Next day of the Mukuntuweap Canyon, he writes:
Entering this, we have to wade up the stream; often the water fills the entire channel, and although we travel many miles, we find no floodplain, talus, or broken piles of rock at the foot of the cliff. The walls have smooth, plain faces, and are everywhere very regular and vertical for a thousand feet or more, where they seem to break in shelving slopes to higher altitudes; and everywhere as we go along, we find springs bursting out at the foot of the walls.[91]
Jack Hillers, a photographer from Powell’s party, spent some time during the summer of 1873 taking pictures in Zion Canyon. These are on file in the U. S. Geological Survey Office and have been often used in publications. For a long time, however, this material and Zion Canyon were largely forgotten. The local course of development continued placidly for many years. Only occasionally a hardy traveler, hearing of the beauties of the region, had courage enough to brave the rocky, dusty roads to enjoy the scenic splendors. One was Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, who had accompanied Powell on his second trip down the Grand Canyon. In the summer of 1903 he found his way into Springdale, where he made his headquarters with Bishop O. D. Gifford, visited Zion Canyon, made some oil paintings to be exhibited at the World’s Fair in St. Louis the next year, and wrote an article, “A New Valley of Wonders,” which appeared in Scribners’ Magazine for January, 1904. In this article, describing his first view of the West Temple, he wrote:
One hardly knows just how to think of it. 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—“The Titan fronted blowy steeps, that cradled Time.”
Grafton has a situation that must some day make it famous, yet one dreads to think of this land being overrun by the ennuied tourist. But with an altitude of only 3,000 feet, a superb, dry climate, mild winters, magnificent environment, and a supply of delicious fruits it cannot long remain unvisited if a railway ever is built within easy reach.
The Zion pictures at the fair created a great deal of interest. A young Mormon missionary, David Hirschi, who had been reared at Rockville and knew every foot of the Zion country, visited St. Louis on his way home from Europe and found them to be a center of attraction in the Utah section. He was surprised and delighted, but was put on his mettle when he heard skeptics remark that there couldn’t be such a place. He informed them that there certainly was, that he knew its every hill and cliff, and to prove it, he pointed to his buckskin shoelace and showed the hill in the picture where he had killed the deer from which they had been made. A great crowd gathered to listen and an interesting discussion followed. Undoubtedly the pictures and magazine article were important factors in arousing a widespread interest in Zion Canyon. The time was approaching when its superlative beauty would be recognized by the national government.
The national conservation program inaugurated by President Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot produced a bill (June 8, 1906) empowering the president to set aside certain lands particularly valuable for scenic, scientific or historic purposes, as national monuments. Many were created during the next few years and among them was the Mukuntuweap National Monument.
During the summer of 1908, Leo A. Snow of St. George, a United States Deputy Surveyor, was detailed to survey in southern Utah, Township 40 South, Range 10 West from Salt Lake City. The party, of which the present writer was a member, in executing the survey covered the upper part of the Zion gorge. Triangulation was used in measuring the gorge from the east to west. When the report and map were submitted that part of the canyon was described as unsurveyable. In his report, Snow stated that from a certain place (now Observation Point):
A view can be had of this canyon surpassed only by a similar view of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. At intervals along the west side of the canyon streams of various sizes rush over the edge of the chasm forming water falls from 800 to 2000 feet high. The stream in the bottom of the canyon appears as a silver ribbon winding its way among the undergrowth and occasionally disappearing from view. In my opinion this canyon should be set apart by the government as a national park.
The report was dispatched to Washington, June 25, 1909. A little more than a month later, July 31, the Acting Secretary of the Interior recommended to the President the creation of the Mukuntuweap National Monument. President Taft signed the proclamation on the same day. This act was primarily a withdrawal from entry—a method of holding land for national purposes and preventing it from passing into private ownership. There was no active administration of the area at first. The farmers still cultivated the land, the stockmen continued to graze their cattle in the canyon and the sawmill owners to lower lumber over the cable. The canyon was still inaccessible to automobiles and the roadway for wagons or buggies was such that few people cared to drive over it for pleasure.
Wesley King, of the Salt Lake Commercial Club, was an early exception. Poor roads could not thwart his desire to see the scenic beauties of which he had heard from E. D. Woolley, a prominent leader of Kane County. He and his wife traveled by train to Marysvale where they obtained a team and buggy and started south. A report of this trip appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune, November 12, 1911. King wrote: