May 13-14, 2018:
In one of our shortest moves, we left Blanding and traveled 11 miles north on route 191 to Devil’s Canyon Campground. The address is Manti-Lasal, Utah although there is no sign of a town here, but is in the edge of the Manti-Lasal National Forest. It’s a nice inexpensive dry campsite in a forest setting, but not exactly the Devil’s Canyon we were expecting. We had seen photos of a Devil’s Canyon with lots of trails and slot canyons and thought this was it, but it’s not ! It seems there are two Devil’s Canyons and the one located another eighty mils to the north is the one with the devil like terrain. It’s no big deal, there is still much to do here. There are miles and miles of forest service roads here and many ATV and dirt bike enthusiasts around, but you really need to get a good map for that, it would be easy to get lost in this immense forest.
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A short interesting trail at the campground
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Since the slot canyon adventure was unavailable, we took a ride 15 miles north to the next town of Monticello, Utah. It’s an agricultural town with vast rolling farm lands that were reclaimed from the original pinion / sage prairie. There wasn’t much open on a Sunday or much of interest to see until Twinkles said, “Did you see that huge tractor back there” ? A quick U-turn was made after which I saw this amazing old tractor inside a building next to the visitors center. The visitor center amazingly was open and it also contained a small folksy local museum (I love those kind) and the woman at the desk said the door to the tractor building should be open. This Tractor turned out to be an amazing story and made my day. It is a monstrous 1913 Emerson - Brantington Big Four Tractor, weighing 18,000 lbs. It was purchased new for $ 4,000 (delivered) by the San Juan Arid Farm Company, shipped by rail to Delores, Colorado and then driven to Monticello, Utah. It was used successfully for many years to plow 8,000 acres of unbroken prairie land to plant wheat and oats as a preparatory crop for Alfalfa. It then became a roadside attraction for a number of years until a dedicated Monticello resident bought it and turned it into a restoration project. It seems that the community came together to help with fund raising and storage space. It has been completely restored, is in running condition and is operated in the Monticello Forth of July parade. There are only two other such Tractors known to have survived, one in Canada and another in the US in badly deteriorated condition.
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| The Big 4 Tractor with those great spoke wheels |
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| Front view |
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The guide wheel shown in this ad was found half buried
in a field during restoration by a man who used to deliver gas
to the Tractor when in operation |
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A mural in Monticello
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1832 history of the US was brief ?
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Jens Nielson was a Mormon bishop and quite a man
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A former championship rodeo saddle, Monticello is still a cowboy town
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| Wonder Flour made in Monticello |
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| Quite a story about making quilts from Bull Durham sacks |
Afterwards we rode another 12 miles to see Church Rock, a prominent rock formation jutting up out of the mostly flat prairie. The story of Church Rock is rather weird and interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Rock_(Utah)
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| I like the soft light in this photo |
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Church Rock is on private ranch property, it appears that the cows like to sit
in the shadow of the rock |
We also took a ride on a dirt county road south of Blanding heading for the Three Kiva Pueblo but after about 10 miles, although a nice ride, but with another 20 miles to go we decided it wasn’t worthwhile. The ride went through some beautiful country and along the way we happened upon two other Anasazi ruins. I always thought these ruins were sparse, but am now finding that they are in many of the canyons here that have a reliable water source. It is a big issue regardless if the ruins are on private or government land, protected or not, as the worth of the pots and artifacts is lucrative for pot hunters to vandalize these sites. Most of the easy to get to ruins were picked clean years ago.
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Next the road was this larger dwelling with part of a wall still remaining. Note the
evidence of smoke on the ceiling |
Afterwards we continued on to the town of Bluff, Utah which was settled by the Mormon settlers who arrived by the Hole-In-The Rock Road from Escalante, Utah. We visited Fort Bluff which was their original settlement. They have done an amazing job of reconstructing the settlers cabins that are decorated inside by actual family decedents. Each cabin has photographs and information on the settlers, most impressive. One of the original cabins remains that has been left in it’s original deteriorated condition, it had a ghostly feel to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluff,_Utah
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This rock formation is the Navajo Twins, the store and restaurant have somewhat ruined
the scenic beauty of it all
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Jens Nielson, (again) Mormon Bishop, with photos of his three wives
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The Walter Lyman cabin nicely decorated by decendants
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Joseph and Harriet Barton and family, you will see the
remains of their cabin below |
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Sarah Perkins with her 9 daughters and only son in
the background. That boy must have had it rough ?
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The original unrestored Barton cabin
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How many people have walked over that door threshold
and the stories it could tell ? |
About 2 miles away from the campground is the Recapture Reservoir which is formed by a dam on the Recapture Creek. As I was doing research on this area I found that this area has come under considerable controversy since the BLM banned ATV’s from going into the Recapture Creek Canyon area. It seems the ATV’ers were making a mess, rampaging all over and making new trails, spewing trash around, so the BLM shut the trails down. In these parts, the ATV legions are like the NRA, they have clout and a local County Commissioner got involved and organized a protest ride inviting the anti government faction in to participate. So all these so called “Patriots”, a very overused word, came in and tore around making more of a mess, he was arrested for instigating this and I suppose has now achieved local hero status.
I don’t know how these sort of issues will ever be resolved as you have two or three totally dedicated and opposing sides. You have the Archeologists who want these ancestral Indian sites strictly preserved (not touched in any way) and the American Indians who consider these sites sacred. You then have the ATV’ers and to a lessor degree even the bikers and hikers who consider this their land and feel strongly that they should have free reign to use it. As these Ancestral Pueblo ruins are all over and the sites can contain valuable articles worth considerable money, people are naturally attracted to the hunt for them, as they have done for the past century, but it’s now against the law. This same fundamental issue is at the heart of the controversy about the Bears Ears National Monument.
Utah is one of the most beautiful states in the US and at the same time one that doesn't seem to quite belong.
The next stop is Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado,
Twinkles and Slick
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