After leaving Pleasant Valley Junction the ascent of the Wasatch was begun in earnest, but, though a long pull, the grade was not remarkably steep, nor was the cañon (worn through a red pudding-stone,) astonishing in any way, while always interesting. By the time breakfast was fairly out of the way, the summit had been reached and the descent began through the cañon of the Spanish Fork into Mormondom.
A few miles down we came to Thistle Station, a place of some consequence because it is the railway outlet for the large San Pete valley, which stretches nearly along the western foot of the Wasatch until it emerges into the valley of the Sevier. This valley is reached from the westward by a narrow-gauge railway line, built years ago by Mormon capital. It enters it from Nephi by the way of Salt creek and terminates at Wales, where there are coal mines worked by Welchmen and operated by English capital. The San Pete valley is not particularly interesting. Yet the little settlements back in the eastern foothills where the many streams come down are pleasant enough.
This valley became famous in 1865-67 as the scene of the San Pete Indian War. “Several companies of the Mormon militia were mustered here, and held the mountains and passes on the east against the Indians, guarded the stock gathered here from the other settlements that had been abandoned, and took part in the fights at Thistle creek, ... and the rest, where Black Hawk and his flying squadron of Navajos and Piutes showed themselves such plucky men.”
Toward the lower end of the valley stands the important town of Manti, its suburbs encroaching on the sagebrush. “As a settlement,” says Phil Robinson, the most recent traveller thither, “Manti is pretty, well ordered and prosperous.... The abundance of trees, the width of the streets, the perpetual presence of running water, the frequency and size of the orchards, and the general appearance of simple, rustic comfort, impart to Manti all the characteristic charm of the Mormon settlements.” Robinson says that the people in that region are chiefly Danes and Scandinavians. “These nationalities contribute more largely than any other—unless Great-Britishers are all called one nation—to the recruiting of Mormonism, and when they reach Utah maintain their individuality more conspicuously than any others.” The temple at Manti will be something worth going far to see when it is completed. “The site, originally, was a rugged hill slope, but this has been cut out into three vast semicircular terraces, each of which is faced with a wall of rough hewn stone, seventeen feet in height. Ascending these by wide flights of steps you find yourself on a fourth level, the hill-top, which has been leveled into a spacious plateau, and on this, with its back set against the hill, stands the temple. The style of Mormon architecture, unfortunately, is heavy and unadorned, and in itself, therefore, this massive pile, one hundred and sixty feet in length by ninety wide, and about one hundred high, is not prepossessing. But when it is finished, and the terrace-slopes are turfed, and the spaces planted out with trees, the view will undoubtedly be very fine, and the temple be a building that the Mormons may well be proud of.”
The lower part of the valley is undulating,—”for the most part a sterile-looking waste of greasewood, but having an almost continual threat of cultivation running along the center,” until it suddenly opens, at Mayfield, into a great meadow of several thousand acres. Passing on to the Sevier, volcanic hills and benches shut in the valley, but the bottoms along the river were level, grassy, “clumped with shrubs and patched with corn-fields.” Here there are frequent settlements, one of the most important of which is Salina, where the alkalies that infect the soil of all this region are concentrated in salt-beds that have long been dug for export. The Denver and Rio Grande Company have projected a track from this point due east to join its main line and thus secure not only the salt trade, but tap this farming and grazing region, which some day will be of great consequence, for there is plenty of water. Furthermore, this same company has laid a sort of preëmption right upon a railway route surveyed westward from Salina toward the Pacific coast through southern Nevada and central California, which will pass close by the Yosemite and the Caleveras groves of Big Trees.
We had gathered all this information from books and good friends, and the recollection of former reading, while
“like Iser, rolling rapidly,”
we descended the Spanish Fork. This cañon is not rough and cliff-bound, but its sides, though steep, are rounded, and soft walls of greenery—small bushes, rank grass and tufted groves of aspen and oak; while the river purls along the narrow depression under the continuous shade of young maples, alders, oaks and other shrubbery. A wagon road is to be seen most of the way showing long use. The rude kennels built for temporary use by the railway-makers have not yet had time to crumble, and add a picturesque note to the pleasant vale. Here and there were camps of emigrants, or of railway people. That they were Mormons was plain by the comfortable, home-like appearance of each bivouac, where buxom women were tending to the children and carrying on the ordinary duties of housekeeping in houses of cloth and kitchens made under booths of maple boughs. Children and dogs and donkeys abounded, and at two or three camps we caught sight of pet fawns. This cañon was formerly an Indian highway, and through it, in days gone by, more than one incursion of Navajos and Piutes has swept down upon the settlements, “bringing fire and the sword.” Through it also came, long, long ago, the pious friars,—explorer-priests—bent upon the conversion of the Indians; and the digging up of a few coins and other relics of their visits has given the name of Spanish Fork to the stream, which really is a “fork” of no other water course, but empties directly into Lake Utah.
As we emerge from the cañon a wide, haze tinted sketch of mountains and green-gray plains, with a touch of steel-white water, greets the eye to the westward, where stretch the arid deserts and volcanic ranges of Utah and Nevada. Southward, nobly tall and rugged, rise the hights of the Wasatch, with the magnificent pyramid of Mt. Nebo, overtopping the rest, exalted above the sunlit clouds and crowned with early snow wreaths. It is the last of the great, lone, Rocky Mountain peaks that we shall see, and a worthy reminder of the splendid scenery in whose presence our life has been expanded and glorified during the bygone months.