Before it was Zion, it was Mukuntuweap

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Geo: 37.1753, -113.289

So for my birthday this year I got an unbelievably gorgeous day in Zion National Park and LOTS of sunshine.

I am a happy camper.

Zion park has made what what has to be one of the smartest decisions ever and perhaps one of the dumbest.

A shuttle bus similar to one in the Grand Canyon takes camera-touting tourists to the most visited places in the park, dropping off and picking up every 10 minutes or less.

It's an ecological no-brainer and when will Yellowstone get smart I ask you?

On the bus I struck up a conversation with the guy holding the biggest lens. Turns out, he was a professional photographer from St. George, hitting the park almost daily waiting for the leaves to show a little more color. He was kind enough to give me some info on great places to shoot and I thank him very much for that.

We got off at every stop, hiking on some and just wandering about at others.

After lunch in the adorable little Sedona wanna-be of Springdale, we drove to the top of the canyon through the 1.1 mile long tunnel completed in 1930. Just at the eastern entrance were some stairs cut into the rocks that I had to try--not knowing of course that this spur of the moment decision would gift me with some of my most memorable views.

The trail skirted the cliffs and clambered up over the top of the mountain we had just driven the tunnel through, to views of the western slopes and jagged monoliths we'd just left.

What as delight!! On some stretches the path was flanked by a sturdy railing and at others, ones that looked just as dangerous to me, there was nothing but thin air and a 6" wide trail for one foot at a time. Those--dang it--were the times I DIDN'T take pictures. I was too busy not falling off.

Wandering about the Zion museum I came across a book that totally captivated me. The author, a history nut, had bought some old scrapbooks on ebay of early visitors to the park. When they arrived he was overjoyed to see they contained 100 original photos with captions written on the backs, newspaper clippings from Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Pittsburgh and various mementos.

Clark says, "I am thoroughly convinced that the greatest motivation driving explorers, archeologists and historians to search for the past is the thrill that comes at the moment they discover something that has been lost for a very long time....I find that moment to be the best form of time travel yet discovered."

The authors are John & Melissa Clark and their resulting book, Opening Zion: A Scrapbook of the National Park's First Official Tourists is the result of their ebay find.

Seeing these old photographs of darling University of Utah students being cute all over the park was so fun. Nothing like beautiful girls to sell stuff--from toothpaste to national parks--back then they called it "pretty-face publicity."

Reading about how they came to be the first official visitors was only enhanced by the old time scrapbook feel of the Clarks' work.

A student of Zion's history for some time, John Clark says, "despite what I knew about Zion, I had never heard the story that came to life in these scrapbooks."

What happened was in the late 19-teens the Union Pacific Railroad, recognizing the dollars they could make bringing tourists to view the natural beauty of southern Utah, spearheaded a drive that improved roads, provided automobile transportation from where their rail line ended, and built campgrounds. This latter job was performed by William Wylie, the same man who built camping facilities in Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone had been a national park for 40 years when Zion began emerging as a destination. In 1903 artist Frederick Dellenbaugh, after spending a summer painting Zion, published an article in Scribners' Magazine in 1904 entitled, "A New Valley of Wonders."

Standing before the Great White Throne Dellenbaugh had remarked, "Never before has such a naked mountain of rock entered our minds. Without a shred of disguise its transcendent form rises pre-eminent. There is almost nothing to compare to it."

His art was displayed at the St Louis World's Fair in 1904. While causing a stir there were those who thought his paintings were a fanciful creation of his imagination--no such place could exist.

Mukuntuweap was gaining fans.

It's fascinating to me to see how fast a hidden corner--one with only rough buggy trails for access, can be marketed as the 8th wonder of the world.

Not that I'm not grateful. I'm deeply indebted to those who trod before and especially appreciative of the foresight to protect it.

But get this timeline: in 1872 it was first surveyed by John Wesley Powell, in 1909 it was declared a national monument, in 1918 named Zion, and even though the first road wasn't built until 1917, by 1919 Zion was a national park.

Hurray for capitalism.

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Photos

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
Jacob's the white mountain behind the shadowed one. An early Methodist minister, awed by the majesty around him, named these towering cliffs. They're in what's called the Court of the Patriarchs.

Great White Throne
Rising 2,200 feet above the valley floor, the Great White Throne is the park's most famous landmark. Artist Frederick Dellenbaugh, upon standing before it, stated, "Never before has such a naked mountain of rock entered our minds. Without a shred of disguise its transcendent form rises pre-eminent. There is almost nothing to compare to it. Niagara has the beauty of energy; the Grand Canyon of immensity; the Yellowstone of singularity; the Yosemite of altitude; the ocean of power; this Great Temple of eternity."

Heaps Canyon
Named for a pioneer family.

Riverside Walk along the Virgin River
End of the canyon: beginning of the Narows. As we were hiking, clouds started forming and within a very short time it began raining. We all scurried for the buses, but now I wish I'd persevered because the rain never amounted to anything. Whatta wus. I got scared off by all they hype over flash floods and narrow canyons.

Storm Clouds Over Zion
It looked like we were going to get doused--scooted us out of the Narrows really quickly anyway. But they passed over with no fuss.

The Canyon Floor
Along the Zion-Mt. Carmel highway as we head towards the top of the canyon.

Squished Rock
It's like a big giant sat on it and squashed it all together into ridges.

A Good Sturdy Trail...for a ways...
Part of this trail is railed, but what looked to me to be just as dangerous, was just open to the wide thin air. In places the trail was no wider than one foot with a 1,000' drop off. In others it disappeared altogether! Many of the trails in the park were built in the 1930's by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

From the Top...See our Road Below??
Well worth the hike.

Trail Falls Off Face of Cliff
Well, not literally, but it ceased to exist on this part. They laid these planks out over the 1,000 foot or so drop off so we could get around this rock.