We crossed the divide ... and began our descent into and upon one of the most scenic portions of America.... I do not believe there is anything on the globe like the canyon of the Rio Virgin, or to compare with the Vermillion cliffs....
Our admiration for this people was aroused.... They can only market such products as can be driven across the mountains, while freighting of goods southward presents obstacles that would baffle the stoutest hearts. Here and over in the Dixie Land to the westward, the people live a simple, healthy life, unspoiled by the world and its vagaries. Children of the soil ... of one faith and with a singleness of purpose....
We lost our way and our tempers getting over the Sahara bordering Kanab. A lone sheep herder saved us on the second morning out and we floundered into Kanab over twenty-four hours late, just as Uncle “D” Woolley was starting a posse of Indian Scouts after us.
The Kings took Dave Rust for guide and went over to Zion Canyon. On the brink above Rockville, they “hesitated for awhile in an effort to comprehend the grandeur of the ‘Great Temple’ and its score of lesser temples and towers, brilliant in the glow of the setting sun.” King’s story continued:
We found the Parunuweap Canyon impassable, so we spent the day in the dark recesses of the Mukuntuweap, speechless with wonderment, except for an occasional “awe” or an “absolutely wonderful.” This panorama had a deeper, a more wonderful effect upon us than anything our eyes had ever beheld....
Garfield, Wayne and Kane counties are sparsely settled, and until permanent roads are constructed into them, they will remain so. Washington and Iron counties have great natural resources and wonderful possibilities which will blossom into realities only when the transportation problem has been solved. Each county can do little by itself in road building. It is a state problem and must be worked out by our state officials.
Times, however, were rapidly changing. The automobile was displacing the horse and the demand for good roads for auto traffic was being met by ever larger road appropriations by the state and the nation. However, the opening of the scenic areas of southern Utah and northern Arizona to the touring public is largely a story of highways.
The Kaibab and North Rim
North of the Colorado River and south of the Utah line lies that variegated country known as the Arizona Strip. To the west lie the Parashont and Trumbull Mountains. To the east, the Kaibab Plateau, locally known as the Buckskin Mountains, rears its summit to 10,000 feet in a long level line that stretches southward to the north rim of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. Information concerning this region began to seep in from outposts during the early 60’s. There is little doubt that Whitmore and McIntyre at Pipe Springs, L. W. Roundy at Kanab, and Peter Shurtz near Paria, all knew something about its general characteristics, for it could be observed from all three places.
The expedition led by James Andrus in the spring of 1866 to rescue Peter Shurtz must have explored the region south of Paria. Roundy said the expedition started south from Paria to investigate an Indian smoke and was gone fourteen days (February 23 to March 9), but no further record is available, except that Nate Adams, who moved to Kanab in 1871, stated the expedition went over the Kaibab.
Jacob Hamblin doubtless became well acquainted with the Kaibab after he went to Kanab in 1867 to live among the Indians. John D. Lee took up a ranch at Scutumpah (on the Andrus route of 1866) in 1869, explored the lower Paria, and located the site for a ferry at its mouth (later Lee’s Ferry). Lee and Hamblin must have explored a good deal of the region together for they built a six room adobe house with sod roof at Jacob’s Lake in north Kaibab soon after. When they divided their property a little later, Lee took the ferry and Hamblin the pool and Kane Springs in Houserock Valley.
In 1870, Brigham Young sent a portable steam sawmill to Kanab and Levi Stewart installed it near Scutumpah and the next year moved it to Big Springs on the Kaibab. Many years later, it was moved farther south to Castle or Rigg Springs.
In 1872, Major Powell’s party centered its work around the Kaibab. Part of the time, this party camped near the Levi Stewart ranch and sawmill.[92] At that time Eight-Mile Spring, Jacob’s Well, Oak Spring, Pine Spring and Stewart’s ranch were all being used as grazing headquarters. During that summer, Powell and a friend of his from Illinois, Professor Harvey C. DeMotte, explored the roof of the Kaibab and bestowed the name DeMotte Park upon the main valley (sometimes called V T Park). In 1873, Thomas Moran, the well-known Western artist who had been commissioned by the Federal government to paint the Grand Canyon, made a trip by mule team from Salt Lake City to the Kaibab, where Major Powell suggested the vantage from which he produced the canvas of the Grand Canyon now hanging in the National Capitol.