle Ben's Dugway, compared with a hand.

Just below the staircase are a row of holes bored into the stone. I had been keeping an eye out for these, as they are a famous engineering feat. Uncle Ben's Dugway, as it later became known, is named after the brains behind the project, Benjamin Perkins.

Along a section of about twenty-five feet, the workers were instructed to chisel out a shelf just wide enough to accommodate the inside wheel of a wagon. From this shelf, the rock slopes downward, and five feet below is where these holes are drilled into the rock. They are about two and a half inches wide and ten inches deep, and drilled squarely into the rock so that directionally they are at a slant. After scouring near the river and even back towards the Kaiparowits Plateau, workers found enough solid oak branches to make stakes two feet long, which were inserted into the holes. From here, they found branches, rocks, and gravel, enough to built the road up five feet to become level with the shelf that had been chiseled out. The result was a road wide and sturdy enough, over which a wagon and team of horses could travel.

It is interesting that I had never heard of an alternate story for Uncle Ben's Dugway until I began looking into my own family history. Emma Hawkins gives the credit to her father, whose story she heard from his own lips:

“They could see that they didn't have room enough to get a wagon and they would have to take the cliff off and make an overlay on the other side so they could make it. He is the one that instigated that building and the driving of those pegs. He told us in the cave about how they drove those pegs in rocks to hold the brush they put on top. He told us about it before we had ever heard anything about San Juan of the Hole-in-the-Rock and before all this writing was done about it. . . Brother Lyman has got it in his book as the Ben Perkins Road. I think he called it that because he married two of the Perkins girls. How can forty men work on a road and have it be one man's road? It wasn't Ben Perkins' idea. It was my father's. . . I don't care if Ben Perkins gets credit for it or not. I know that I have got my dad's story and his impressions. I know my dad well enough to know that if there was any kind of work that had to be done, he could figure out a way to do it.”

[In fairness to the Perkins family, it should be noted that Joshua Stevens told these stories to his family while hiding in a cave in Mexico, just before his murder in 1912. Emma was only seventeen years old, and it is possible that some of the story may be misremembered, embellished, misunderstood etc. But on the other hand, you never know. She may be spot on!]

Looking toward Lake Powell from just above the point where the slot opens up.

Looking toward the Hole from above the lake.

From the point of Uncle Ben's Dugway, any remnants of the original road disappear (from what I can discern), and it is now just a scramble down a rocky hillside, past an informative sign, to the shoreline of Lake Powell. Before the damming of the lake, the pioneers rode their wagons down for another mile to the Colorado River, where they were ferried across.

Our new-found friends arrived at the Hole via Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell.

The lake is lower this year, as it has been for quite a while due to drought. But, there is still plenty of water, and this oasis in the desert is the part looked forward to the most by our scouts. They quickly change into bathing suits, using large boulders as shields, and dive into the water.

I'll go swimming, but not now. It is interesting that there are a couple of boats docked along the shore, probably having made the long ride from either Halls Crossing, or Bullfrog Marina. It turns out that access to Hole-in-the-Rock is more popular from the lake, than overland.

We meet the family that is on the boat nearest to us. It is a husband and wife with their kids, a sister to the wife, and also her parents, who are probably in their eighties. (They brought both boats.) At first I think they are just your average tourist boaters, but then the old lady speaks up: “Are you fellows descended from anyone who came down the hole?”

I am the only one able to answer affirmatively. Quickly I learn that her great-grandfather was Henry Holyoak, who was a member of the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition. As the pioneers had brought animals such as cattle and chickens, the Holyoaks brought a hive of honey bees. The lady—Janelle Hicks I believe is her name—tells us the story that at some point during the trek, their wagon overturned and all the bees escaped. Not only did they have to reassemble the wagon, but they also had to wait until nightfall to sack the bees. “It has stayed in our family,” she continues to say, “and every generation since then has kept bees.”

We continue to talk with the adults in their family, including her husband who is a UFO specialist living near Roosevelt, Utah. It makes for an interesting conversation. Eventually I take a dip in the water, bobbing up and down from the slow, but steady sway, and watching the reflection of the rock cliffs atop the surface. Always on my mind, however, is the immensity of the feat which my ancestors and several others performed many, many years ago. They did it not only because they were hard-working and determined to make the trek work, but because they were devoted to their God and religion.

After crossing the Colorado River, the pioneers had another three months of arduous travel before them, arriving in Bluff on April 5, 1880. Some of the settlers eventually returned to their former homes in western Utah, while others migrated to other areas. A good segment of them, however, stayed in the area, and laid the foundation of what is now San Juan County, Utah.

Joshua Stevens and his wife, Elizabeth, were among those that migrated elsewhere, this because there wasn't enough room for everyone in the small valley near Bluff. After Joshua's murder in Pacheco, Mexico, his family returned to San Juan County. But that's another story. ♠

Sources

Hawkins, Emma Stevens Palmer. Interview by Gary Shumway,  July 20, 1973.

Hawkins, Emma Stevens Palmer. Interview by Gary Shumway.  September 2, 1973.

Miller, David E. Hole-in-the-Rock: An Epic in the Colonization of the Great American West. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1959.